SECRETS OF THE STREETS:
23 Secrets For Achieving Success In The Entertainment Industry… and anywhere really!
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Secrets
Streets::
of the
23 Secrets For Achieving Success In The
Entertainment Industry... and anywhere really!
TEJU Babyface OYELAKIN
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SECRETS OF THE STREETS:
23 Secrets For Achieving Success In The Entertainment Industry… and anywhere really!
(C) 2016 by TEJU Babyface OYELAKIN
All rights reserved
No part of this book should be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted by any means without the
written permission of the author or publisher except for
brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN 000 - 00000 - 0 - 0
Printed and published in Nigeria by:
Banc & All Publishing Company Limited, Abuja
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SECRETS OF THE STREETS:
23 Secrets For Achieving Success In The Entertainment Industry… and anywhere really!
Contents
Acknowledgement
Appreciation
Dedication
Introduction
Secret 1: The Secret of ‘Jamb Question’
Secret 2: The Secret of Boniface
Secret 3: The Secret of Puma
Secret 4: The Secret of Puma (2)
Secret 5: The Secret of King Solo
Secret 6: The Secret of ‘Bros’
Secret 7: The Secret of the ‘Monkey Work, Baboon Chop’
Secret 8: The Secret of ‘Banging’
Secret 9: The Secret of The Gospel According to M.I.
Secret 10: The Secret of the Scion
Secret 11: The Secret of Confam
Secret 12: The Secret of the Lay-About
Secret 13: The Secret of Joe
Secret 14: The Secret of ‘Maintain your Shampion’
Secret 15: The Secret of O.Y.O
Secret 16: The Secret of Lilliput
Secret 17: The Secret of the Efiko
Secret 18: The Secret of Hip and Hop
Secret 19: The Secret of War Chest
Secret 20: The Secret of Titration
Secret 21: The Secret of ‘Wetin You Bring’
Secret 22: The Secret of The Last Card
Secret 23: The Secret of ‘The Latter Shine’
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5
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7
8
10
20
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39
46
55
63
71
79
84
94
103
113
121
129
137
146
157
167
175
185
193
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SECRETS OF THE STREETS:
23 Secrets For Achieving Success In The Entertainment Industry… and anywhere really!
Acknowledgements
Apart from those who expect their names to be there, does
anyone actually read the Acknowledgements in a book?
I don’t!
Which is now something of a challenge, because I want you to
read this. So, I have devised a system.
I will enumerate them as opposed to writing prose. That way,
you can just skim through to see whether your name appears
here... Or not.
Come on, you know you want to.
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Appreciation
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
The wife and best friend - Oluwatobiloba Oyelakin
The mother - Olori Oluyemisi Oyelakin
The siblings - Mojoyin, Adebukola, Omolara and
Gbadebo (the ManF)
The family - the Oyelakins, Banjokos, Buharis and
Animashauns
The ‘appointer’ - Olakunle Soriyan
The believers - Adetunji Ogunwusi, Dr. Muiz Banire
(SAN) and Fola Adeola
The long-time mentors - Leke Alder, Sam Adeyemi and
Femi Paul
The first editor and counselor - Demilade Olaosun
The second editor and ‘encourager’ - Azubuike
Ishiekwene
The boyhood hero and the advocate - Richard and
Jumobi Mofe-Damijo
The supporter-in-creativity - Tade ‘Ignatius’ Ogidan
The ‘broses’- Basorge Tariah and Ali Baba
The visionary marketers - Tunji Adeyinka, Yetunde
Akin-Olaiya, Oluwole Mayungbo, Rilwan Fujah, Eniola
Gilbert and all at Connect Marketing Services
Please fill in your name here if you think it ought to have
appeared, but didn’t ____________
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SECRETS OF THE STREETS:
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Dedication
Dedicated to the memory of my hero, friend and confidant,
Omo Oba Jacob Gbadegesin Oyelakin. I still hear your voice dad
And to mommy, Ajike Ebunolu Oyelakin. Ajike, awon omo ’n ki
oo
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SECRETS OF THE STREETS:
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Introduction
I never thought I would write a book so soon.
I always figured that at some point in the future I would write a
book. I just didn’t think it would be in 2015.
When I had my epiphany relating to thought leadership a few
years ago, I assumed I was ‘called’ to be a motivator and speaker
mainly and as I had noticed, a book was usually the spin-off of
those things, as a matter of course.That is, a celebrated thought
leader would always write a book. So in my mind’s eye, the
natural progression proceeded thus: teach/inspire for a few
years and then begin to write and publish books based on what
I had been teaching on the circuit.
These days, however, I am less sure about that order. Sometimes
it seems that things might actually be the other way around,
which is to say the speaking gift might be a spin-off of the
writing gift. (Emphasis on the word ‘might’. A very confusing
thing, this gifts matter. A classic case of the chicken and the egg.
By the way, have they finally figured out which came first?).
This is because something remarkable started to happen as I
began to prepare my lecture notes. As I proceeded to write my
thoughts down, so as not to forget them, I discovered that they
began to take on a life of their own and went totally bonkers!
It would be my intention to write down a thought I assumed
would take up only one page, but as soon as I put pen to paper,
one page would become two and soon balloon into multiple
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pages. In fact, I often worried about how I would ever manage
to commit all I had written down to memory when the time to
teach it would come.
So what to do with what I had written? It would take almost
two years, but the answer finally arrived in a suggestion by
my friend, Tunde Oluwasola, to write a book. At the time the
suggestion seemed ludicrous, but the more I thought about it,
the more I came to realize that I had actually written most of the
book already. What I had assumed were lecture and teaching
notes actually read more like a book than an oral presentation.
And as they say, the rest is history.
While it is my hope that this book will provide answers for
millions of young people across Africa who desire to have a
successful career in the entertainment industry, it is more
than just a book written to that industry. Even though the
experiences are personal (of course), the principles remain
universal and will be instructive for young people who desire
success in any industry at all.
Apart from crime.
I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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SECRETS OF THE STREETS:
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SECRET 1:
THE SECRET OF
‘JAMB1 QUESTION’
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SECRET 1: THE SECRET OF ‘JAMB1 QUESTION’
Bros, am I supposed to be a comedian?”
This question I asked my second comedy mentor2, Alibaba,
several times during the period I served as his apprentice.
Am I supposed to be a comedian?
It was an enquiry he treated with his usual approach to banal
matters; he thoroughly ignored me.
He had (and probably still has) that annoying habit of becoming
tight-lipped whenever he thought you were speaking on
matters he felt you ought to know better than to speak about.
Having suffered the embarrassment of being ignored a few
times, I stopped asking. Then, in a move that closely resembled
how life often deals with us, he, out of the blues, supplied the
answer one day when I least expected it.
I had followed him to Akodo Beach Resort in the Ibeju Lekki
area of Lagos for an event where he was to be emcee for the
annual gathering of the Jaycees Association. It was an all night
event and one of those rare occasions where the emcee is
treated as ‘one of the family’.
So it happened that after performing for a few hours, Ali was
able to put his feet up on the sandy beach under the moonlight,
1
JAMB QUESTION- parlance used to describe a needless question. It is derived from the Joint Admissions
and Matriculation Board examination that students seeking admission into Nigeria’s higher institutions of
learning must take.
To satisfy your curiosity, my 1st comedy mentor is Basorge Tariah Jnr; more on him later.
2
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with a drink in hand (non alcoholic; Ali is/was a notorious
teetotaler) and watch the Jaycees members eat, dance and
generally have a good time.
After the dancing had gone on for a while, everyone decided
to take a break and they figured they needed some more
humor and my boss decided that I could handle it. And so the
microphone was handed to me to entertain for another hour
or so.
And entertain I did.
When I had finished and returned to my seat beside Alibaba,
he looked at me for a few seconds and in a low voice laced with
sarcasm said, “And you keep asking me if you have what it takes
to be a comedian”
A warm feeling spread through me like I’d just had a hot cup of
tea. In the small universe of upcoming comedians, that was one
of the highest testimonials you could receive.
Now, it might seem strange to you- having known me for a few
years as the Teju Babyface - that I could have been so insecure.
Perhaps I should explain my insecurity.
You see, I never really set out to be a comedian; not in the
beginning anyway. What I was going to be was an actor and
after I appeared in Tade Ogidan’s Diamond Ring movie while
still at the University of Lagos, I was convinced it would happen.
Well it didn’t.
I sort of stumbled into comedy as a means of making some
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extra money while in school, so I wouldn’t starve. (This is not
an autobiography, so I will skip delving into details. I will write
one someday though, so keep your appetite sharp).
I arrived at the doors of professional comedy to meet others
who had nursed the dream of being a comedian for quite a
while and had had quite a bit of practice at it.
That wasn’t, however, the main reason for my insecurity.
The main issue was I didn’t in any way, look (or sound for that
matter) like a comedian.
If you think I have a baby face because of how I appear now, you
should have seen me in 1999 when I started out in the humor
industry. I was a different ‘proposition’ altogether. I didn’t look
the part, sound the part or have any pedigree in that area.
Pedigree? Yes, pedigree. Back then, most comedians were
either from the Niger Delta area of Nigeria or from very humble
backgrounds, facts they wore proudly on their sleeves as their
qualifications to be humor merchants.
I went to Corona School for crying out loud!
Oh and they reminded me of that fact at every opportunity
they got. My colleagues would always refer to me as being ‘Aje
Butter3’, never mind the fact that I grew up in the Oshodi area
of Lagos, which is almost as far from being Aje Butter as you
could think.
A popular slang employed to refer to a person of elitist or sheltered upbringing
3
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To cut a long story short, as they say, I spent my first few
years as a professional comedian dealing with insecurity that
stemmed from things I had no control over and could not
change; my background and my looks. I would have arrived
under Alibaba’s tutelage more insecure than I did, but Basorge
Tariah had done a good job of curing me of as many of those
‘demons’ as he could.
Despite their best efforts, however, it was an issue I carried
around with me for quite a while. In the face of rejection and
other daunting challenges over the years, I was forced to deal
with that question time and time again and return to the root
of my initial desire to go into entertainment.
How does this concern you?
Yes, you reading this book, which I hope you bought by the way.
You need to rid yourself of that ‘borrow borrow’ mentality.
I know, without a shadow of doubt, that as a young entertainer,
it is a question that you will ask not only at the start of your
career, but also time and time again as you are faced with the
challenges and the discouragement that will surely come.
Believe me, as sure as night follows day, you have my word that
you will have these professional challenges.
Are you on the right path?
Should you be doing what you are doing?
Should you be pursuing entertainment or stay where you are
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currently cutting your teeth?
How do you know if you are not forcing yourself to do something
that you shouldn’t?
If I have to tell you anything at all in answer to that, it is this:
follow the low-hanging fruit.
Simply put, in my experience, life hardly ever leaves you without
options. Conversely, life will also, usually, not give you a lot
of options at any one point, at least not in the entertainment
industry.
In short, life will seemingly make your mind up for you. Never
mind the many things you feel like doing when you set out.
Just pay attention to that which rewards your efforts the
most with growth.
As I have stated, I stumbled into comedy as a means of making
money. But let’s face it; it was the only ‘viable’ means available
to me at the time.
There is a reason why the word viable appears in inverted
commas in the last paragraph. It is because what should be
done is hardly ever that obvious to most people.
Many people thought I should have pursued acting, yours truly
included. There was a handsome young actor who was even
convinced that I had fluffed my lines by not following up on the
momentum of my first movie, Diamond Ring. When I met him
on the set of a series called ‘One Too Much’ in the year 2000,
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Desmond Elliot was convinced that if he had been given a whiff
of the opportunity I’d had with that movie, there would have
been no looking back in his career.
I guess he was right.
His successful acting career certainly proved that4. That in itself
is the crux of this discourse, isn’t it? His destiny responded to
the effort he put into acting, mine didn’t. No matter how hard I
tried (and trust me I did), the doors to acting just wouldn’t just
open for me5.
Yet, that which I was doing ‘on the side’, the comedy, was
encouraging me more and more. Slowly but surely, opportunities
about which I had only ever dreamed started to open up in the
comedy industry and even though I didn’t recognize it for what
it was at the time, I decided to ditch acting and pursue comedy.
Okay, let me be more accurate. What I did was stop my active
pursuit of acting in the belief that I didn’t need to. We had just
spent almost two years filming a soap opera for the late Amaka
Igwe and as far as I was concerned, when that was released, I
would become the MAJOR actor I had wanted to be all along.
To my frustration again, it didn’t happen as conceived and
hoped. I was only fortunate that I had decided earlier to give
4
He has also evolved over the years in his career as currently (as at the time this book went to press), He is
a distinguished member of the Lagos State House of Assembly, with solid prospects to advance into more
active political roles at the federal level of the Nigerian Government.
5
Julius Agwu remembers as much when I approached him at the Miss Tinubu Hall pageant at UniLag in the
year 2000, to ask for his help in getting on stage that night to do some comedy. He and Okey Bakassi were
the hosts and he kindly gave me the opportunity on the night.
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my full strength to the low-hanging fruit; comedy.
In its usual manner, life would still deal me another major hand
to ensure that I had only comedy to pursue. After my final year
in university, I could not go job-hunting, because I had not been
issued a certificate at the time. While my classmates had gone
off into the labor market in search of jobs upon graduation,
I had a few complications with my results and had to spend
extra time sorting that out, hence my need to make money to
survive. (My father had stopped my allowance as punishment
for not graduating when I should have).
Literally, being a comedian/emcee was about the only viable
option I had. It was the low-hanging fruit and even though I
kept second guessing it, I really had no choice but to reach for
and pluck it.
I am willing to bet that you are not exactly rolling around in
viable options at the moment, are you? The chances are that
if you are seriously contemplating going into a particular line
of entertainment, it is about the only viable option you have. I
am assuming, of course, that I am talking to someone who is
truthful with himself/herself.
Kick the doubts into a corner, will you? This is only your first
step. It is literally a means to an end and not an end in itself.
The chances are that where you are starting out in the industry
is not where you will end up. Here I am 15years later and even
though I will probably always be qualified as one, I am hardly a
comedian anymore.
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When I look back at all the questions I threw at my longsuffering
mentor as to whether I was supposed to be a comedian or not,
I realize that I was entertaining needless fears. I literally had
nothing else to turn to,in spite my beliefs and the illusion that
an acting career was in the offing. This, of course, is the comfort
and benefit of hindsight. Vehicle manufacturers are wont to
boldly inscribe on rearview mirrors that “objects in the mirror
appear nearer (clearer, I might add) than they really are”.
Hence, if you desire to know whether you are on the right path
in the entertainment industry or not, ask yourself a question;
‘am I eating from the low-hanging fruit or have I chosen to
stretch to pluck that which seems more alluring, but is way out
of my reach at the moment?’
Stop subjecting yourself and others to JAMB questions at every
turn!
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“The fundamental cause of the
trouble is that in the modern world
the stupid are cocksure while the
intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell
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SECRET 2:
THE SECRET OF
BONIFACE
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SECRET 2: THE SECRET OF BONIFACE
hat’s in a name?
W
If you haven’t figured it out yet, you will soon.
Without your telling me so, I know that you
have agonized long and hard over what brand
name to coin for yourself as an entertainer. If you are yet to
pick one that is satisfactory to you and possibly to your clique
of friends and advisers, don’t be embarrassed. All of us, without
exception, went through this ‘agony’.
Teju Babyface sounds normal now right? Even has a nice ring to
it, doesn’t it? Chances are that if your name is Teju, your friends
automatically call you Teju Babyface. If only you knew what a
ridiculous name it sounded like when we first came up with it!
I could have sworn that it wouldn’t work.
My stage name before then had been just ‘Teju’. If you ever get
the highly unlikely chance to see some of my earliest work as
a comedian, you will be able to confirm this. I was introduced
just as ‘Teju’. It however occurred to me that something had to
change and Dan Foster, then of Cool FM, was the agent of that
epiphany.
Tee-A was planning a comedy gig at a new club called Tiberios
in Victoria Island back then. The year was 2001(or thereabout)
and I was on the bill to perform, along with Ali Baba, Basket
Mouth and a few others.
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No problem with that: at least until Dan Foster got to promoting
the show on radio.
Dan, as you know is an American. Again, no ‘wahala’ with
that. The only thing was that when he started reeling off the
names of the comedians that the prospective attendees could
expect to see at the show, I didn’t hear my name. At least not as
anybody or I knew it.
”Featuring Tee-A, Ali Baba, Basket Mouth… and Tiyuuu.”
