An international student at the Coventry University, Moboluwarin Ayeye, who called for a ban on Amala in a class presentation, has said that he was proud of his Yoruba heritage and also as a Nigerian man.
In a reaction which he sent exclusively to The PUNCH, Ayeye, who simply goes by Bolu on his Twitter handle, said, “I love being a Yoruba and Nigerian man, and proud of it (most of the time).”
He added that the presentation was part of a class project to help students improve their presentation skills, hence, the content of the presentation didn’t really matter.
“The class’ name is Presentation Skills for Successful Graduates and it’s a class on improving and working on media and presentation skills. So, the goal isn’t necessarily about the content, more so about demonstrating excellent presentation and media skills.
“So, while I had spent weeks practising and perfecting my presentation and media skills, the subject matter during the class mattered little. It just had to a have lot of information and more importantly, I had to showcase strong presentation and speaking skills, a bit of a challenge for me, as I had always struggled talking to groups of people.
“But what people didn’t know was that it wasn’t a serious slide in my presentation in the first place. It was one of two ice breakers I had prepared to make my presentation more exciting and engaging for my class.
“The first to my fellow Africans in the room to catch their attention and the second one, ‘Why Superman is the greatest hero of all times,’ to catch everyone in general’s attention. What is funny in the end, I realised while practising I wouldn’t even have the time to use these two joke icebreaker slides and skipped over them during my slides, the real presentation was actually on Brexit.”
He revealed that he enjoys annoying his friends and followers on social media. While, he wasn’t bothered about the backlash that came with the Amala brouhaha, Bolu stated that his parents were also dragged into the matter and with that, he wasn’t okay.
“It was not my intention for it to be taken seriously, and I apologise if people thought I was berating their culture in another person’s land and for that, I understand the anger and vitriol, or if I thought Amala is nasty, in reality, I really don’t care much for it, it’s not bad, it’s not fufu (just kidding again) .
“I didn’t mind the insults when they were directed at me and I really don’t care for them. I mean people can’t beat me over the WiFi and in a few days, people would forget. But what I didn’t enjoy or find fair was the insults to my family. That was out of bounds. My parents are good people, might I say, excellent people, the very best of the best, you can’t find better people and they don’t deserve or warrant such insults over a joke.”