In addition to more than seven million Google search results, tweets, posts, songs and t-shirts, the “Oga at the top” gaffe made by the Lagos state commandant of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC) has inspired developers at Kuluya.com to design an online game for visitors to the website.
HumanIPO reported last week Obafaiye Shem had failed to name the NSCDC’s official website address in an embarrassing morning television interview, causing a social media outburst across Nigeria.
In an exclusive with HumanIPO this morning Olakunlel Ogungbamila, chief executive of Kuluya Limited, said the decision to develop the game was not calculated, but necessitated by the trend in Nigeria’s web space.
He said: “It wasn’t calculated; it was “spur of the moment” thing. It was an impulse. Oga at the top was a top trend in Nigeria’s web space that we just wanted to see what we can do around it.
“We’ve seen people do songs and t-shirts around it. It just made sense to create a game around it. We have skill sets to develop games within 24 hours. We just did it!”
So far he said the response has been impressive.
“A lot of people have been to our site to play the game so far, but I can’t give you the exact number right now. But since we put it on our site last week Friday, quite a lot of interesting things have happened concerning the game in particular. One of such is that people are playing the game and posting the scores on Twitter,” he told HumanIPO.
He said the attention the gaffe has drawn does not connote that the commandant committed a grievous offence. According to him, incidents like this happen frequently only that the internet took notice of this one.
“Stuffs like this happen every time; it’s nothing new – journalist interviewing somebody and the person saying something wrong or doesn’t respond properly. It happens. Just that this time, it just turned into a mess. It happens all the time, only that the internet noticed this time,” he said.