Yeah, that was what the big dog (as Dan called himself on radio
at the time and probably still does) called me: Tiyuuu.
Tiyuu ke! People kept asking me why I wasn’t in the show’s
line-up. After all, this was my family; my men, my brothers and
my people.
“But I am!” I protested.
”No,” they insisted. “We heard Tee A and Ali Baba and Basket
Mouth and one Tiyuu. Who’s this Tiyuu by the way?”
What, of course, followed this incident was the realization
that I had to find a suffix to my name that could be universally
recognized or perhaps even a new name altogether. It must be
said that between Alibaba, Tee-A and I, we couldn’t come up
with a name until Tee-A’s wife (and her sisters) suggested ‘Teju
Babyface’.
In my mind, a more ridiculous name I had never heard.
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What? The who to the whom? Plus I was very sure that many
people would try to take the mickey out of me by calling me
Boniface. And some did, including Tee-A! What a Judas.
They insisted, however, and we decided to give it a spin. I can’t
tell you how uncomfortable I was the first few times I heard it
over the microphone as I was introduced on stage.
But that’s the thing about names, isn’t it? Not only do they grow
on you but also, one’s achievements justify the name eventually.
I also remember the first time Tee-A announced, back in UniLag,
that henceforth, he would be known as Tee-A. Before that, he
had been called ‘Lagbaja of UniLag’.
Tee who?
I thought it was such a simple name that it would never work,
especially as I saw it in my mind as T.A and not Tee-A.
Well, guess who was wrong, again?
So, the point is pretty much elementary. It doesn’t matter what
you call yourself really. If you do what you are supposed to do
as you are supposed to do it, the world will eventually respect
your name.
Having said that, do not be ridiculous either!
Be careful not to choose a name that your family would be
ashamed to repeat in public; a name that would cause them to
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deny you.
I have tried to make this book as easy to read as possible, so I
have avoided loading it with technicalities, but at this point, I
must give you a few pointers.
1. DON’T CHOOSE A NAME JUST FOR THE SAKE OF IT - Your
choice of name should be functional and necessary. Which
is to say, don’t be flippant with your choice of a craft-name.
Don’t pick a name just because everybody is and it seems
like the hip thing to do. Don’t be out there cracking your
skull for a new name when your given name will do just
fine. I have said to people many times that if my given
name had been something like Teju Sinclair (or Scott or
Campbell) or any one of a dozen swanky sounding names,
nobody would probably have ever heard of Teju Babyface.
As I have said, I was just looking for a name that would
be universally pronounceable and once we got onto that
track, we decided to go for something that was descriptive,
ergo, the ‘Babyface’ part. Which is why, now that I am
considerably well known, I have added my surname into
the mix. You will hardly ever see my name without the
‘Oyelakin’ tag at the end of it these days, at least when I
have any control over the release.
Julius Agwu, Olamide and Bovi knew to do something right
when they stuck with their names, didn’t they?
2. BE WARY OF CHOOSING A TERMINAL NAME - Don’t go
around calling yourself ‘young this’ or ‘little that’. Apologies
to those who have done so, but you must have noticed that
after a while, they try to shed the toga of ‘lil’ or ‘young’.
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Unless it is your intention to have a terminal career (i.e. a
career that ends when you stop being young or little), be
a bit more futuristic in your thinking. On the other hand,
there are exceptions to every rule and you might even be
able to use the dropping of such prefixes to introduce your
re-invention to the world when the time comes, but that’s
a gamble; you may not be able to pull that off.
3. AVOID PICKING AN ESTABLISHED NAME OR ANYTHING
CLOSE TO IT - This seems obvious right? So you would
have thought, but it appears not to be the case, as many
still make this rookie mistake. You wonder how someone
new on the scene would call himself ‘Magic Child’ when
there is an already established and successful ‘Magic Boy’.
They then give all kinds of lame excuses as justification:
”Em, I chose my name before I knew there was another
name close to it’; ‘I was already in the industry before he/
she came’ etc. Look, we don’t care who was here first or
whose father came to Lagos first! Once someone else has
taken a name and made more of it than you can in the
same industry, find another name! Especially if you are
still largely unknown at that point and didn’t have the
foresight to trademark the name. I initially considered
calling myself T.J; after all, my name was Teju and T.J is
a common abbreviation for Tejus, Tajus and Tunjis. Well
guess what? I realized that people would mix me up with
Tee-A all the time! Think about it; Tee A and T.J.
Not a lot of margin left, is there?
4. AGAIN, DON’T BE SILLY! - The fact that you are going to
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be a comedian (for example) doesn’t mean you should be
foolish (forgive me). How can you call yourself Corporate
Clown the MC? (Apologies again if that name does in fact
exist). Really? I mean think of when in the future your wife
is asked who she’s married to. Clown? And you can be
sure that is what they will call her; Mrs. Clown! People can
be malicious, especially when you are successful. But then,
with a name like that, you probably won’t need to worry
too much about ‘beef’ arising because of success.
Look, the truth is that there are lots of guidelines for this type
of thing. In the end, choose a name that you are happy with and
commit the rest to fate. Time will tell, as will your earnings and
popularity… Or lack thereof.
After all there are a lot of names that mean nothing (at least to
us) and seem to be doing well. Just imagine how many times
Diddy has changed his name. What is he called these days by
the way?
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“The critical question to ask in
naming a brand is, what does the
name convey to third parties…
Invariably the equity built into a
name matters. And this takes time.
Consistency is the name of the
game.” ― Leke Alder
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SECRET 3:
THE SECRET OF THE
PUMA
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SECRET 3: THE SECRET OF THE PUMA
Make haste slowly.”
If you know anything about me at all then you know that I
had a mentor-protégé relationship with my late father, Jacob
Gbadegesin Oyelakin.
While we had the normal father and son thing going, my visits
to him in the twilight of his life were typical of a man trying to
pass off a vast body of knowledge in as efficient a manner as
possible, in a short period of time.
It was almost as if he knew he didn’t have much time left.
I make reference to him, because the statement quoted at
the beginning of this chapter was one of his favorite sayings
to my siblings and me. (Proper grammar teaches us that that
statement should read ‘my siblings and I’, but this is my book
and I will choose how to write if you don’t mind).
The expression “Make haste slowly” is an English proverb and
never have three words had more impact on my life.
Apart from: I am pregnant.
I love you.
I hate you.
You are negative (after an HIV test).
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Okay, I agree, there are many other powerful three-word
sentences, but keep your eyes on the ball, will you?
Moving forward, I once used this powerful saying to qualify a
story I shared on the Teju Babyface Show about my first official
foray into comedy. If you watched that episode of the show you
would have heard this before, but for the benefit of those who
did not, I will share it again. Somewhat.
There are several ways of becoming a superstar comedian
these days - or a superstar anything for that matter.
You can record a skit on your phone and post it on the Internet
and become an overnight sensation. Just like that! (I really find
it hard not to nurse a grudge against the younger generation
and the opportunities it has been given).
Back when we started, it wasn’t such a simple matter. Just to
give you some perspective, the year was 2000 and the Internetenabled GSM phone was not to make its entrance into Nigeria
for another five years or so. Back in those days, you either made
a phone call from a landline or you got a pager, after which you
still had to find a landline to call the person who had paged
you.
What’s a pager you ask, young player? Well, Google, as they say,
is your friend.
That was oddly satisfying.
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Coming up back then, there was just about one sure-fire way
to become a recognized comedian in the industry and that
was performing on the biggest comedy stage at that time; a
concert tagged the Night of a Thousand Laughs, organized by
a gentleman by the name of Opa Williams. In fact, apart from
a few rare exceptions, there is hardly any comedian who came
up in the late 90s and early millennium years that didn’t have a
few minutes on that stage.
This show derived its power not only from being just about the
first on the scene in terms of comedy concerts, it also had a
wide video distribution network so that after entertaining the
thousands who attended the live show, you would be seen by
millions around the world on tape or Video CD. It was a very
important platform indeed and getting on it was the dream of
just about every aspiring comedian.
That feat, however, was easier said than done.
You had to scale an audition and grab one of the few rookie
spots available every year. Now when you read that word
‘audition’, I bet you thought of the Simon Cowell, Nigel Lythgoe,
Tyra Banks, American Idols type of thing, didn’t you?
Chortle chortle. What a thought!
Auditions for the Night of a Thousand Laughs held in a bar!
In the middle of the night!
Two days before the main show, with your audience consisting
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of all the established members of the entertainment industry!
Indeed you read that right. Just about all the established
comedians would be present (fortunately in my day, there were
just a few), as would also be a lot of established actors (now
there were more of those), not to mention veteran musicians
too.
The intriguing part, however, is that they would most likely be
‘gone in the bottle’ by the time you were called to perform.
Drunk.
Inebriated.
Intoxicated.
High.
And belligerent with it!
It wasn’t just enough that you were willing to put yourself
through this process; you had to be recommended by another
established entertainer or someone else of equally high repute.
My mentor at the time and one of the leading comedians,
Basorge Tariah Jnr., recommended me.
The venue was more of a Jazz hangout than a bar, or so the
name and initial atmosphere led me to believe. It went by the
descriptive nomenclature ‘Jazzville’ and was situated in the
Iwaya area of Yaba, Lagos.
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Unfortunately (for you if you are enjoying this story), I can’t go
into all the juicy details here. You will just have to catch me at
one of my lectures or talks. I do quite a lot of those every year,
so opportunities to catch me at one are boundless.
To continue the story, these were the conditions under which
we had to perform. It didn’t seem like an audition as much as
it did an inquisition. It was as if an unspoken question hung in
the air; how dare you assume that you are funny enough to be
a comedian?
The first rookie to perform that night was a friend of mine
called Emeka. I knew him from the University of Lagos.
It didn’t go very well for him.
Understatement.
Allow me rephrase.
It couldn’t have gone any worse for him even if he had tried to
make it so himself. The way I saw it, he was one more bad joke
away from a lynching by the end of his performance.
The emcee literally snatched the microphone out of his hand.
The emcee that night was Baba Dee by the way, the Big Bad
Wolf, as he was known and veteran singer, Sound Sultan’s,
elder brother.
After packing him off the stage with as much fuss as he could
cram into the action, Baba Dee proceeded to warn the rest of
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the rookies in words that conveyed the message that being a
comedian was not by force. If you knew you didn’t have it, don’t
waste their time.
And that was when he called me.
Unfortunately, I had written my name second on the list directly
after Emeka’s.
I cursed myself for that move as I tried to get my feet to cooperate and get me to the stage. In a move to dwarf my initial
stupidity of writing my name after Emeka’s, I had also put on
that list that we were both from the University of Lagos - which
was exactly how Baba Dee introduced me.
“And now we have another one from UniLag. Hope this one is
better.”
The words nervous, mortified, scared, fearful, frightened and
intimidated don’t even begin to come close to how I felt. I can’t
remember how I made it there, but somehow, I found myself
on the stage. I was sure that every single person in that room
could hear my heart pounding. ‘So this is what a heart attack
feels like,’ I thought.
I was certain I wouldn’t have the energy to open my mouth but
somehow, open it I did. Surprisingly, words came out. Not just
words, but jokes and from the reaction of my audience, good
jokes at that.
You see, as scared as I was, I knew my lines and all my jokes
front to back, back to front and inside out. My mentor, Basorge
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Tariah had trained me over and over again for months for this
one night. He had made me repeat my jokes to him over and
again until I was sick of hearing them. In fact, I was certain in
those days that if you had woken me up in the middle of the
night, I would have told you those jokes without missing a line.
I performed.
They loved me. I think I even got a standing ovation. Who would
have ever thought…?
As I left the stage, the producer of the show, Opa Williams, let
me know I was in.
Oh jubilation!
So, my friends (who were there to support me) and I went
outside to celebrate. I had sat all night under the oppressive
hand of tension and now that I was in, I just wanted gulps of
fresh air.
As we made our way outside jubilantly, Baba Dee called the
next rookie. This fellow, whom I had never seen before that
night, made for something of an interesting specimen. Not
only did he seem to have limbs that stretched forever out of his
gangling frame, he had also been sitting directly behind me all
night and had hardly spoken a word to anybody. I had Emeka
to chat with (or more accurately, listen to, as Emeka did most of
the talking). The other two rookies had each other. (There were
five of us in all).
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I had recognized his silence as the same brand of fear that had
been killing me as well.
So, this guy seemed to be alone and he hardly spoke a word all
night. As he passed by me on his way to the stage to do his set,
I remember feeling pity for him. In my opinion, he was going
to a certain death on that stage, because there was no way any
other rookie could top what I had just done.
Could anyone have been more wrong?
We hadn’t been outside two minutes when I heard the first
explosion of laughter from within.
‘He seems to be holding his own,’ I thought. ‘Let’s see how
much longer he will last.’
The second explosion of mirth came on the heels of the first
and within three minutes we had to rush back inside, because
the cause of the laughter issuing forth had to be seen to be
believed. This guy seemed to be getting more volume than I
had!
He rounded off his set not only to a standing ovation, but also
to what seemed like an endless roar of applause, whistling, feet
stomping, ikiras1 and so on. He had people waving their chairs
in the air and asking for an encore.
1
Ikira- a repetitive chant of four ‘heys’ in ascending order. Made popular or perhaps invented altogether by
Lagbaja the masked musician at his Motherlan music spot. He would call out the word ikira on stage and
the chants would duly follow by the faithful
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Someone even rushed onto the stage to shower him with Naira
notes!
He chose that auspicious moment to announce his coming to
the world.
“Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “My
name is Basket Mouth.”
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Brutus:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3, 218–224
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SECRET 4:
THE SECRET OF THE
PUMA (2)
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SECRET 4: THE SECRET OF THE PUMA (2)
W
e (Basket Mouth and I) were the only two
rookies chosen that night for the Nite of a
Thousand Laughs year 2000 Lagos edition.
We went on to form a very close friendship and bond that would
serve us for many years. I remember that after the main show
that year, Basorge Tariah (who didn’t perform) said to me, “All
the performers tried, but there was one clear winner. That boy
Basket Mouth took the lot of you to the cleaners.”
I agreed, albeit grudgingly.
My professional jealousy, however, did not get in the way of
good sense and I really wanted to know how it was that he had
gotten that good with the microphone. And he explained it to
me in his usual good-natured manner.
It turned out that while the decision to become a comedian was
something of a recent one for me, for him it was an ambition he
had not only nursed for years, but had also had ample practice
at in the one place where you do not want to be a rookie
comedian - the University of Benin.
Think the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York then take out
the niceties, grooming and civility.
The one place you don’t want to go to ‘test’ out your dreams of
being a comedian is the great UniBen. I performed there once
(at Basket Mouth’s invitation) and I only escaped ‘death on the
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stage’ by sheer cunning. The comedy colleague with whom I
went on that trip wasn’t so lucky. I remember that they counted
him off the stage.
Yeah, that’s what they did in UniBen then. Upon your
introduction to the stage as a comedian, they gave you what
seemed like just a few seconds to convince them that you had
what it takes. If they felt that you did, they would allow you
perform in some peace. If they didn’t, which I found was the
case more often than not, they would start to count down from
10.
Can you imagine that? There you are on stage, sweating, panting,
fumbling and trying to make sense and before you have settled
in, you hear an ominous “10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…0!”
What happens at 0? Well, one comedian decided to find out. It
was a spectacle worth watching (if you weren’t the comedian,
that is). In what was an unrehearsed but impressively
choreographed move, all sorts of missiles flew out of the
audience in his direction all at once; sachets of water (‘pure
water’), old slippers and shoes, rotten fruit etc. There might
have even been a stone or two. They didn’t suffer fools gladly.
Okay, that was an extreme case. What usually happened when
the count was done was that the audience would start to clap so
loudly that you just had to leave the stage. The missiles would
follow as a last resort, you know, for the performer who would
refuse to leave.
This was where, according to Basket Mouth, he had cut his
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teeth in comedy. For a sustained period of about two years, he
had performed in front of that audience. He confessed that it
was hard in the beginning, but that after a while, he got their
‘number’ and could do it with his eyes closed and lips sewn
together. Having mastered that, he said, Lagos was a cakewalk.
It turned out for him that the worst place to perform was
actually the best place to grow. The University of Benin had
prepared him properly and it was time to step out before the
rest of the world.
Basket Mouth has gone on to become one of the greatest
comedians on the African continent and every time I see him,
my father’s injunction about making haste slowly comes to
mind. Here was a young man who spent time preparing himself
and stepped out when he had been reasonably groomed and
the opportunity presented itself.
