Spy poll verdict -Yes Nigerians are copycats!

The Spy's week-long poll to determine whether or not people think Nigerians have a penchant for copying trends  has concluded today with the verdict that they ARE!
All the 60% of votes received was in the affirmative. To re-cap, we launched the poll after a Nollywood director in an interview with a sister website lamented the name - NOLLYWOOD - attributed to the Nigerian film industry and wondered why Nigerians had to copy so much.

The Spy says - copying, mimicking, imitating, - call it what you will - is a natural thing and everyone is guilty of it to a certain extent. However, if this natural tendency is expressed in more creative ways, it becomes more inspirational than COPYCAT - ish.  

To be clear,  here's typical example - There are a thousand and one Sun, Star and whatever else newspapers around the world but you'll find in most places that the mastheads (title graphics) are styled in certain distinctive ways from place to place. So you can image how astonished I was when I visited Nigeria two years ago after many years and stumbled upon the Sun newspaper there for the first time. I nearly freaked out thinking I was holding the same Sun  I was used to in the UK although in fairness, the Nigerian copy bears the article "Daily" instead of "The"  preceding the word Sun but everything else is as good as carbon copy, e.g. the font and colour. This can be disturbing or even legally questionable especially when its not a franchise like KFC or Woolworths.

On the other hand however, I found that the (Nigerian) Guardian newspaper has an original styling. The saying goes that "Its not what you say but how you say it" that makes the difference. Nuff said and thanks to our voters.