Comedian Basketmouth Says Nigerians Are Hypocrites

One of Nigeria's top comedians, Bright Okpocha, the one known as Basketmouth, may have used his mouth to incur the wrath of Nigerians, by saying that the same people who made him who he is today are hypocrites and cannot understand simple jokes.

Basketmouth was speaking on a Channels Television program, Rubbin Minds with Ebuka, where he was a guest on the talk show.

During the show, Ebuka brought up the rape joke Basketmouth made last year which turned most of his fans against him. The much loved stand up comedian blew his top and poured insult on his country people.

This is what he said:

The thing is they are all hypocrites in this country. The thing is, it’s a joke. Do you understand me? It’s just a joke.

I’m not celebrating rape, it’s just a joke. And they wanted to just kill me, you know, and I’m sorry about it, honestly, I am sorry about it, but.. I tried as much as possible not to let it consume my creativity because if I start saying, oh you can’t talk about this, there shouldn’t be any topic that can’t be talked about, it’s a joke.

I crack jokes about my own death, do you understand, and people laugh about my own death, it’s just a joke. Let’s grow beyond this. Definitely, I’m not going to crack a joke about rape again, I shouldn’t even be saying the word. I’ve learnt my lesson, but we shouldn’t have limits.

But I’m happy that controversy came up, it helped me sell my tickets. I sold out, my show was sold out big time, we even started selling standing tickets. There weren’t meant to be standing tickets, regular tickets were supposed to be 25 pounds but because of the controversy, London Guardian carried the story, even compared me with Jimmy Carr, my tickets sold out.

We even sold extra 600 standing tickets at 75 pounds! So I’m looking for another controversy, though not that type.