But how does one make haste slowly, really? It does sound like
an oxymoron, does it not? Well, young entertainer, if you will
lend me your eyes for a minute, I will be glad to explain.
It simply means that while you must indeed make hay while
the sun shines and you must embark on whatever venture life
has called you to immediately, you must learn to bide your time
while preparing yourself.
In short, don’t be a puma. Don’t be overly anxious. Take your
time.
Say you want to be a musician, great ambition. Start now. But
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start what? Start taking voice lessons or learn an instrument.
Start performing in as many places as they will have you. Write
as many songs as you can or go to a music school.
Whatever you have to do, start improving yourself and getting
ready for the big time now.
The ‘making haste’ part refers to making haste to improve
yourself and hone your skills. It does not refer to the rush to
be well known; to ‘blow’, as it is put these days (‘I wan blow’).
There are many entertainers who are gifted beyond reckoning
who have failed to make any impact on their world or dent in
the universe and the only mistake they made was coming out
with their talent before they were truly ‘done’.
You must make haste to prepare yourself, but you must be
cautious in declaring your arrival to the world on the big stage.
As a matter of fact, having prepared yourself, there is a sure-fire
way of knowing when you are ready to step out and introduce
yourself and your talent to the world and we will discuss this
in the next chapter.
To round off this chapter, permit me tell you about a young
man who approached me some years ago, wanting to perform
on my show as a comedian. I try not to judge people by their
appearance, but I got the distinct impression that he didn’t
have ‘the spark’, as I liked to call it. He just didn’t look serious,
neither did he look ready. I advised him as much and told him
to take more time to develop himself in the art. He wouldn’t
hear of it, neither would he take no for answer and he became a
complete pest. I eventually capitulated and gave him a chance.
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It was a complete fiasco and waste of my time.
He disappeared for a while and resurfaced later, asking for
another chance and claiming that he was now ready.
“Cool,” I said. “See me next week.” It’s been three years and
counting.
Another chance? Not likely. Iwo puma?
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–“Make hay while the sun shines, but make haste
slowly.” - Prince J.G Oyelakin (amalgamating two
English proverbs)
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SECRET 5:
THE SECRET OF
KING SOLO
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SECRET 5: THE SECRET OF KING SOLO
O
ne of the oft-quoted verses of the Bible is credited
to King Solomon. A testament to the fact that it
has been used more times than you can imagine is
that you probably know it and you might not even
be a Christian. It goes something like this: There is a time for
everything under the sun. A time to be born and a time to die, a
time to cry and a time to laugh… (And so on).
Well, the great King Solo’ left one part out, which I will help him
add here for free.
THERE IS A TIME TO COME OUT IN THE ENTERTAINMENT
INDUSTRY AND THERE IS A TIME TO WAIT!
You should ask Farrah Fawcett about the importance of timing,
if you can find her.
You see Farrah Fawcett is not with us anymore. She’s dead.
She was quite the TV star when she lived. She had a very famous
swimsuit poster that older gentlemen will remember. It was
a racy piece of work that sold a record-breaking 20 million
copies, according to Wikipedia. According to the same source,
in 1996, she was ranked 26th on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV
Stars of All Time.
She died on June 25th 2009 and by all accounts, her death
should have gotten more news coverage than it did. However,
she died on a day when another event occurred that eclipsed
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the impact the news of her sad passing should have had.
She died on the same day as Michael Jackson.
Need I say more?
Simply put, not every day is quite the same and timing in
entertainment is as important as anything else. Even for dying!
I know of musicians whose brilliant songs did not go anywhere,
simply because they chose to release their songs at the same
time as another, bigger act with a bigger song; or a bigger act
with a song not as good, but with loads of money to promote it;
the permutations are endless actually.
As I said in the last chapter, you must make haste to prepare
yourself, but you must be cautious in declaring your arrival to
the world. As a matter of fact, having prepared yourself, there
is a sure-fire way of knowing when you are ready to step out
and introduce yourself and your talent to the world, lest you
miss that window.
It is a fine balancing act indeed I must confess. You must not
rush out. On the other hand, you can’t afford to be too late. As
I like to say, it is a ‘slit in the fabric of time’, so how to spot it?
Permit me to regale you with another short story. This one
follows on the heels of the one from the last chapter.
What I didn’t mention about the audition to which I referred in
the last chapter is that on that night, there were two classes of
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performances, as was the tradition.
The first were performances much earlier in the night by
established comedy acts and the second by those of us who
were aspiring to perform in the show. The effect of that was
that not only did the established acts get to perform before
everybody got drunk, they also got to perform with respect,
because nobody was judging them.
The ‘zoning’ would not have been a problem for me, except that
one of the guys billed to perform with the established acts was
my friend.
‘Friend’ doesn’t really describe the relationship. He was my
contemporary and ‘brother in the struggle’ and as far as I was
concerned, we were not that different from each other abilitywise, so how come he was afforded the luxury and respect of
skipping the dreaded auditions?
Well, this was how.
Throughout the entire time I was trying to cut my teeth in
the comedy business in UniLag, I had to contend with the
dominance of another comedian on the campus who was more
established than I was.
By taking advantage of a gap in time, he had stepped up to the
challenge of being the university comedian a few months ahead
of me, so that by the time I started, he was already established
as the official comedian of our school.
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This gap in time was occasioned by the fact that Tee-A, who
was hitherto the undisputed comedy king of UniLag, had just
graduated and while I was still trying to come to terms with
whether to be a comedian or not, this ‘sharp’ guy had taken the
initiative to step into the shoes that Tee-A left had behind.
Yeah, I must admit, I dropped the ball there.
I found that I only got the jobs on campus that he turned
down and despite my best efforts, I was always the alternative
comedian. Regardless, we soon became very good friends and
brothers and went to all shows together, which usually meant
that he was performing and I was hoping and waiting for an
opportunity.
As a matter of fact, the first paying job I ever got on the campus
he gave to me, because he was otherwise engaged doing
another dinner that night. It was the end of year dinner for the
Department of Philosophy and he kindly passed it on to me.
Anyways, it was this dominance on campus that earned him
the unique opportunity of performing with the established
acts during our Night of a Thousand Laughs auditions. To be
known as the ‘go-to’ comedian in UniLag was no mean feat
in those days and that position afforded him the privilege of
skipping the auditions.
Much to my chagrin…
‘Lucky $%&@#’, I thought then. (Fill in whatever word you
want. Be nice though; he is a great guy and I love him).
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Anyways, the show (Night of a Thousand Laughs) came and
went and soon it was time to graduate from school - which he
did and I didn’t. As I mentioned earlier, I had to wait around to
clear some papers.
Look, I am tired of being coy. Let’s call it what it is; I had an
extra year! Happy now?
In keeping with what I considered my rotten luck at that time,
while my mates were going to different parts of the country
to do their National Youth Service, I had to remain on campus
for a few months to sort out my graduation. After a few days of
feeling sorry for myself, it suddenly began to dawn on me that
I might have been handed a gift in disguise.
You see, after our exposure at Night of a Thousand Laughs, we
suddenly found that we had different and new opportunities
to perform at comedy shows, which was exactly what we had
been hoping for.
All of a sudden, my friend now had a decision to make. On the
one hand, he had been posted to the North of Nigeria to do his
mandatory youth service.
On the other, there were attractive opportunities opening up
before us in Entertainment.
Decisions, decisions. Defer the youth service- which was an
option- and follow the opportunities that were opening up for
us in the comedy and entertainment industry at that time, or
go away for 11 months and return to pick up from where he
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left off?
He chose the latter and off he went to serve his Fatherland.
It turned out to be the beginning of the end of his entertainment
career.
None of us could have foreseen it, but while he was away the
landscape of the comedy industry changed so much, offering
so many opportunities to the young comedians of that time
(and there were not so many of us), that in just 11 months,
we went from being unknown to mini celebrities who now had
younger comedians who wanted to be like us.
The result was that by the time my friend returned, the industry
had almost completely forgotten him. So he couldn’t start from
our level, but had to start again, as if from the beginning.
He took it quite well and shortly afterwards decided to quit
comedy. That was almost 16 years ago. He was doing well on
his job the last time I saw him, but I remember that in the years
following that incident, he would always tell me that if only he
had known, he wouldn’t have gone to serve when he did.
Timing, as I have said, is very important. You can have all it
takes to succeed, but if you miss your timing, you may regret it
forever.
Or regret it for a while.
Folk wisdom also suggests that ‘opportunity comes but once’
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and ‘an opportunity lost can never be regained’.
So here lies a conundrum; if you come out too early, you will
not make a telling or impactful mark, if you come out too late,
the opportunity has passed and you might as well not bother.
So how does one know when to come out?
The truth is that you don’t come out as much as you are sent
forth.
In other words, a telling mark that it is time for you to come
out (onto the scene) and showcase your talent is when an
established authority in that field or a related field gives you
the mark of approval and literally tells you that you are ready.
The very first thing I did as a comedian was to look for a mentor
and I had the luck of being introduced to the man who was one
of the three biggest comedy acts in the country at that time,
Basorge Tariah Jnr.
Which now leads us to the next point and chapter...
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–“Ni ’gba ara l’a bu ’ra. Enikan e’e bu Sango
l’erun.” (Sango only answers by thunder in the
rainy season. Therefore, no matter how devout,
no disciple invokes the god of thunder in summer
and gets an answer. There is a right time to do
everything).
– Yoruba proverb
(said to me by Prince J.G Oyelakin)
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SECRET 6:
THE SECRET OF THE
‘BROS1’
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SECRET 6: THE SECRET OF THE ‘BROS1’
Bros I hail o!’2
If I were to really delve into the dimensions of this next issue, I
would write an entire book. I have no doubt it will be the basis
of a future book project. If you had to take just one thing from
this book, this should be it. Of course, my recommendation is
that you take as much as you can from it, but then I know how
busy you are, what with your many fans and all.
I ended the last chapter by telling you that it is my belief that
one sure way for you to know the time to ‘come out’ is by having
a mentor who will direct you.
Sometimes, I think our progression and refinement in terms of
Western ideas and civilization have robbed us of the wisdom
of Africa that exists at the grassroots level of our society. By
African tradition, a trader or craftsman cannot even dream of
starting a business until he has learnt under an established
person and attained what is called ‘Freedom’, which is the
celebration of his/her graduation from apprenticeship to the
first level of mastery and self-sufficiency.
Whether you aspire to be a tailor, mechanic or metalworker,
whatever the vocation, you would be mandated to spend time
serving. In fact, your choice of a vocational teacher oftentimes
would determine the referrals people would give you later
1
2
Bros: short from for ‘brother’ used only in reference to a man older than one is
Bros, I hail o’: Nigerian Entertainment industry greeting of respect for a senior colleague - from whom
you may need a favor.
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on. The fact that your mentor was willing to organize a huge
celebratory event to declare to the world that you had come of
age is enough of a testimonial, as far as your future customers
are concerned. It is an unspoken seal of approval.
I know what you are thinking right now; ‘Well, they didn’t go to
school and the apprenticeship served as their schooling.’
That’s not a bad thought at all. Now – since you went to school
- why don’t you dust off your Physics degree certificate and use
it to release the album of the year?
No? Okay, let’s proceed, shall we?
Having read this book this far, you know that I had two celebrated
mentors in the business of comedy on my way up. The question
that I am sure is on your mind at this time, therefore, is, how
did I get them to be my mentors?
Let’s start with Basorge.
I was introduced to him. It was literally that simple.
A friend with whom I attended the UniLag, Kayode Peters3,
had met Basorge on the set of one of the productions he had
been involved in and he (Basorge) had taken a shine to him. He
offered to organize introductions, since, as fate would have it,
in those days Basorge lived near UniLag; just a 10-minute bus
ride away.
A television/movie director
3
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Talk about being lucky.
It is a testament to the character of Kayode– KP, as we fondly
call him - that I did not doubt his claim that he knew a
superstar like Basorge Tariah. From what I had seen of him in
our friendship of about four years at that time, he wasn’t given
to lying or exaggerating his own importance.
On the day, we piled into a campus shuttle headed in the Bariga
direction of Lagos, alighted at Chemist Bus Stop and footed it
the rest of the way to Basorge’s house.
But as luck would have it, he wasn’t home!
As said earlier in this book, GSM phones were still at least two
years away (for the well-to-do. For most folks, those phones
were at least five years away at that point in early 2000).
In C.S Lewis’ book, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe4,
there were two types of magic on display; deep magic from the
dawn of time, which saw Aslan the Lion killed and then deeper
magic from before the dawn of time, which saw the same lion
come back to life.
Okay, I admit it. The folks that labeled me ‘Aje Butter’ were at
least partially correct.
So, if the fact that Basorge wasn’t at home was deep magic,
deeper magic was that as we turned to leave, he chose that
Chapters 13 & 15 in the book by C.S Lewis, which was first published in Great Britain in 1950
4
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moment to return and strolled through the gate of his house.
That elicited a feeling of pure delight and at the same time
trepidation that is hard to capture here.
KP did the introductions and Basorge, rather than take things
at face value, asked a very pointed question.
I am willing to bet that neither Basorge nor KP can paint this
recollection of events anywhere close to as vividly as I can.
Apart from the fact that I was ‘the object’ of the events, those
two gentlemen are now advanced in years, so the memory isn’t
what it used to be.
I will surely be made to do some sort of penance by Basorge
for that last paragraph. Bet I’ll have to pay a fine of some sort.
Mentors hold that kind of power over you in perpetuity. Still,
it will be well worth it to take the mickey out of bros this one
time. The opportunities are very few and far between.
So as I said, bros asked a pointed question.
“What have you done so far?”
Let’s take a few minutes to contemplate the ramifications of
this question.
For those of you looking to be mentored by someone you have
identified as an achiever, if you cannot answer the question
‘What have you done so far’, which they are almost guaranteed
to ask you – unless the evidence is obvious - then don’t bother.
Because if you cannot point to any achievement, no matter
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how modest, to which they can relate, then you may be in for
rejection.
In my case, I had the glowing testimonial of the movie Diamond
Ring to point to.
As I have also mentioned, I was something of a celebrated
comedian on the show circuit back on campus as well, even
if as a second option. So I pooled together a resume to get his
attention, no matter how little and his attention I got. To the
degree that he not only agreed to take me under his wing, but
also asked me to let him know the next time I was performing
in UniLag and that he would show up to watch me.
Which I did and he did.
I met Ali Baba the same way.
Basket Mouth facilitated the introductions.
In this case though, he didn’t ask me what I had done so far,
because he knew. This is the point I referred to when I wrote
about building a resume of modest achievements before
approaching anyone for mentorship; achievements you can
point them to or that are so obvious that they know who you
are upon introduction.
At the time I was introduced to Ali Baba, still a minnow in
the industry, he had seen me perform in a few places, which
included on stage at the show in the University of Benin
(referred to in an earlier chapter) and on TV (on NTA) in the
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mornings on a show called Humor on Ice, which Basket Mouth
and I co-hosted5.
This is not the book for the details of the experiences I had while
training under these two gentlemen - and there were plenty! I
point you here not only to one of the benefits of having a
mentor (and underscore the importance of having one),
but also the level of preparedness that is required.
So, to whom will you direct your next ‘Bros I hail o’?
We got that gig through Julius Agwu who was also a host on the same show
5
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There are basically two ways of getting wisdom
in life; from experience and at the foot of a mentor. Having one without the other is like answering only half the questions in an important examination
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SECRET 7:
THE SECRET OF
“Monkey Work, Baboon Chop”
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SECRET 7: THE SECRET OF “Monkey Work, Baboon Chop”
Lawi, wanted dead or alive!’
I finally left the University of Lagos Main Auditorium about
5:30am.
The more religious students were already making their way
to their places of prayer and early morning food vendors had
started to sell ‘risky burgers1’ and Zobo2.
I bought myself a burger and a sachet of water and made my
way upstairs to my room. I couldn’t afford Zobo.
Oh, by the way, I was thoroughly dejected and borderline
depressed. I had just been had.
Swindled. Swerved. Used. Conned. Exploited. Taken for a ride.
The night before had started with a lot of promise. Having
spent the past few months doing as many free shows as I could
manage on campus, just so that my fame could grow, I finally
got my first paid show. A producer from town called Lawi was
coming to do a show on campus and having asked around, he
was told I was one of the two main comedians on campus and
so he gave me the show.
Risky Burger- soft loaf of bread stuffed in the middle with fried egg(s). You know, like a burger
A non-alcoholic drink made from… Heck! Who knows what Zobo is made from?
