With a global media focus on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Fatboy has seconded the opinion of Jamaican Dancehall musician Clifford Smith commonly known as Mr. Vegas, who called out the world for its hypocrisy in speaking against the Russia-Ukraine crisis yet it remained silent about similar atrocities on the African continent.
The Jamaican music legend in an angry tweet said, “The whole world stayed silent on the atrocities in Uganda, Nigeria, Darfur, Mali….Just remember that!”
“He's obviously not wrong,'' said Fatboy. “ Clearly there’s a double standard, the media and the world seems to choose which conflicts to pay attention to and which to ignore. And I usually tell people not to get played by the media. Why allow the media to tell you what to be offended and outraged by? Because if it weren't for the situation in Ukraine being amplified to the extent that it is, maybe it wouldn't have gained this much airtime in public discourse,” he added.
Olive Najjuma, his Co-host perceived the amplification of Ukrainian invasion as a matter of racism citing the ongoing killings in Sudan which no one is paying attention to because they aren't white.
However, Fatboy argued that on the geopolitical scene, the aggression of Ukraine carries more weight given that it involves global superpowers.
“In my opinion, I think that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine from a geopolitical level is more significant to the powers involved. Because this involves geopolitical military alliances of NATO and Russia, in other words, two elephants are clashing. Not that I want to diminish the suffering that has happened elsewhere but from a geopolitical standpoint, this Russian-Ukrainian conflict bears more significance,” he said.
He referred to the European conflict as the Premier League which Africa does not qualify for, the Middle East as the second division and African conflict as the third or fourth division which no one cares about because now it's the big boys fighting.
“However, isn't it embarrassing that Africa still has no seat in the geopolitics of this world yet the seat hasn’t been denied to them. It's just that our leaders are in a league of their own,” Olive commented.
Fatboy concluded, “You may want to chill with the big boys but you are still a backward, impoverished, scientifically and technologically backward continent,” he said to Olive who in response wondered whether it was the impact of the African leaders or the Western world that were keeping Africa so.
The Fatboy show is hosted by James Onen aka Fatboy, Olive and Sarah every weekday from 6am to 10am on RX Radio.