Nigerian Afrobeat star, David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido, has deleted a controversial music video following criticism from the Muslim faithfuls.
Gatekeepers News reports that the Davido Music Worldwide label boss and his signee, Olamilekan Taiwo, aka Logos Olori, caused a stir online, sparking mixed reactions from netizens following the release of the latter’s new record, ‘Jaye Lo.’
A 45-second clip of the new video posted Friday on Instagram by Davido got a lot of reactions from Nigerians.
Many Muslim devotees labelled the video offensive and were calling for a retraction while also threatening the artistes with a lawsuit.
Davido had posted the video on Instagram with the caption, “Allow me to re-introduce Logos Olori with his new single, ’Jaye Lo.’ Let us run it up one time! Let’s take over the world. DMW.”
The controversial scene featured some men depicting praying mallams seen dancing in front of a mosque instead of praying. This dancing act has since been deemed offensive by some Muslim devotees.
Reacting to the post, a fan, Abba Sa’ad, wrote, “My last day of being a Davido fan. You don’t disrespect Islam like this! If it is normal for the Christians, it is not normal for us.”
Another commentator, Muhammad Gajimi, wrote, “What you posted was absolutely wrong and prohibited in Islam. We won’t take this lightly. You need to come on television and apologise to the Muslim ummah. You need to take this video. Let us report this video please. This is a complete disrespect to you religion. No Imam will dance in the mosque. In fact, music is prohibited in Islam.”
Logos Olori’s social media pages were also awash with criticisms. An Instagram user, Abdelrhman Malik wrote, “This is not creativity. You are mocking the prayer imposed by God.” Also, Abdullah wrote, “This isn’t it at all. How can somebody be done praying and start dancing on the praying mat? Subhanallah. May Allah protect us from Satan. The music is nice but the video is definitely not good!”
Recent checks on Davido’s social media accounts showed that the video had been deleted from his handles.
Reacting to the development, former President Muhammadu Buhari’s aide, Bashir Ahmad, hailed the singer for removing the video.
He wrote on Twitter, “It is good to discover that Davido deleted that offensive and hurtful video. Hopefully, the entire scene will also be deleted from the actual footage before releasing it to the market, and we humbly urge that the same grave mistake should never happen again from him or anyone else.
“Nigeria is a beautiful country. It is always amazing when we celebrate the beauty of living in unity and harmony while embracing our differences.”
Also, another Twitter user, with the username @PoojaMedia, commended Davido and his team for handling the issue in a mature manner.
“You have to give it to Davido’s PR team & how they redirected energy to a positive one. Gifted the lady 10K, deleted the video & posted the video of the gift with the prayers down to Davido’s capture & build new energy. In 24hrs, so much to learn if you are in the PR hustle 🔥”