1
2
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Actually, again, the guy I mentioned earlier was busy the same
night (hosting the Miss Moremi Hall beauty pageant), so he
wasn’t available to do this show and that’s why I got it. I was
simply the only other option.
Ah, those were humbling days.
And so, we negotiated and he agreed to pay me N3, 000.
3k, jackpot!
I proceeded to divvy up the expected money in my mind. I was
going to give my girlfriend N500 (because she had been taking
care of me in my ‘poverty’), I was going to use N1, 000 to buy a
pair of jeans and a shirt and the rest I was going to save towards
getting a pager.
There was only one condition attached to the ‘contract’, which
was that I would get paid after the event.
No problem at all!
I mean I was so glad that finally somebody was willing to pay
me to do what I loved doing that it didn’t occur to me to ask for
an upfront commitment or some other guarantee of payment.
What a ‘mugu3’ I was! The guy must have been licking his lips in
anticipation of the ‘screwing’ he was about to do.
A dumb person that is quite a game to dupe
3
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Suffice to say the event was an unmitigated disaster! The
Moremi Hall Show completely killed ours. We barely had 100
people in an auditorium that had over 1000 seats.
At that point, I was still naive enough to think I was going to get
paid and so rather than relocate to Moremi Hall to party with
the army of willing and nubile females there, I stuck faithfully
with my emcee duties.
The late Father U-turn was the main act of the night, as I
remember it. He had just released his hit track ‘Yetunde’,
featuring Pasuma Wonder back then. The show eventually
ended at 5am and I eagerly went to look for Lawi to get paid.
Ah, you guessed it, right? Lawi was nowhere to be found. In
the face of what appeared might be imminent lynching, he had
made off into the dawn without telling anybody. You see, I wasn’t
the only one that had been roped into the scam. Everyone, from
the bouncers to the ushers and some of the performing artists
who had come all the way from Cotonou, had been promised
gold after the event.
I mean, how desperate could anyone be? Travel all the way
from another country on a mere promise? I remember that
one, particularly muscular bouncer almost wept in annoyance.
He must have spent his last coin just to get to UniLag.
I felt a bit better at that point.
So, now that you have finished having a good time off my past
misfortune, let’s get to the point.
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I once read an interview given by King Sunny Ade and the
interviewer must have been quite a fan, because he knew to ask
the king about his acrimonious relationship with the chairman
of his erstwhile record label - basically the guy who had taken
him mainstream in those days.
It was such a big fight back then and it made all the headlines.
I was not old enough to remember it. In fact, I don’t think I had
been born, but people used to feed on that kind of fight and the
juicy gossip that came along with it in those days, so I heard a
lot about it from the adults around me growing up.
I don’t think we have changed that much either. Remember all
the press coverage and excitement that surrounded the Mo’Hits
split?
My mechanic once gave me the gist of that fight, which I,
however, took with a pinch of salt. Remember the song ‘E su
biribiri e bo mi o, iwaju l’oloko wa mi lo’ by KSA?
Now if you really know African or juju music, you will know
that there are two versions of that song. One version says ‘mi
o mo’ (I don’t know) while the other version says ‘mo ti mo’,
(now I know). Well, according to my mechanic then, one Mr.
Dapo Anigioro, it was in the throes of that legal battle that KSA
had sung the ‘I don’t know’ version. The courts had ruled then
in the favor of the other party and so KSA sang to say that he
understood not where The Driver of life was taking him.
And then afterwards, the matter was settled and he officially
released the ‘now I know’ version, meaning I now know where
life is taking me.
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I really should confirm that from KSA.
So the interviewer asked KSA about that fight and I remember
his reply.
He said that at the beginning of every career, one is often naïve
and consequently, people will take advantage of you and cheat
you. He said that the problem with many young people is that
once they ‘wisen up’ to the fact that they have been or are being
taken advantage of, they spend a lot of time fighting (the people
who cheat them). He said that this was wasted energy.
(Please bear in mind that I have paraphrased his expressions
in the interview).
He ended by saying that one must accept that being taken
advantage of and being cheated in the beginning is the cost
of learning and doing business and that rather than fight it,
embrace the lessons therein and move on to the next thing.
Need I say more?
I probably should. A contract is always a handy thing to have
when involved in performance negotiations. Some people
seem to think that it is somewhat too officious and you will
sometimes come across as being ‘difficult’. Think about it for
a minute; everybody for the show/event negotiated vocally
and agreed – maybe even over the phone - and here you are,
demanding a written and signed copy of the details of your
agreement.
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WHO ARE YOU???? SEE THIS UPCOMING ARTISTE O!!!!
Let them rant and froth at the mouth all they want. I can almost
guarantee you that they will admire and respect you - even if
grudgingly - and you will begin to build a reputation for doing
things by the book.
It also makes your clients more comfortable with engaging you.
In an industry where it can be hard to trust some performers
to show up on time (or show up at all!), it is often comforting
for your ‘employers’ to know that they have a contract hanging
over you, in case you suddenly develop amnesia on the day of
their event and conveniently ‘forget’ to show up.
I should mention, however, that some people are just
unscrupulous and will seek to swindle you, contract or none. I
cannot imagine that a signed agreement would have prevented
Lawi from pulling the wool over my eyes all those years ago.
Leke Alder said as much in his book, Minding Your Business4.
As I have inferred, it is the cost of doing business. Take it as a
free tutorial on the workings of your industry. Some day you
will be big enough for people to know they should not think
about messing with you. Before that though, just plaster a smile
over the cracks.
By the way, if you are reading this Lawi, God will judge you.
An Alder Media Publication of 2007
4
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ALWAYS WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN!
–Efere Ozako, the ‘Entertainment lawyer’
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SECRET 8:
THE SECRET OF
‘BANGING ’
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SECRET 8: THE SECRET OF ‘BANGING1’
‘For the student entertainer’
‘
“Hey, Teju! Tejuuuu! Wait for me! Wait, wait, wait!”
I was on my way to the New Hall supermarket in the University
of Lagos – YemYem, I think it was called - to procure a breakfast
of bread and sardines, when that call reached my ears. I turned
around to see who was calling and it was her; the goddess with
skin like cocoa butter whom I had wooed a year earlier and
who had promptly and pointedly shot me down! So why was
she now being so sweet and willing to skip across the road,
dodging campus shuttles and other vehicles, to get to me and
in such an excited manner?
I soon had my answer and it went something like this: “Oooh,
you didn’t tell me you were an actor! I just got back from home
and I watched your movie last night, where you stole a ring and
it was soooo nice! Why haven’t you checked on me?”
REALLY???
The entrance of light does indeed bring comprehension. I knew
to what she was referring. As he had been promising for a few
weeks, Tade Ogidan’s marketer had finally released the movie I
had spent the past year acting; Diamond Ring. That was what
this beautiful undergraduate who wouldn’t give me the time of
day just a year before now stood and enthused about.
A popular slang used in Nigerian schools to qualify the total failure of exams and tests
1
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Needless to say I tried to play it cool. I barely managed it though,
as I was quite excited myself. “Oh that,” I replied. “Well, you
know, it was just something that we put together, you know.”
To cut another long story short, she decided to ‘make me
breakfast’ and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Let’s just say we saw
‘plenty’ of each other in the ensuing months.
Now it begins to occur to me at this point that more than a few
students who have entertainment dreams will take my frequent
references to my undergraduate days and the experiences
described as encouraging shots in the arm. You know, a pep
talk to further ignite their passion to pursue entertainment
while still in school.
Nothing wrong with that.
It would, however, be remiss of me if I fail to paint the full
picture; you know, give you the good with the bad.
The good part is that if you can manage it – as I seemed to have
- you will become an instant campus celebrity. Even a snootynosed guy with whom I had attended primary school, who took
to just tolerating my presence whenever he saw me- on account
of the fact that he was now a club boy- was suddenly nicer. I
remember him calling down from the balcony of the main
auditorium one day during this period, to let me know that he
had seen me in a movie. To impress his other club friends and
their female groupies no doubt.
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You will become better known on campus and, depending
on where your proclivities lie, favors will suddenly become
easier. Not to mention the extra money you will make from
entertainment to add to your pocket money. A few more
designer shirts and jeans never hurt anybody’s profile. Perhaps
a new telephone these days?
What a rosy and bright picture.
Now let me tell you the bad part. Unless you are extraordinarily
gifted, or favored, or both, you will fail MISERABLY!
As my roommate back in the day used to put it, a certain
Sunkanmi Kolade, “Wo, wa bang l’aiye, won a gbo l’orun.”(Look,
you will bang/fail so much that even the heavens will notice)
Since I used an illustration to paint the good part, allow me use
another to establish this sobering one.
There were several graveyard scenes in the movie Diamond
Ring on account of the fact that some characters in the story
took to desecrating a grave. Well, if you know anything about
grave robbing, that is an activity best done under the cover of
darkness and so it was that we had to shoot those scenes at
night.
Eerie that! Still gives me the hibby jibbies to think about it.
I returned to the campus after shooting a scene at dawn the next
day. Nothing strange about that, except that for some reason I
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can’t remember anymore, the car that took me back to school
dropped me at the main gate instead of taking me all the way to
Eni Njoku Hall where I stayed. The part I do remember clearly
is that as I started the one-mile (or so) trek to New Hall, many
other students were also on their way up campus to resume
the day’s lectures and so we all journeyed together.
That was the part that struck me as rather ironic and not a little
amusing.
I looked no different from any other student. I had the same
knapsack slung over my shoulders and was wearing the same
‘uniform’ of jeans and a T-shirt and any onlooker would have
concluded that we were all on the way to our classes.
But I wasn’t. I was on my way to bed! Never mind that I had
a full schedule of lectures that day. Who could attend lectures
after a whole night of shooting a film in a graveyard for none
other than ace director Tade Ogidan, a perfectionist if ever
there was one?
That was basically how I spent an entire semester and half in
my second year. Those bouts of truancy would add up so that
when it was time for convocation, I had to put in another entire
extra year. No graduation for this boy.
I was, however, one of the lucky ones.
There are entertainers whose achievements and careers you
aspire to emulate who never graduated or never even bothered
with a university education.
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Hey, I am not judging. As I have said, I was just lucky in the end.
It is basically a choice you have to make. Are you going to do
as my father counseled me to and “face your studies first and
chase entertainment later”? Or will you do what I did? Ignore
such counsel and chase entertainment now to the detriment of
your studies?
Before I end this chapter let me clear up a little something. If
you have read regret into my accounts, you would be wrong
and right all at the same time.
I will be eternally grateful for the rare opportunity I was given
to appear in a movie so early on in my career. I don’t think there
is any way I would have turned it down and wouldn’t, if I had to
do it all over again.
On the other hand, I do regret almost flunking out and
eventually barely managing to graduate. It broke my father’s
heart that.
So, what am I saying here?
It doesn’t fall within my purview to tell you exactly which to do.
That is a personal decision. I am just burdened to let you know
what is the likeliest outcome of your decision to do ‘this and
that’ at the same time.
In the end, however, there are exceptions to every rule and you
could end up being a 1st class engineer who also released the
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album of the year, at the same time. Maybe it is just a coincidence
that what happened to me ties in with the principles of FOCUS
and DEDICATION.
After all, the fact that I couldn’t do it doesn’t mean you cannot.
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–“A ki ko’rin meji bo’na l’ekan na.” (No blacksmith
puts two pieces of metal in the furnace at the
same time) - African Proverb
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SECRET 9:
THE SECRET OF THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO M.I.
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SECRET 9: THE SECRET OF THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO
M.I.
If you are not already a star where you are… if you are not
already the most popular in your school (or wherever), then
you are probably not yet ready to be a star’
These were the words of Mr. Incredible himself, Jude Abaga,
when I interviewed him on Talk with Teju Babyface in 2015. It
was the second time we were doing the interview, having done
the same on The Teju Babyface Show in 2011.
The question I had put to him was that now that he was the
head honcho of Chocolate City, the record label, what was the
first thing an aspiring musician had to do if he wanted to get
signed on to Chocolate City?
I fear that I might not have stressed the importance of this
point enough in the last few chapters, so I will spend a little
more time, driving them home, as we say. I might have left it
to inference and interpretation in those pages; ergo I have
decided to say it as clearly as I can here.
UNLESS YOU HAVE CONQUERED YOUR IMMEDIATE LOCALITY,
DON’T BOTHER TO LOOK FOR ESTABLISHED HELP.
I couldn’t have put it more clearly than that, could I?
‘Immediate locality’ does not refer to your Local Government
Area, although that may very well be a part of it. It refers to
the primary point of deploying your skills i.e. where you were
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when you decided to become whatever it is you have decided
to become.
There are, of course entertainers who may have to build their
relevance from outside their locality: a classic case of a prophet
not having honor in his own hometown.
Nothing wrong with that, if that’s the hand life deals you. But
you have to have built relevance somewhere. The point at
which you need help is not the point at which to start.
Let me paraphrase that last statement for clarity; contrary to
what you think, even though you will need help in your career
at some point, that point is not the day you decide you want to
be an entertainer.
There are several levels you have to conquer and several tests
you have to pass on your own and by yourself first, including
the ‘No Pay’ test. A ‘No Pay’ test is an exam that life sets you to
determine if you are really as passionate about your nascent
pursuit as you claim, and the major element of this test is
exactly that; NO PAY! If you find that your passion suddenly
dies when you find that you have done a few shows without
remuneration, check the passion again.
A book I really enjoyed reading was Robert Greene’s book with
rapper 50 Cent, The 50th Law. Good read that. In it, we find
that 50 Cent rose to stardom by pursuing an aggressive mix
tape campaign on the streets and it was upon the crest of this
wave of popularity that he came to the attention of Dr. Dre and
Eminem (not particularly in that order), who helped take his
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career mainstream.
In other words, the streets already knew ‘Fiddy’ before the
system came to ‘help’ him.
So have you achieved local domination? Do your streets know
you already?
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‘Ile l’ati’nk’esor’ode’- African Proverb that translates as ‘Charity begins at home.’
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SECRET 10:
THE SECRET OF THE
SCION
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SECRET 10: THE SECRET OF THE SCION
P
lease, what’s a scion? (Pronounced ‘s-y-on’ and not
‘sk-y-on’, as the pompous chairman of the organizing
committee of an event I once emceed at called it. Talk
about confident ignorance! He was lording it over me
when he said it too. I considered correcting him, but I hadn’t
collected my balance yet, so I kept my counsel to myself. He is
probably still spouting that error at every chance).
Well, pick up a dictionary. And remember, Google is your friend
too.
On a fateful day in 2009, after weeks of thinking and overthinking upon the question ‘how will I get The Teju Babyface
Show on air?’ I decided to pay a wealthy man a visit.
He lived in the Victoria Island area of Lagos State.
I had known him for several years and over that period he
had been kind to me on occasion, giving me some unsolicited
money whenever I organized a show. Nothing fantastic or bankbreaking mind you, but very much appreciated nonetheless. My
reason for approaching him at this time was that since he had
shown signs of interest in my work in the past when I did not
ask for it, perhaps now that I had a project that would change
my career he would put some of his remarkable resources
behind me.
I was there promptly at the appointed time and he graciously
invited me in without any delay. At that time, I hadn’t recorded
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all of The Teju Babyface Show and only had a few of ‘The
Governor’ skits with Stella Damasus, which I duly played for
him on my computer.
Those were some of the longest two minutes of my life, as I
waited for his verdict.
“Well done,” he said.
Silence.
And then…
“Unfortunately, I cannot invest in your project at this time. One
of my children, whom you know, is currently abroad studying
film and will be returning to Nigeria later this year to set up
her own film outfit and I have decided to invest in her business.
To that degree, I cannot invest in another business that’s along
the same line. If you can wait until she comes back, I may take
a look at the matter again.”1
I thanked him, packed up my bag of tricks and left, feeling not
a little depressed.
Up until that time, I had never considered that I might have
been born on the wrong side of the rail tracks. While I knew
that my parents were not stinking rich, we were comfortable
and I had figured that I had a good enough pedigree to get by in
life. It occurred to me that day that I might have overestimated
the circumstances of my birth and that I would have to claw
I have paraphrased of course
1
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my way up the food chain and ladder of success. In essence,
regardless of how talented I was, since my parents didn’t have
the millions to invest in my business, I would have to start
somewhere close to the bottom and build success almost
without help.
As shocking as this realization was, it wasn’t the most sobering
part. The fact that there were others who wouldn’t have to go
through the process of building from scratch; those whom the
circumstances of their birth had favored, who had wealthy
parents that would support any initiative they had (no matter
how ludicrous) to the exclusion of people like me, was.
