Yesterday, on-air personality, Gbemi Olateru-Olagbegi got into trouble with Adejoro and Dokun Olumofin–now famously referred to as the Olumofin brothers.
From Gbemi’s twitter subliminals, the Olumofin brothers are a pair who love to attend weddings and would do anything to extract wedding invites from the bride and groom even if their company isn’t wanted anywhere near the wedding venue. “Social climbers”, Gbemi called them without referring to them by name.
Wedding Gate-crashers, she also must think of them.
She depicted the Olumofin brothers as a bunch of social wannabes–the kind of persons who would want to attend any society or celebrity wedding just to rub shoulders with the creme-de-la-creme.
“It’s just tacky and desperate. If he/she didn’t invite you, don’t be annoyed. Sit in your house. Shout out to the two brothers who make sure they attend every society wedding, whether they are invited or not. Awon social climbers”, Gbemi signed off on her Twitter page.
It took a while, but the Olumofin brothers finally decoded that the ‘sub’ was theirs. And so where Gbemi left out names, they came for her in unsparring terms and hard as well. No deprecating or profane words were considered off limits.
Gbemi was described as “ugly”, “frustrated” and the kind of lady who wouldn’t find a husband because she is not good to look at. Her vagina was described as “cobweb” infested for lack of regular use and she was described as being inflicted with halitosis; a medical term for bad breath. She was called out for her endless masturbating sessions (how the Olumofin brothers knew all this, I’ll never fathom).
The Olumofin brothers posted screenshots to prove that the groom, Tunde Demuren, did invite them for the next big society wedding which Gbemi was referring to in her ‘sub’ laden tweets.
Now, Gbemi and the bride, Tolu Oniru (popularly referred to as Toolz) are besties (best friends) and Toolz provided enough to prove she supplied Gbemi with the gist of the Olumofins harassing the would-be couple for wedding invites.
“Someone can’t even gist Gbemi small without her subbing the person’s entire generation on Twitter”, Toolz tweeted to her army of followers.
For hours, Nigerian social media was lit on account of the invectives, diatribes and name-calling that the Gbemi Vs Olumofin spectacle had become. Like it often happens when celebrities choose to air their dirty laundry in public, almost everyone had an opinion.
As I read the different viewpoints on the subject, it occurred to me that very few were calling out Toolz for her role in the shameful episode. Apparently, she supplied the gist to her friend Gbemi, who in keeping to character, went to town, running her mouth (or fingers).
I have followed the pair of Gbemi and Toolz all my adult life from Cool FM, to Inspiration FM and now to Beat FM. They provide plenty of gist and celebrity gossip during drive time traffic to keep your mind on everything but the Lagos bedlam in front of you. They are a witty, entertaining pair with the most acerbic of tongues. It makes for good radio when the hosts are on top of their game, dishing out small talk aplenty with a cocktail of the latest urban hits.
But it makes for a pretty poor spectacle as well when on-air personalities or celebrities don’t know where to draw the line between their private and professional lives. I’ll never for the life of me understand why Gbemi would tweet a private gist about her friend’s wedding and why that friend would admit publicly and shamelessly to providing the gist.
If the Olumofin brothers aren’t wanted at her wedding, Toolz more than anyone else has the powers to stop them from coming. She didn’t need to confide her helplessness in stopping them in a friend. And besides, since when has it become acceptable behavior to call out certain guests before one’s nuptial?
I reckon that Mr. Demuren must have been sorely embarrassed that his upcoming wedding has become chat fodder for the online-savvy, “twittering and facebooking children of anger”. Exactly the kind of pre-wedding publicity he wouldn’t have wanted.
The Olumofin brothers are also a pretty shameless lot as well from what I was able to make of their posts. Calling a lady all those unprintable names because she is un-married? I mean, who makes these stupid rules where a young unmarried woman is deemed a societal failure? I can understand that they were justifiably aggrieved but they went overboard with the invectives and slurs they threw Gbemi’s way.
Lagos is a city that loves its weddings, its parties and its nite clubs and no one who goes through the kind of traffic we go through in this city all year long, should deprive anyone of the city’s little pleasures. The Olumofins shouldn’t be called out or ridiculed for making wedding appearances their pastime–invited or not. I also like that they publicly admitted to loving weddings. We shouldn’t begrudge them whatever makes them happy.
In the final analysis, while a bit of celebrity drama is good for spicing up our social media spaces, it has to be said that celebrities can also choose to act as grown-ups and spare the public the drama and entertainment when they can. Not everything should be made public fodder.
The quartet of Gbemi, Toolz, Dokun and Adejoro, have displayed enough pettiness, jejune and infantile qualities to last us a year. This is hoping they some day find it within themselves to grow up.
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The writer is on Twitter as @egbas