I had to contend with the fact that while I had to go from office to
office marketing my ideas and groveling to have my proposals
read, there were children whose parents could just snap their
fingers or make a phone call and the same benefits that were
denied me would accrue to them in the twinkling of an eye!
Poor me!
Okay, I am exaggerating a bit. About myself that is, not about
the polite ‘buzz off’ I got. That part was true.
The thing is, while I never really considered us wealthy, we
were quite comfortable (remember how I was called the ‘Aje
Butter’ comedian?). After all, I had attended some of the best
schools and my father was well respected for his success at least within his own circle - and so I had grown up quite
privileged and with a sense of entitlement. Therefore, while my
parents might not have been able to give me the millions that
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the wealthy of Ikoyi and VI could give their children, they could
have started me off comfortably in my business.
If they had been of a mind to.
Unfortunately for me, my father believed that everybody had
to make his own way in life and business and that he had done
his duty by educating his children. Therefore, sink or swim,
the rest was up to us. After all, he had made his way from the
village to Lagos and to success with no rich parents or relatives
to count on for support.
As a matter of fact, he had even gone one step further by
educating just about all of his siblings. Our house - when I was
growing up - was a veritable tribe of aunties and uncles.
As such, while I might not have been technically poor by birth
I was no better off than those who were, because I was not
getting any help from home, at least not to start my business.
Or so I thought.
Let me explain. Not being helped by your parents is not quite
the same as being born into abject poverty and I respect those
who have had to overcome odds that I could not even imagine
in my worst dreams of deprivation. To that degree, I am not
trivializing the lack of opportunity that a lot of people contend
with.
Having said all this, however, the fact is that the majority of
those who will read this book will - whether by birth or by
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other life circumstances – be starting their entertainment
careers without anybody to count on for ‘initial investment’
and inflow of much needed capital.
In short, you are on your own.
But fret not. I have news for you.
Over the years, I have had cause to look back and thank my
father. While I don’t think I would approach things as he did, I
can see now the benefit of having your children ‘hustle’ at least
a bit. Perhaps by the time I begin to raise mine, I would have
seen from both sides of the divide and be able to give precise
and more informed counsel, but for now I know enough to hold
one truth as unassailable.
I have found that ONE of the MAJOR ingredients you need
to achieve outstanding success is OUTSTANDING HUNGER.
There is nothing quite like being deprived to give you a
desperate desire and compelling hunger to succeed. It is like a
ravenous animal that lives within you that wants to get to the
top one way or the other.
There is a particular desperation and keen drive that enters
your spirit while standing in the rain, waiting to catch a ‘molue’
(Lagos commercial coach) or ‘okada’ (commercial motorbike)
while you watch others drive by in luxury SUVs and other stateof-the-art cars.
There is a raging desire you get to succeed when you get to
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Oshodi and have run out of money and have to beg a total
stranger to give you N10 to catch the next bus home or beg the
conductor to let you ride for free.
That didn’t always work and sometimes you trekked.
There is an indescribable passion to ‘make it’ that enters your
soul when you go to visit your girlfriend at Moremi Hall and you
see her stepping into the Mercedes Benz of an ‘Aristo’(sugar
daddy).
Teju Babyface, really? You? Surely you lie!
Sigh… Oh the things you don’t know about me
Okay, that girlfriend, Mercedes and aristo part happened to my
roommate on campus actually, but the point is the same. He
returned to the room ‘crying’ and vowing to make it. He has
too!
It is true that there are advantages a privileged birth will give
you - if your parents are inclined to support you - that will make
your journey to the top less stressful than it may have been.
It is true that an ‘abolanle’ situation (meeting money at home)2’
will make your life a whole lot easier and give you a head start in
life. However, unless your parents have paid special attention
to not spoiling you and making everything cushy for you, that
same privilege may rob you of the needed hunger and drive to
succeed by all means. I have been told that the line between
2
As Yoruba’s like to say
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supporting one’s children and spoiling them is so fine that it
is virtually non-existent sometimes and that it’s a balancing
act that the finest tightrope walker would be proud to pull off.
What can I say? I can’t wait to find out myself.
This is a good juncture at which to point out that I eschew all
illegal and diabolical means of amassing filthy lucre. When I
say ‘making it by all means’, I refer to making it on your own
terms within the confines of legality, morality and humanity. If
your modus operandi cannot stand the exposition of the law or
the Golden Rule, then don’t use it.
Back to the matter at hand, there’s a reason why most of the
richest people in the world come from humble, not particularly
spectacular backgrounds. Do a little research yourself, go on.
You will find that while there are billionaires who have had the
privilege of daddy or mummy’s success to ride on, there seem
to be more who had to do it without family money. Very few
are able to like Donald Trump say, “It has not been easy for me.
I started out in Brooklyn, my father gave me a small loan of a
million dollars…”3
As far I am concerned, the children of the rich - as with those
born not so privileged - are victims of birth and didn’t ask to be
born with privilege. Therefore I don’t judge, seeing how I know
a bit of that world myself. Remember, I am a hybrid of sorts.
The true picture is that even though the rich kid has the
advantage of privilege, he will generally lack the needed hunger.
3
The American Billionaire made the statement amongst others during one of his speeches in the run-up to
the US Presidential elections.
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Conversely too, the poor kid has the required hunger, but lacks
the resources to go at it from the start.
As I am finding out, there are other things important besides
money and a man with honor and influence is often wealthier
than a man with just money. Nelson Mandela springs to mind
as a prime example. How many rich people will ever get the
level of veneration and influence that Madiba enjoyed and still
enjoys? (You should ask his descendants).
As far as I am concerned, the stage is set quite fairly between
Richard from Ikoyi and Morufu from Mushin. Well, almost
quite fairly.
May the better man win with the resources at his disposal.
P.S. If you were born poor and lack the hunger to succeed, you
might as well return to the village now, lest you lose out in
life completely. At least there’s pounded yam and palm wine
aplenty there.
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“Origins should never be a barrier to success.
A modest start in life can be a help more than a
hindrance” - Sir Alex Ferguson, former manager
of Manchester United football club.
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SECRET 11:
THE SECRET OF CONFAM
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SECRET 11: THE SECRET OF CONFAM1
Oh, he should never have left the Plantashun Boys!’
We were in Fantasy Land Ikoyi that Saturday evening for Basket
Mouth’s monthly comedy gig, Laffs and Jams, and the person
who made the statement above was the girl I was dating at the
time.
Tuface Idibia (or 2face, as one of his handlers keeps reminding
me) had just released his debut solo album after leaving the
group PlantashunBoyz. It was a shock to the public to say the
least, given how much of a hit that group was.
It was to him that she directed this pearl of wisdom as we sat
in the audience listening to ‘African Queen’ for the first time.
Well it was to me actually, but he was the subject of her deep
consideration. I have always felt that I don’t have a good ear for
music of the hip-hop genre, so I kept my counsel to myself and
was willing to wait to see how the market would receive the
new 2face.
Not so my date. Like most girls, she felt she had a right to a
piece of 2face and consequently a right to voice her opinion,
which she duly did.
The full text of it went something like this: “Oooh, I don’t like
this song jare. He should never have left the PlantashunBoyz.
This song will not make it. What’s ‘African Queen’?”
CONFAM: Nigerian slang meaning the same thing as the word ‘confirm’, i.e. to pass a vote of assurance or
affirmation on something or someone
1
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I am sure you are in stitches right now, choking on whatever
you are eating or drinking and calling her a bimbo, right? If
ever a song and an album would change one man’s fortunes,
African Queen and the Face2Face album did for 2face Idibia,
yes?
Yet, her opinion is about the exact reaction you will get almost
every time you ask people to judge your creative work before
you make it public or introduce it to the market.
Whenever you feel the need to ask anybody what they think
of your new song/book/joke/dress etc, quash that feeling
immediately!
‘Did I just read that right?’ you are wondering.
Absolutely! And I will say it again for good measure.
Whenever you are looking for people to ‘confam’ the viability
of your new project or work before you introduce it to the
market, don’t ask anybody!
Okay I am being overly dramatic. You should actually ask your
closest loved ones and strategy team, but limit it to that.
So, what is the definition of ‘closest loved ones’? (I am assuming
I don’t have to define what a strategy team is or why you should
have one).
Well, you get to determine the parameters for picking these
human beings, but they should be people that not only have
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your true and genuine best interests at heart, but also who can
be objectively constructive.
It also helps if their fortunes are tied to yours intricately. That
way, they have a stake to protect and will give your nascent
project the attention and respect it deserves. As a friend of
mine once put it, those who are concerned that you ‘become’
all that you were meant to be.
Concerning your team, it should be made up of people who
have some insightful knowledge or experience in the area of
your work or the product/service you intend to release.
The truth, however, is that every great idea you have has more
than a seed of brilliance in it and if it has passed your own test
of viability, the chances are that it is more good than it is bad.
If you were excited enough to do something about any dream
you have and have invested dearly to bring it to life, the chances
are that you have a potentially great product in your hands. It
might need a tweak or two, but nothing near what most people
will tell you if you make the mistake of asking them.
Yes, I know they say that you cannot appraise your own work
objectively, but technically that’s not true. Even though I had
editors and a brilliant team, I suspected I had a hit on my hand
with this book before I ever showed it to anybody and the few
people to whom I showed some chapters were those I was
absolutely sure loved me enough to see it the way it should be
seen.
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To make this treatise more practical, I will give you the details
of all the people who saw this book in part or wholly before
it was published. My wife (obviously), my younger brother
Gbadebo (whose views on what makes for a good read I
value highly), my lawyer Demilade (who doubles as my first
line editor), Mr. Azu Ishiekwene (my second line editor and
proof reader, who is a former editor of Punch and General
Managing Director, LEADERSHIP Newspapers), my friend ElNukoya (who is a published writer) and my marketing team
at Connect Marketing Services Ltd.
Yeah, that was the full measure! Nobody else saw it.
I have discovered that people often feel an unconscious
burden to find something ‘wrong’ with your project whenever
you ask them what they think about it.
I don’t know why this is so, but what most people hear when
you ask them what they think of your project is ‘Can you help
me correct this work please? I am sure there is something that
needs correcting that I may have missed, so can you help look
at it more carefully?’ Subconsciously, people feel they have let
you down if they are not lampooning your work in the name
of constructive criticism. It is a rare occurrence indeed when
you give your work to someone and they return to tell you
that it is great and there is nothing wrong with it. Haven’t you
noticed?
As far as I am concerned, too much has been made of
‘constructive criticism’in the creative industry anyways. What
occurs mostly is actually the exact opposite, i.e. that which is
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destructive. As a creative person, you definitely know what I
am talking about, or you will soon find out. There is nothing
more painful than spending all your resources on a project;
your money, time, sweat, faith etc, only to have someone who
doesn’t know the half of it begin to tear it down, simply because
you asked them what they thought about it.
And it’s your fault too. To indict you further, you didn’t even
ask someone who knew anything about it. Most of us are like
bakers asking the fried yam enthusiast if the bread we baked
is good. The way we think about it is ‘Well, this yam lover is a
member of the public that will eat the bread, so I might as well
get his feedback.’
Really? Perhaps I should explain ‘feedback’ to you.
It is exactly that; feedback! It is what happens when your
product has gone to the market and the market responds to it.
It is organic and you will pick it up one way or the other. You
will see from your sales and performance and other indices
how the product is doing. Feedback is not when you take your
unreleased creative work and start asking everybody what
they think.
Surely Teju, you exaggerate! Actually, I do not. I have not a few
friends who fall within the ‘aspiring’ musician category and
every time they go into the studio to cook up what they hope
will be their breakout hip-hop hit, they make it a duty to send it
to me and ask me what I think.
Me? I might be an experienced member of the entertainment
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industry, but I am totally hip-hop deaf! I am the last person
to know what qualifies as a hit song. There have been songs I
thought were great that the public didn’t respond to and viceversa. (Oh, if I had a kobo for all those songs that don’t make
sense – at least to me - and yet became hits).
And I cannot be flattered into thinking they are asking me,
because they truly value my deep insight. I am probably
number 100 or more on the list of people they post it to and
ask, ‘so what do you think?’
It’s an irony that I will never understand; the people we end up
asking are rarely the people that the product is even meant for.
The people to whom we go for their opinion, who mercilessly
criticize us under the guise of ‘love’, are hardly our targetmarket in the first place. We usually choose based on their
closeness or accessibility, or success in other areas. We ask
someone who enjoys wrestling what he thinks of our new talk
show. We ask someone who is stuck on rap music what she
thinks of our new reggae song. And the cycle goes on.
The truth is that we are mostly insecure creatures in the end,
yours truly included. We crave affirmation. We want to know
that we are on the right path and that we are not wasting our
time and while there is nothing wrong with this in a sense, I
would advise you to man up and build a strong sense of selfconfidence, if you want to do creative work.
The late comedian and philosopher, Gbenga Adeboye said as
much in one of his later works: “Even the composer of atrocious
music knows within himself that it is atrocious. He really does
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not need the opinion of others (to tell him); after all he has ears
and can hear it himself.”
And I truly believe that it works the other way too: THE
COMPOSER/CREATOR OF GOOD MUSIC/WORK ALSO KNOWS
IT IS GOOD WITHOUT SEEKING THE OPINION OF EVERYBODY.
If you believe it is good enough and your closest confidants do
too, go for it and let the market be the judge. Let the fans ‘confam’
you. If you believe in the viability of your project strongly, then
go for it! What’s the worst that could happen? It doesn’t work
and then you have to return to the drawing board? Great! At
least you’ll now know what does not work and you can tackle it
more intelligently. Far better than allowing people who do not
know half of what you have gone through to birth the project
criticize it mercilessly before it even sees the light of day.
A few years later I ran into the lady I took to Fantasy Land who
predicted gloom and doom for 2face’s career and I asked if her
if she remembered what she’d said years ago?
She totally denied it!
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–“Enu ti araye fipe adegun, ohun nani won fi pe
adeogun mo” - African proverb meaning ‘opinions are subject to [the] caprice [of people] and
are at best fleeting. People are wont to change
their minds about anything at the drop of a hat’.
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SECRET 12:
THE SECRET OF THE
LAY-ABOUT
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SECRET 12: THE SECRET OF THE LAY-ABOUT
Help, I am bored!’
“Can you imagine (me) waking up in the morning and
saying ‘Oh, what kind of day is this now? What am I going
to do today?’ When I already know what I will do with the
rest of my life?”
I was listening to a teaching on CD and heard this statement
from my mentor - the man whose achievements I aspired to
emulate. That was quite depressing.
Because, that was exactly how I woke up most mornings; not
having anything to do.
And if you have decided to be an entertainer, let’s face it, that is
exactly how you will too; wake up in the morning, hoping your
phone will ring and the conversation will go something like:
Caller: Hello, is this Gaffar the comedian?
You: Yes ma, it is
Caller: I am actually a man.
You: Oh sorry sir, I didn’t…
Caller: So, are you free on the 23rd? We have an event and we
want you to…
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That phone call, however, will come with less frequency than
you would prefer, therefore you are going to spend a whole lot
of your time seemingly doing nothing productive, just waiting
around for the phone to ring.
That right there will be a major source of frustration for you,
because you will hear successful people go on and on about
how they wished there were enough hours in the day and how
they are so busy and so on and so forth, and yet here you are
with more time on your hands than you know what to do with.
I mean take the statement above credited to my mentor for
example. He was speaking on the subject of discovering one’s
life purpose and his conclusion was that when you do discover
your life’s purpose, it occupies you so much that you will not
have enough time to do all that you would like to do. The
reverse, of course, being the case.
So when you haven’t discovered it, you’ll be loafing around
mostly, wasting time, which, according to him, is your most
precious resource.
I felt like a lay-about when I heard that.
I am guessing you are feeling the same way, more or less.
Well, let me tell you something to sweeten your disposition.
Rather, let me give you an equation that will throw more light
on the matter.
Lots of time + little to do = Start-up Entrepreneur/Entertainer
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This means that it goes beyond the entertainment industry
really. Never mind what anyone tells you or what you read, you
will have a lot of time on your hands when you are your own
boss and you are just starting out. Whether you are into events
or catering or entertainment or laundry, when you are a startup, you will have more time than you’ll know what to do with
it.
Well, unless you are a tailor. Tailors always seem to have
something to sew.
I am certain you would ask me how I arrived at this conclusion.
Well there are probably several reasons, but I found one to
be mostly responsible, at least in my case. Let’s just call it the
Dependency Fallout Syndrome.
Simply put, money calls the shots and since you don’t have a lot
of it –yet - you will have to depend on many external factors to
get things done.
You are bursting with jokes but you can’t organize your own
concert, so you have to wait until someone calls you to theirs.
You are a whiz at organizing events, but nobody knows you yet
and so you have to do free events for only family and friends
and let’s face it, those don’t happen exactly every week, do
they? To complicate an already bad situation, because they
have ‘seen you finish’1 they won’t even give the event to you
Seen you finish (to see finish)- Nigerian pidgin English expression used to convey the sentiment ‘familiarity breeds contempt’
1
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when they do have one. Talk about a home defeat.
And the examples are endless:
A make-up artiste with no studio to go
A musician with no concerts to play
A producer with no shows to produce
A… with no… to… (Fill in your peculiar area of frustration).
It can be a very frustrating and depressing time when taken with
the fact that on the inside of you, you are probably brimming
with ideas and concepts, yet there are seemingly no ways to
bring them into reality.
Oh, you are probably flat broke too by the way; nothing like
an empty pocket and loads of time to ruminate over it. The
depression it engenders is top notch. These are the days (and
nights) when you wonder if your life really has any meaning or
purpose.
Fret not, it is normal. In fact, I would be so bold as to say it is a
stage through which all creative achievers must pass, because
it is strategic.
I will say that again.
Your bored, restless, have-nothing-to-do stage is orchestrated
by life for your own good. In a manner of speaking, it is both a
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test and a gift.
On the one hand I believe that it is life testing your resolve, to
see if you are as passionate about your dream as you claim to
be. Remember the ‘No-Pay’ test mentioned a few chapters ago?
Well, this is the ‘boredom’ test. This dark period often forces
people who have passions of doubtful provenance to find
something else to do. That is when they decide to look for a
job or ‘start something on the side’. Those who are committed
to their dreams, however, lay a marker and dig their heels in
through the frustration, as if to say to life ‘Bring it on!’
That being said, it is, as I have said, a gift as well. In fact, it is a
test that you can only pass by understanding the gift nature of
it.
It is a gift to the degree that all this time you have is life giving
you a chance to get ready for where you are going; to line up
your ducks in a row, as they say. It is your chance to prepare
yourself through practice, rehearsals and schooling. (Schooling
here refers not to formal schooling, but the gathering and
assimilation of information, knowledge and wisdom pertinent
to your field. It could however, also be formal schooling, if that
is applicable to you).
As we have established earlier in this book, one day, the
opportunities that you are waiting for will show up and if you
have not been adequately prepared, you are going to fluff your
lines.
Bungle your opportunities, as my father was wont to say.
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Take the author of this magnificent work you are reading, for
example, i.e. moi. I conceptualized strategic parts of this book
during those ‘loafing’ years. During those years when I was
waiting to transcend my level as just an entertainer and be
known as a thought leader, I had to do a lot of waiting around.
Yes me, the Babyface himself!
Fortunately for me, I knew enough of the nature of those boring
days to put them to good use, so I started reading and writing.
At a time, my reading became almost a full-blown obsession. I
would wake up in the morning and write most of the talks that
you have heard me give (if you have heard me speak), or the
episodes of my show you see on TV. I would write and write.
Sometimes I wrote for guests whom I eventually got around
to interviewing. Other times, I wrote for guests I still haven’t
found the opportunity to talk to yet. I just kept on reading,
writing and projecting.
I can’t really put a finger on how I knew it, but somewhere in
the inner recesses of my mind, I got the distinct impression
that when the moment came and I ‘set it off’, I wouldn’t have
the luxury of time anymore.
That is to say I knew that when I eventually became popular as
a thought leader, speaker and author and my career took off on
that level, I would barely have the time to compose teachings
or write as many books as would be required of me, because
of the demand on my time. I had a sneaky feeling that it was
whatever I had managed to come up with during the ‘boring’
years that I would have to refer to most of the time and guess
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what? That’s exactly what is happening.
When I interviewed musician Beautiful Nubia on The Teju
Babyface Show, I was shocked when he told me that he had
written most of the songs on his hit album pre-pubescent.
My ears nearly popped! “What do you mean, you wrote those
songs when you were barely a teenager?” I quipped in reply. He
confirmed that assertion.
Ace director Tade Ogidan professed the same during our
interview. Most of his celebrated movies and series that are
just now seeing the light were written decades ago when he
was a much younger man. As he gets more empowered and
becomes more of a celebrated maestro with the resources to
pull off projects, he opens his archives, tweaks a few details
here and there and delivers another wondrous work that we
hail as new but in truth, was written decades ago.
As I type this book in the year 2015, he is in pre-production for
a series that he wrote in 1988! Can you believe that? 27 years
ago!
So you get the point, right? Spend your ‘boring’ days developing
yourself and working on your projects.
I must confess though, it can be hard.
Creative and passionate people usually labor under the illusion
that they do not have to do any preparation and that they can
deliver whenever they are called upon to do so. After all, this is
an idea that keeps them awake at night.
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Wrong!
There is also that erroneous feeling that we are only truly busy
when we are doing something that we are making money from.
Getting up in the morning and beginning to write a book on
your computer in your room hardly seems like much, does
it? I mean, you would much rather be going to meetings and
performing events and so on. That is what most people regard
as being properly busy.
That is because you do not understand that that book is your
passport to a land called fame and wealth. If you did, you would
understand that you actually don’t have as much time as you
thought and that you could indeed be very busy.
The same goes for you, O great comedian to be. How many new
jokes or routines have you put together this month as you wait
for your opportunity?
What about you, super star singer? How many hit songs have
you written in the confines of your‘one-room, self-contained
flat’?
Having said all this, despite your best efforts, there will still be
some days you will be bored.
Well, what can I say? Deal with it!
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Boredom always precedes a period of
great creativity
- Robert M. Pirsig
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SECRET 13:
THE SECRET OF JOE
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SECRET 13: THE SECRET OF JOE
A
fter The Teju Babyface Show had been on air for
several years we ran into a brick wall, figuratively
speaking.
The show had always run on our blood, which is to
say that things had always been difficult and we had been able
to forge ahead only through sheer determination, grit and not
a little luck in the mix. For us, the Promised Land was always
around the corner.
So one day, during one of the darkest periods, I had a sudden
brainwave. I decided to write to the CEO of one of the newest
TV channels in town. They had just launched their platform
and were doing quite well, so I was hopeful that we could strike
up a broadcast partnership.
As a matter of fact, what I felt was a bit more than hope, because
a few years earlier, just after we had debuted on TV, I had met
that same CEO of that station somewhere outside the country
and I was congratulated on the success of our show and told
that getting interviewed on the show would be a great pleasure.
I was really excited by that compliment and tried to make the
interview happen. There was even a time we had agreed on
recording details, but had to postpone it, due to lack of funding
and when we were eventually ready, our schedules didn’t sync.
So, while I was a little nervous about my proposal to this TV
station, I was mostly full of optimism and duly made contact.A
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few weeks later, the reply came and here is the line that really
released a hive of bees under my bonnet:
“We are excited about having your show on our platform…
However, it (the show) may not in its current form meet the
needs of our target demographic”
And they duly described their target audience: young, edgy,
pan African, cosmopolitan and hip.
They concluded by saying that they still liked the show and
would be willing to work with us next time we were recording,
to make sure that it met their standards.
Not bad at all is it? I mean, this sounds okay, does it not? Here,
finally, was a chance to work with these guys, yes?
No, actually.
As you do not really understand television speak, permit me to
translate for you.
All that was just polite lingo for buzz off!’
What they told me politely was, ‘You are too razz1 (unrefined)
for us. Your content and the way you present it are uncultured.
You keep bringing people like Tope Alabi, Pasuma, Obesere,
Ayuba, K1 the Ultimate, Ebenezer Obey, KSA and so on. Our
audience is young and hip and globally aware…’ and so on.
1
Razz- not the English word but a Nigerian slang referencing an entity possessing a distinctly local and
consequently unattractive quality i.e. that which is base and is suited only to the uninformed and usually
unpolished elements of society
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I was mad!
When you take content that is directed by TadeOgidan and
that has been on TV for years, winning awards and gaining
almost total acceptance and say to the producer that it does
not currently “meet your standards”, you have just delivered
an unmitigated insult. We had even been on TV in the UK and
Ghana, Cameroon and other parts of Africa. We had won more
awards than we had shelves to put them on.
Our problems (at that time) were operational and not content
or technically related, which is to say that what we needed was
a broadcast partner, as we did not own a TV station yet. We
didn’t need help with our content.
When you consider that we had even watched this TV station
and while we conceded that they were doing some good work,
our content was at least as good as most of what they had.
Okay, I was just being modest. Our content was better actually.
Without prompting, in the early days following their debut
transmission, quite a few people thought we should be on that
station and every time I told them of this episode, they just
couldn’t believe what they heard. Neither could we. If I were
given to conspiracy theories, I would have sworn there was
foul play here. Or was it not this show? Not wanting to sound
boastful or arrogant, we did some good work on that show,
yes?
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Think about it for a minute; you mean that The Teju Babyface
Show was so bad that the one slot that they would have given
us weekly would have plunged the ratings so badly? So much
so that they needed to work with us to bring the show up to
standard? Really?
At first I was discouraged and felt very bad about it, especially
when you consider that we were going through a turbulent
period in our business. But then weeks and months passed and
as they say, time heals wounds and as the poison of that hurt
left me, wisdom began to enter my soul gradually and one day,
my eyes were opened.
You see, the truth of the matter is that those people had done
nothing wrong and were within their right to turn down my
content. They may have been disillusioned and myopic, but
since when is that a crime?
I realized that not everyone is going where you are going and
that the fact that you think otherwise does not mean you can
convince the owner of the vehicle to take you to Ibadan when
they want to go to Badagry. They had spent vast amounts of
money to set up their TV station and they had a vision for it
and had a right to tell me that my content didn’t tie in with their
vision, no matter how I felt about it.
Furthermore, all of us have at some point or the other turned
down brilliant people who needed our collaborative help,
because we didn’t see where they were going or didn’t see their
vision in congruence with ours.
It is always left to the owner of the vision to find a way to
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establish and manifest his vision. A mentor of mine likes to say
that you are the one who saw what you said you saw; therefore
it is your duty to make it happen.
Personally, I believe that if you have a vision that you are
passionate about, it means that there must be people who
need what you carry. You may not have met them and may have
to go through a lot to connect with that market, but you will
eventually, if you don’t give up.
In the beginning and along the way, you will meet a few people
or persons that you thought would help you, but they will
not. If you keep at it, you will eventually find those who are
desperate and craving the uniqueness you carry. You see, you
are the answer to some people’s prayers and even though you
don’t know it, as you have been searching for them, they have
also been searching for you.
If you don’t give up, one day you will connect with your market
and in the words of Fela, question go jam answer.
So get ready. Some will help you, thank them; some won’t, love
them. Okay that’s stretching it. Don’t love them, but don’t hate
either. Hate is wasted energy that could have been otherwise
productively used to create better content.
Another mentor of mine counsels that when you do make it;
don’t waste your time settling old scores.
It is very tempting, especially when the tables are turned and
those who turned their backs on you now need something
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from you. Try to rise above it. See them as instruments that
Providence used to get you to where you are. Without their
rejection, you might not have found the impetus to strive and
compete.
Whenever you want to pay people back in the same coin of
rejection, remember a certain Joseph who was sold into slavery
by his own siblings. Many years later when he could have had
all of them impaled, he simply told them ‘Even though you
didn’t know it, all you did to me was for a greater good.’ (Well,
that’s the gist of what he said).
On a self-satisfied note, I have been turned down and denied
help so many times that several people, upon reading this
book, will think I am referring to them and hopefully, they will
squirm uncomfortably in their seats.
Good for you!
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– “But don’t be angry with yourselves that you
did this to me, for God did it! He sent me here
ahead of you to preserve your lives”
- Joseph Israel
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SECRET 14:
THE SECRET OF ‘MAINTAIN
YOUR SHAMPION1’
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SECRET 14: THE SECRET OF ‘MAINTAIN YOUR SHAMPION1’
A
bout a month ago, I received an award from the
National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts
Practitioners (Lagos Chapter). I was awarded
as a certified Thespian in recognition of my
“outstanding support, service and commitment to
the development and growth of arts and culture in Nigeria.”
Remarkable! Especially in view of what I said in the last chapter,
right?
‘Buy Africa’is the title of one of Fela Anikulapo’s hit singles. In
that track, he lampoons the average African, who seems to hold
more respect for things made and manufactured abroad than
here. And if you have listened to Fela to any degree, you will
find that this was one of his major peeves. He would refer to
it as ‘Kolo Mentality’ in another track; the unhealthy respect
and awe of all things foreign, an unexplainable need to be more
‘European’, as he put it, to the disdain of the things that make
you originally African.
Other tracks in which he referred to the same are ‘Shenshema’,
‘Suegbe and Pako’, ‘Ikoyi vs Mushin Mentality’ and ‘COP’,
amongst others.
Sadly, it still exists and in no place will you meet it more alive
than in the entertainment industry.
Don’t get it twisted here. Sometimes you have no choice but to
buy abroad. Can you imagine insisting on driving a ‘made in
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Nigeria’ car at this point?
It’s just that there is something about sounding foreign that
seems to rock our world here and on the pretext of being
‘globally relevant’, we often subjugate true talent.
Thankfully, there are always entertainers and institutions that
stand as a bulwark against this disturbing trend. From the
afore-mentioned Fela to people like KSA and Femi Kuti2 who
were nominated for Grammy awards on the strength of their
traditional music, there are titans who have proved that the
best way to be a global citizen is to be a local champion
first.
Yeah, you read that right. Trust me, you already have enough
to worry about even convincing the people in your local
government area to accept you, let alone the world.
If you think the best way to be relevant is to cut across every
culture, you might just be missing the point. There is nothing
wrong with cutting across, of course, if that is your natural
inclination and if your inherent talents lead you in that
direction. What you must not do is kill your inner and true
African (or self) and aspire to have an accent or nature that is
foreign to you.
Speaking more on that, your focus should not always be on
‘cutting across’ or being globally relevant. It is a great dream
SHAMPION- CHAMPION as pronounced by a street urchin aka area boy
a scion of Fela Kuti; himself, a chip off the old block.
1
2
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to have, but I have seen that it arises as a matter of course,
only if you have laid the foundation very well and the only way
you are ever going to connect with the market is if you are an
‘original’.
Look, I don’t know how they figure it out, but the market always
knows when you are faking it. I swear it’s a science that beats
me, but even if you get away with it initially, which I doubt,
they will find you out sooner or later. That’s probably what Bob
Marley was referring to when he said, “You can fool some of the
people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of
the time.”
Okay, that’s not actually accurate.
I just ‘Googled’ it and found that it was Abraham Lincoln who
indeed said, “You can fool all the people some of the time and
some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the
people all of the time.”
If you were raised in London and speak with a true British
accent, by all means, speak on. That is who you are. But if you
were raised in ‘Oju Ina’ in Ibadan and have spoken your English
with an earthy African accent all your life, it would be foolhardy
for you to suddenly start presenting a show on radio trying to
sound like the American actor you watched in a film yesterday,
simply because you think it’s ‘tush ’.
Unless you are an actor playing a role of course.
You hear it all the time on TV and radio. They start out with
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an affected American accent and then all of a sudden you are
thinking ‘Wait o, did I just hear cockney there?’ Sometimes a
Jamaican accent even sneaks in unnoticed.
There are many permutations to this counsel, but the bottom
line is, be yourself.
If Pidgin English is all you know to speak, don’t try to do your
jokes in Queen’s English. If they won’t employ you to perform
at their end of year party because they’ll have many foreigners
there, then fine. Do you know how many people speak Pidgin in
Africa? The market is huge! Fela certainly proved that.
Ali Baba will remember this next part quite well. (Ali, should I
tell them?)
Some years ago, we had been invited to perform somewhere;
‘we’ being Ali, another and myself. Ali and I had gone up first,
doing our sets in English and then it was time for the last guy.
A little background on this guy to give you some much-needed
perspective; he was a truly gifted comedian and could crack
open a rock with his jokes. That’s how funny he was. Ali Baba
used to speak about the depth of his versatility to us all the
time, albeit in his absence, you know, to avoid a swollen ego
and all that. Only that, like most comedians of the day, he did
his act in heavy Wafi .
On that day, however, the occasion must have overwhelmed
him and he chose that moment to experiment with performing
in English, perhaps for the first time.
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Or it seemed he was about to. (Lagos crowds can be intimidating,
what with the high heels, dinner jackets and cosmopolitan
mien).
Rather than the usual “How una dey?” that we were expecting
to hear, the first thing out of his mouth was “Distinguished
ladies and gentlemen.”
Ali Baba panicked, to say the least!
‘Tej, Tej, go tell am make e no try perform for English o! Make
im just do im normal tin.” (Teju, Teju, go and tell him not to
attempt to perform in English! He should just perform in his
usual pidgin English!).
I delivered the message and he duly delivered his lines in
Pidgin. He killed them.
The point here is that you should not subjugate whatever is
natural to you in a bid to acquire something that you think the
market will appreciate. Not if you intend to do entertainment
anyways. Yes, I know that you shouldn’t attempt to sell a
market what it does not need, but I am almost certain we need
your brand of originality, or else why would Providence have
equipped you with the gifts you carry?
So, the question is what comes naturally to you when you are
in your element of performance and delivery?
I have heard it said that if you catch fire, the world will watch
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you dance. I have added to that: if you catch fire, the world will
watch you dance, regardless of the language or accent you are
screaming in.
A weird and painful analogy that one and I wouldn’t want to
burn under any circumstances, but it gets the point across,
doesn’t it?
That very local factor they said was a disadvantage was exactly
what I played up on the Teju Babyface Show. Not many people in
my generation have the grasp on African music that I have and
can also connect with contemporary issues and music. I went
back into myself and I discovered that I was a link between that
era and this. In my coruscation and contemplation, I discovered
that I was beginning to forget my uniqueness; that which made
me special.
And the people loved it; the same thing for which I was labeled
razz by some of my fellow students back in the day.
If you must re-invent yourself somewhere down the line, do so
having given it a lot of thought and plotting a map for where
your brand is headed; you know, your vision for yourself as far
as you can see it at the point of re-invention, relative to your
inherent abilities.
At the start of your career, however, drop the pretense and do
you.
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OPPOSITE PAGE QUOTE - “You’ll learn, as you get
older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold
enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever
apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to
conform, take the road less traveled instead of
the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though
EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of
your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit
in.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and
a Dash of Sass
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SECRET 15:
THE SECRET OF O.Y.O1
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SECRET 15: THE SECRET OF O.Y.O1
A
gainst the machines!
I had an ‘argument’ with my wife shortly after we
got married. Perhaps a debate is more like it, as we
weren’t fighting. It was an interesting discussion
that had us on opposite sides of the divide.
We were watching television when she suddenly asked, “Wait,
why don’t you go for auditions to host all these international
shows on TV?”
It was one of the easier questions I had been asked in my life
and I promptly delivered the answer:
“Because I know myself.”
Of course she didn’t understand so I explained. “For reasons
which I do not understand,” said I, “Auditions just do not work
for me. I have tried over and again over the years, but they
never choose me. Maybe I am not handsome enough or the
way I speak English is not ‘tush’ enough? Whatever the reason,
I have gone for enough auditions to last me a lifetime and have
made up my mind not to go for any again.”
“In fact,” I proceeded, having now warmed up to the subject,“That
was exactly why I started my own show. I was quite clear in my
spirit that if I had to wait for someone to put me on TV in a
hosting capacity, it would never happen.”
OYO- acronym meaning ON YOUR OWN
1
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Brilliant, right? Absolutely convincing too, wouldn’t you say?
You must not be married.
Of course she didn’t agree and didn’t let it go at that.
In her opinion, I was quitting too soon and giving up on what
might be a viable means of adding more feathers to my cap.
Yes I did have a show that I produced that was doing well, but
how could it hurt to have another one where I earned a steady
‘salary’?
“Even the biggest stars in the world have to audition sometimes,”
she said.
Guess what? The Council of God must have been listening that
night because the next day, I got a call to come for another
audition to be the host of an international show.
But for the conversation I’d had with the Mrs. the night before,
I would have refused it outright. But here was a classic case
of what Africans refer to as ‘the witch cried yesterday and the
child died today; surely it is not rocket science to link the witch
to this tragedy’.
In my mind’s eye, Providence surely had to be at work here
and so I showed up for the audition. Plus, the thought crossed
my mind that since I was married now, maybe old things had
passed away and all things had become new indeed.
Guess what? Miracle of miracles!
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I was again NOT chosen.
Of course you know I returned home to rub my wife’s face in it
properly “I told you, did I not? That’s how you won’t ‘hear word’
and be arguing” and on and on I went with cheerful gusto.
I know someone reading this will say that ‘well, you went there
with a negative attitude and you should know that you will
have whatever your faith expects.’
Oh really? That’s how you choose to see it?
Well, let me tell you what happened just a few months ago.
Perhaps you would consider this more recent and fresh.
Three years had almost passed since the incident just described
and one evening, while lying on the couch in our living room
feeling sorry for myself on account of the food poisoning I was
dealing with, my phone rang.
(Food poisoning? Well, we had just come back from a holiday
somewhere outside the country and I must have eaten
something that disagreed with me. Not a funny thing this).
I just about managed to pick up the phone, whereupon the
caller let me know that he had been trying to reach me for a
few days and that he wanted me to come in to audition for yet
another international show. He wanted me to come in the next
day, because the show was way behind schedule already.
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Now, given all my posturing about knowing myself and all that,
you would expect that I turned it down, wouldn’t you?
Well, you see, as I said, we had just returned from a holiday
abroad and replenishing funds from this type of work didn’t
seem like a bad idea. Besides, The Teju Babyface Show was on
hiatus at the time, so why not give this a try? I thought.
Time does indeed heal all wounds and makes some things
seem not so bad in retrospection, because I should have known
better.
Suffice to say I dragged myself there, stomach bug and all. In
fact, I was so below par when I got there that they had to buy me
painkillers to stave off a pounding and malevolent headache.
Then I proceeded to do my best in front of the camera. They
told me they liked it when I was done and that they would get
back to me.
They did a few weeks later, to tell me that I had passed and
that they were waiting on the sponsors to approve and would
get back to me again. Which they did again a few weeks later,
to tell me that unfortunately the sponsors wanted someone
‘international’ and were flying in their presenter from abroad.
Which they did; I saw the show on TV a few times. I don’t know
if it’s still on.
Nonsense and ingredients! Really? We have problems in this
country o.
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I have since gone on to produce other hit shows where I
installed myself as the presenter.
The point for you dear reader is this though: DONT EVER
QUIT ON THE DREAM OR VISION FOR YOUR CAREER WHEN
SOMETHING ISN’T WORKING. Look at it well and determine
if you need to CHANGE TACTICS and MAKE IT HAPPEN FOR
YOURSELF.
If opportunities are denied you repeatedly, look to see if there
isn’t a way you can create your own best version of you. After
all, there is a reason why you feel the way you do about wanting
to pursue that passion.
The Yorubas say ‘Alatisheni ’nmo atishe ara e’, meaning, ‘you
better than anybody know what works for you best’.
For example, I know myself enough to know that I like the
music of KSA and I have made it the theme music of more than
one of my shows. Do you think some other show would have
afforded me the liberty of doing that?
I like to wear suits and I wear a lot of them on my shows. If
it had been another show, maybe they would have made me
wear native attire, or hip-hop y’all.
I believe this right here is one of the things that have held us
back as a nation. Young people have a sense of entitlement
that is misplaced. I know this has been said many times and
I don’t want to sound like another broke record, but it may be
instructive to just say it again for posterity. How many times
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have we heard armed robbers that the police catch telling
pressmen that the reason they went into crime was because
there were no employment opportunities? Start your own!
Contrary to what you think, a lot of the people at the top today
also didn’t have what it took. Don’t even get me started on all
the snooty people who wouldn’t allow me on their television
stations.
Sometimes it just seems as if you are up against all the
established systems of the day. Well, tell ‘em to stick it and go
start your own.
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–“Alatise ni’n mo atise ara e” - African saying,
meaning that the discovery of one’s authentic self
is the bedrock of all success.
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SECRET 16:
THE SECRET OF LILLIPUT1
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SECRET 16:THE SECRET OF LILLIPUT1
Short people are always stubborn!’
So said a friend of mine; one beanpole of a fellow upon whom
God bestowed some 6ft6 inches of totally undeserved height.
Francis the carpenter (furniture maker as he likes to be called)
takes pleasure in often reminding me that my ‘stubbornness’
is expected, on account of the fact that I am clearly ‘lacking in
height’.
Francis will read this book and this is such a tempting
opportunity to go into ribbing him, but I am a magnanimous
sort of fellow, so I forgive you dear friend. Say it again though
and I will write an entire book about you!
He’s right though. Of course not about the height (or lack
thereof) being the reason for my stubbornness (that’s heresy).
The plain truth is that I can be resolute.
You see, I am blessed with tunnel vision or single mindedness of
purpose. Once I am convinced about the need to do something
or head in a particular direction, then that is exactly what I do
most of the time. In fact, a whole lot of the time, the doubts only
begin to set in upon the completion of a goal and not before it.
Just as well.
That is one of the major ingredients you will need to make it
in entertainment in Nigeria, or anywhere else for that matter.
1
LILLIPUT- an island nation in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels populated with miniature people
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Only that in Nigeria, it is seems doubly as hard, at the very least;
perhaps thrice.
To put it strongly, that was how one of the people to whom I
went for advice put it when I wanted to start a show on TV. He
spoke in Yoruba:
“Ah aburo, to bafe make e ninu television nibibayi, wani lati ni
agidi gaaaaan ni.” (Look brother, if it is your desire to achieve
success in the Nigerian TV industry, you must be completely
obstinate about it).
I say the same to you now. You should probably have gathered
as much, if you have read this book this far.
As far as I know, there is no singular stand-alone principle of
success. The recipe for the achievement of success is a cocktail
of all sorts of principles, but I consider obduracy to be the salt
of the whole mix.
Of course I do not counsel that you should be pig-headed. You
will simply wear yourself out for nothing and achieve exactly
that; nothing. However, this is not another chapter on the
virtues and benefits of not giving up. Too many books have
been written on that. What I am counseling here is that you
don’t give in.
No, the difference between the two is not just semantics.
As I see it, giving up refers to walking away from something
because of the fallout between your expectations and the
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results you are getting, e.g. people sometimes walk away from
other people in the wake of a disappointing relationship and
you will hear statements like ‘I give up on you’.
‘Giving in’, for me, is not only giving up, but also trading in most
of your emotional energy and self-esteem in the process. Giving
in is what you do when you have been battered over and over
again and in the end, you just give up. Yeah, I just used give up
there didn’t I? To my understanding, giving in is giving up and
then a bit more than that.
The way I see it when you give up, you may still have enough
spark left to go on or start something else. When you give in,
you have none of that left. The system has battered you so
much that you just lie down in the end and let it have its way
with you, in a manner of speaking.
That is exactly what this environment will seek to do to you if
you are a creative trailblazer. It’s almost as if there is an entity
that bestrides this space, refusing to allow any sort of genuine
and honest creativity to flourish without capitulating to some
sort of compromise or underhandedness.
Perish the thought that good intentions and originality
will see you through. While those are important things to
have, as they form part of the springboard for your takeoff, they are never enough.
Sometimes you will almost swear that there is a cabal
deliberately opposing you simply because you did not play by
the ‘accepted’ rules of doing business in your sphere of interest
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or business. You will almost feel like a conspiracy theorist,
seeing knives, guns and canons in places where others cannot.
It will be like a descent into paranoia.
Well, I have some news for you. Even though it feels like that,
you are actually not the victim and you shouldn’t lie down and
allow yourself to be had or ridden roughshod over. You are
actually the attacker and you are the one that has come to lay
siege to this city. You are the aggressor seeking to break in;
therefore (the) momentum depends on you, even though it
rarely feels like that.
Think of the established systems of the day as a great and
fortified city that must be accessed. Within its walls lie the
market and the people. Its outer reaches stretch to the seaports
from where all sorts of vessels sail to foreign lands and return
with exotic goods and spices. The land within those walls is
fertile and the produce second to none. Its learning system is
the thought leader of the entire free world.
It’s a place you need to be. You don’t want to own or take over
the city. All you want is an opportunity to access the resources
that lie within and make the best you can of yourself.
Well, initially anyway.
You do intend to take over the entire city someday. Nothing
wrong with dreaming big is there? But for now, you just want
the opportunity to display your wonderful wares there.
Yet, they will not let you in.
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You wonder to yourself whether it is because they are corrupt
and you are not, or vice versa. Whatever the case, you have
ideological differences. You have written all sorts of proposals
and sent all kinds of emissaries all to no avail.
So what to do? You lay siege against the city of course! And this
is where not giving up and not giving in come into play.
As they are a mighty city and you have a ragtag army, your
siege - if it can be called that - will have all the effect of an ant
hurling itself against an elephant, a full grown African tusker
at that. You will seemingly be making no difference or impact
whatsoever.
When you also consider the losses that you are tallying up what with all the hot pitch that is poured on you and your men
routinely from the top of the walls - after a while, the instinct
will be to just give it all up (and pack it in) and slink away into
the hinterlands from whence you came, never to return again.
Don’t.
Sooner or later, they will be forced to acknowledge your
presence. Whether for its nuisance value or any one of a dozen
other reasons, they will at some point be forced to send you an
envoy to negotiate terms.
Or they may just send their elite guard against you; heavily
armed, well-trained guys on horses the size of elephants.
Oh, did I forget to mention that you also need to know how to
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pack it up and run for the hills at a moment’s notice?
But you are not running away forever. As soon as the elite
guard in their polished armor go back into the city and close
the gates, you come back again. After these skirmishes go on
for a little while (or a long while), they will send envoys for you
to negotiate. You just have to stay there long enough.
I know that in the last chapter I said that when the systems of
the day are against you, you have to go off and start your thing.
This doesn’t contradict that in any way.
Even when you are going to do things on your own terms, you
still have to get to the place of business first; you have to come
to the market and ‘play’. For example, if you live in my village,
Ajaawa in the Ogbomoso area of Oyo State and you decide you
want to become a consultant to big companies, you had better
find a way to break into Ibadan or Lagos or any metropolis,
unless, of course, you want to be the local consultant to the
cocoa and cassava farmers.
That’s how I mean; even though you must be prepared to do it
on your own terms if the powers that be won’t help you, you
must break into this mythical city in the first place, to get access
to the land and markets and ports.
Getting help from the system is one thing; entering the city/
market in the first place is entirely different. And when you do
get there, you must have a ‘die there’ attitude. Plant yourself
firmly like a rock and refuse to be licked into submission by the
waves of rejection and frustration.
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Last last, whether you are ‘Francis tall’ or ‘Teju not so tall’,
stubbornness is a trait that will serve you well if you intend
to succeed in the entertainment industry around here, or
anywhere else for that matter.
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“Ikoko ti yioje’fo, idi re gbodo gbona” - African
proverb, figuratively translated as ‘He who intends to succeed must be prepared to weather
the storms of adversity. Literally translated it
means. ‘To make good soup, the pot must be prepared to sit on the flames of the stove for quite a
while.’
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SECRET 17:
THE SECRET OF THE
EFIKO1
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SECRET 17: THE SECRET OF THE EFIKO1
E
ntertainment and studying? Whoever heard of such a
thing!
After all, entertainers are supposed to be high
rolling, money spending, champagne popping, Bentley driving
individuals who club all night and sleep all day. What have books
and other forms of knowledge got to do with the entertainment
industry?
Well, plenty actually, at least if you desire to be on top of the
industry for a long time.
If, on the other hand, you don’t mind stumbling into some
moderate success, maybe a hit or two and be cast aside and
forgotten like millions before you, then drop this book and go
play a video game, will you?
You are still here? Great! Let’s get into it.
Beyond all the benefits of reading that have been touted over
and again, I am of the unassailable opinion that reading will
give you a glimpse of who and what you are going to become,
albeit a hazy picture - none of us can predict the future with
any degree of accuracy. But you will definitely know in which
direction you are headed.
You will know more than most. I particularly like that feeling
Efiko: Nigerian School slang for describing a studious and often extremely brilliant student i.e. a bookworm
1
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of knowing something others don’t. Don’t play coy, so do you.
Before you get discouraged, seeing how you just hate to read
anything, I should mention that I use ‘reading’ to mean the
acquisition of information. Your method might not be reading
books. You might be one of those who like to watch or listen
to things, or hear people speak. There are several ways of
acquiring knowledge and I have only used reading here as a
point of reference, in a manner of speaking.
I don’t know how it happened, but I discovered one day that
my appetite for reading a particular type of subject matter just
blew up exponentially.
That last statement in itself should tell you something. As TD
Jakes is wont to say, if I sit down at this point I have already
said enough.
This means therefore that there are certain types of books
that I do not read (anymore). There are certain genres of
literature and certain writers that I used to enjoy greatly that
I seem to have lost the taste for and I have concluded that this
is something that will happen to most avid readers as they
continue to feed their minds. After a while, if you read a lot and
are committed to improving your mind, you will begin to see a
pattern concerning the types of books and content that appeal
to you.
On discovering your purpose or area of expertise, many
teachers and coaches advocate a number of things on which you
should focus and dedicate yourself to, and they are probably
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correct. From following your passion and natural inclinations
to harnessing your inherent talent, there are several proven
ways to discover your true self.
In my case, however, after pursuing all the afore-mentioned
processes (and others), I still had my doubts and I am willing
to bet that I am not the only one.
Well, I have good news and bad news. Then more good news
(sort of).
You see, I have discovered another way. (Okay, let’s put the
word ‘may’ before ‘have discovered’ in that statement and go
again).
I may have discovered another way.
I have to be clear about this, because while in all honesty I cannot
remember having read this in any other book, or listened to it
from any other teacher/documentary/teaching in the past, I
have been exposed to more than a few teachings in my time.
The fallout of this type of constant exposure is what I call the
Duplicity of Thought Origin, meaning that sometimes, what
you consider an original thought isn’t but is a crystallization of
many other thoughts from other sources.
So, that is the good news; that I know another way by which
you can narrow the discovery of your life’s purpose or career
down to an almost accurate degree of certainty, a glimpse into
your future as I said earlier.
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The bad news, as I promised, is that it is going to take a long
time to get to that point - years even - if you decide to follow
the route I am about to suggest.
Now to the final ‘goodish’ piece of news to help restore some
semblance of a smile to your face. Whether you follow what I
suggest here or another route, it is going to take you years to
discover your purpose or calling or ministry, if you may.
It’s a classical win-win situation. Whatever you choose to do
will take many years anyways, so you might as well follow this
one with my testimonial, recommendation and blessings.
Let us spare a moment to pity the person that chooses to follow
no one’s advice and is insistent on going it alone and learning
solely by experience. He might finally figure it out at 92, if he
does at all.
Time in years is relative. A period of five years means less to
a guy who is 20 than it does to the dude who is 50. Or viceversa. It is both short and long at the same time, it just depends
on how you view your life and what you want to achieve.
Personally I believe that the years invested in discovering
yourself are miniscule compared to the rewards you will reap
upon the achievement of desired mastery.
Are you ready for this? Okay, here we go.
The reason you will discover your life’s career/purpose/
ministry through reading (or listening or watching) is because
you will eventually happen upon your literary obsession.
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Yes. Your literary obsession.
Someday, you are going to discover that you crave and are
obsessed with a certain genre of book/content/activity, to
the exclusion of almost all others. When that day comes, you
will discover an appetite for a particular type of information/
content that you didn’t know existed within you. It will be like
a fire that aptly consumes pages in its wake. It will seem as if
you can’t get enough.
Other symptoms might include:
- The almost complete lack of interest in any other subject
matter, including things that used to interest you. You just
discover that movies suddenly become boring, unless they
are related to the subject of your obsession. The series that
everyone likes on TV don’t do it for you; TV suddenly seems to
lose its allure, except for one or two channels and so on.
- The inability to get other people (usually your closest loved
ones) interested in the same subject. I mean, here you are with
all the religious fervor of a newly converted zealot (with the
attendant frothing at the mouth and wide-eyed wonder) and
your wife (or husband) just doesn’t get it. Neither do your best
friends or your drinking buddies.
- Oh, one more; the discovery of this passion might impact you
health-wise or in some other physiological way. Insomnia is
one of the more common fallouts. How ironic.
When that day comes, congratulations! You have finally
arrived at a juncture that most humans will never get to in one
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lifetime: you actually enjoy the gathering and assimilation of
information as both an end and a means to an end.
We all know that the achievement of success is not easy;
otherwise everyone would be rolling down Broad Street in a
limo. Or maybe Ahmadu Bello Way.
One of the reasons why trying to achieve anything outstanding
or worthwhile isn’t easy is because the information and secrets
needed to unlock those rewards are usually, how do you say it,
not fun. Mind numbing, grueling, soporific, uninteresting etc.
Yet, here you are, actually enjoying what by all accounts should
be boring and tortuous. You are reading this book, are you not?
I mean think of rocket science. We all admire rocket scientists,
do we not? Have you, however, tried to study rocket science?
To think that those guys in the lab coats actually enjoy it!
(Shudder).
When you get to the point where you love just one subject or a
series of streamlined and related subjects that seem boring to
most people, you will know, without a shadow of doubt,, that
you can stake all you have in that direction or on that obsession.
It will, at the very least, take you to the next point in your life
where you will again discover more about your unique journey.
Isn’t that what we are all looking for, the assurance that if we
put all our eggs in this one basket, we will have omelets for a
long time to come?
We all admire Moses for standing up to Pharaoh and all, but
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he did have that little incident of the Burning Bush. Even with
that, he still argued. He doubted. He still needed to be sure that
if he was to pack up his family and migrate back to Egypt and
eventually to the Promised Land, it would be on more than just
instinct.
Actually, it seemed he was more concerned about not having
his head handed back to him on a plate by Pharaoh. There was
also the little incident about killing a guy some 40 years before
and all that.
So he needed the one thing that all of us need; ASSURANCE.
Well, unless I am mistaken, you haven’t been standing in
front of a burning bush with an awe-inspiring voice booming
out instructions to you, have you? (I exclude all partakers of
‘earthly’ or illegal substances like weed or crack from this
question. Them guys see and hear all sorts of things that are
invisible to the naked eye).
Great! Or not so great for us, as we do not get the benefits of
thunder and lightning these days when we decide to stake our
future on the pursuit of one direction. We just have to hope that
we are right and that the fire that burns in our bellies is more
than just the early onset of an ulcer, and that’s what this whole
chapter has been about.
No, not about ulcers.
While there are still margins for error (and there will always be
in life), you can be more sure than most that when you have a
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sustained and prevailing obsession about a particular subject
matter, accompanied by pleasure and delight upon partaking
of it to the exclusion of most other things, you may just have
discovered the direction in which to place all your bets. Go for
it!
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“Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.”
― George R.R. Martin
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SECRET 18:
THE SECRET OF
HIP AND HOP
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SECRET 18: THE SECRET OF HIP AND HOP
‘
They’: I work in a bank/oil company/school etc. but I
want to be an emcee/comedian/singer/director etc.
Me: Good for you! So how may I be of service?
‘They’: Em, I was hoping that, you know, you could train me
per time or introduce me to someone who can train me per
time.
Me: Why?
‘They’: So that when I am good enough and start making
money from it and I am known, I can leave my job and
concentrate fully on it.
Me: (speechless)
Really? You really think that’s how this works? That you can do
this on the side, say the weekends while having a full time job
and rise in the entertainment industry?
I can almost hear you thinking ‘Gosh, of course not. Why would
anybody think like that’?
But you’re only thinking that now that you know I disapprove
and have stated my sentiments very clearly. It is apparently not
so obvious to the many that have approached me and the many
more that haven’t, but believe they can maintain a 9-5 job and
still have a successful entertainment career.
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Again, I have seen the night turn into day in my short life (thus
far) and have seen the miraculous happen, so I always leave
allowances in my assertions for the exception. So there may
indeed be someone somewhere, even in our country Nigeria,
who is a regular banker and is also the most sought after
emcee/singer/actor in town.
The fact that I haven’t seen it happen or that I don’t believe it or
that it isn’t commonplace doesn’t mean that it cannot happen
tomorrow, or that it hasn’t happened somewhere else and I
just don’t know about it.
In fact, it has, as it turns out. Recently- days after writing the
preceding paragraph- I saw a documentary on TV about a very
successful South African musician who started out working in
a bank and whilst he was there, he sent a demo of his record
to a record label and they loved what they heard so much that
they offered him a deal. He promptly quit his job in the bank,
entered the studio and released a debut album, which was
received with critical acclaim and catapulted him to success!
Just like that!
Maybe you should consider moving to S.A?
Even as I suspect that the makers of the documentary in
question glossed over many salient points in their story
telling, I humbly grant (again) that there are exceptions, like a
rainbow if you like. My experiences and observationshowever
show that life generally only gives full returns to those who
invest themselves fully and will give per time results to those
who invest themselves part-time. Anything you are doing on
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the side part-time, will usually give you on the side part-time
results.
Think about it.
On the one hand, there are those who have chosen to forego
the comforts and assurances of a steady job and sure paycheck
to brave uncertainty and chase their dreams in the creative
industry. Those who are not sure what tomorrow will bring or
where the next pay packet is going to come from, but stake it
all on the belief that their talent, hard work and singularity of
purpose will eventually vindicate them.
And then there is you. You have a steady job and pay packet and
come rain or shine, you get paid regularly and don’t quite have
to suffer under the dark and oppressive hand of uncertainty
as to where the next meal is coming from, in a manner of
speaking. On the side, perhaps on weekends, you pursue an
entertainment career.
It is your belief that when the day comes - as it so often does - for
Providence to reward diligent participants in the industry with
stardom, endorsement deals, fan adulation and outstanding
success, life will skip over those who are 100% committed and
hand the goods to you, the part timer, instead.
Again, really? You think life is truly that unfair?
The reality, as it stands, is that only a fraction of those who are
even fully committed to the industry will ever get to the land
called Success, and you think that of that small quota, you the
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part-timer will get a cushy spot? There are millions who have
staked it all on the industry and didn’t get anything out of it and
yet the once-a-week performer thinks he has a realistic shot?
What most people who claim to have a passion on the side do,
is that they continue with their current endeavors or jobs that
give them comfort and security, in the hope that if and when
this on-the-side hobby or passion picks up, they will drop what
they are doing at the moment and just jump into it fully; you
know, seamless integration.
Not likely to happen sis.
Trying to leave your current job only when it is obvious
that the next level (that you aspire to) will give you the
same level of benefits or comfort and security is akin to
trying to get from one mountain to another mountain
without coming down to the valley. It is the equivalent of
trying to get from one tree to another without coming down
first, like a monkey.
Is it possible to wear a new crown while the old crown is still
on your head? There must always be a moment when your
head is without covering, no matter how brief it is and it is this
moment of exposure that most people fear and run away from.
I could give quite a few analogies to illustrate this. Have you
noticed that no matter how hard you try, when it is raining
and you are trying to get from one place to the other, you will
always get some rainwater on you? Have you noticed that even
though you have an umbrella, you still get wet as you try to
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either come out of your car or get back into it?
That’s the point. There will hardly be any occasion in your
life when as you try to go from one level to the other it will be
seamless. There will always be that moment of exposure and
discomfort, however brief.
If you know anybody who has achieved enviable or outstanding
success or greatness in the entertainment industry while
holding down regular, paid employment, you should greatly
respect him or her, as they are a rarity. But even that neither
discredits nor flies in the face of what I am saying. As a matter
of fact, what it means is that if you are able to achieve results
with part time effort and dedication, can you imagine how much
more you could have achieved if you were invested in that area
and dedicated to it full time? But hey, we are just postulating in
the non-existent, yes? Because, as I have said earlier, I am yet to
meet any of such.
One of the major problems - again, as I see it - is that people
think it’s down to just pure talent. They erroneously assume
that since they have it, all they have to do is take one or two
shots at it and as soon as the market hears/sees what they
have to offer, talent will bear them out. It’s the case of the oil
company worker who does indeed have a good voice song idea,
who believes that all that is required is to just get to the studio,
‘drop’ a single and get it to the market somehow, and that as
soon as the market hears it, bingo! Pay day!
So, how’s that working out for you so far?
As one author once put it, talent is not enough.
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I had a friend who was in university with me who wanted to be
a musician as much as I wanted to be a comedian/actor and we
used to go for shows and hustle together in those struggling
days. Upon graduation he got a job in a financial institution,
but told me that he was still working on his musical passion
and that he would quit soon and concentrate on music full time.
This was in the year 2000 and over the years that followed we
would see each other from time to time and he would tell me of
how he was in the studio, working on his music.
One day in 2008, eight years after we had graduated and God
had blessed me with a productive comedy career (having finally
decided that acting wasn’t for me at the time), he came to me.
He spoke of how he was finally serious about his music and he
wanted me to invest in the album he was working on and that
when it was released and was a hit, I would get my investment
back in folds and that the album was going to be a hit.
I congratulated him massively.
I then asked him to clarify what he meant by his saying that he
was serious about his music though. Did this mean that he had
quit his job in the financial sector and was now going to give
his time and energy to music fully?
“No, you know I am married now, so I am still working in the
office, but I have booked studio sessions and I am really going
to do it this time and once it hits, I am going to quit and face
music,” he enthused.
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For the third time in this chapter, really?
Of course you already know where I stand on the matter and
so I proceeded to give him my own counsel. With hindsight, I
might as well have not bothered.
He then proceeded to ask me what he considered a very
important question (after I had finished speaking); what about
Jamie Foxx the American performer who won an Oscar for
his portrayal of Ray Charles and had several hit records? Or
Will Smith who won the first Grammy with DJ Jazzy Jeff in a
rap category and went on to be a box office champion in the
movies? They did music and the movies and they were masters
at both, so why should not he be a master at two things’?
Not a high level of coruscation, that one. But because you might
have also wondered the same at some point, it will be my
pleasure to let you into the obvious.
Those two brothers he mentioned are involved in two things
in the same industry; Entertainment. And those two things music and movies - intersect at a very complementary junction.
Will Smith performed the theme song of his first foray into
acting, the series ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’. Those things
complement each other. Elvis Presley is principally known as
a music legend, but he acted in many films – a few of which we
had on cassette - and he would sing and dance in those films as
well; Viva Las Vega, Fun in Acapulco etc.
Jamie Foxx came to fame as an actor (even though he had a
passion for music all along) and only when he got to the top
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in the acting industry did music really open up for him. In
fact I am sure that it was the success from acting that made
making hit music easier for him and if you watch the video of
his hit song ‘Blame it on the Alcohol’, you will see Oscar winner
Forest Whitaker and other A-list actors. While he might have
recorded success in music, Jamie Foxx is an actor; that is how
we primarily know and relate to him, isn’t it?
Therefore, those two areas are just different sides of the same
coin; music and movies, or have you never heard of musicals?
Did you not see The Sound of Music or My Fair Lady or Mary
Poppins or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?
In fact, I am going too far back. Who hasn’t watched the
characters Lucious Lyon and Cookie in ‘Empire’ these days?
“What you, my friend, are attempting to do are as related as
night and day,” I told him. “You are working in a bank and yet
you want to be a successful musician? Where do they intersect?”
Unless you want to start singing in the lobby of the banking
hall
At any rate, those two brothers concentrated on just one
vocation i.e. acting. Music for them seems to be more of a
hobby. In fact, Will Smith said as much in an interview.
He didn’t take my advice charitably, as he told me that it wasn’t
true and that he was going to make it work. Well, I wished him
luck and we parted. It has been seven years since that time and
to the best of my knowledge he is still in the office and we have
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heard no hits from him.
He did manage to release a single and musical video a few years
ago. It didn’t work.
The tragic thing about it is that I doubt that he will rise to the
top in the financial sector either as long as he is divided in his
thinking. As a matter of fact, the last time I saw him, he had
changed jobs and was now with a company.
So, what am I counseling you to do, seeing as you love
entertainment and you don’t mind giving up your job for it?
Am I saying quit now and face entertainment squarely?
Ah! Iya a je pala pala si e l’ara! (You will suffer at levels and
intensities you did not even know existed).
What to do then? Read on. For now though, stop ‘hipping’ and
hopping between two realms of possibilities. Sit down with
one.
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“Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will
cost you your life.”
― Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy
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SECRET 19:
THE SECRET OF THE
WAR CHEST
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SECRET 19: THE SECRET OF THE WAR CHEST
A
to sell.
li Baba and I were in his car one day, approaching
the Stadium area of Surulere when we met an
acquaintance of his, who was riding in the same car
she had told us two months earlier she was trying
That had caught my attention at the time, because I was car-less
and any car on the market, especially from an acquaintance of
Ali’s, was of interest to me. Consequently, Ali made inquiries
for me, but she had quoted an unrealistically high price and so
we let it drop. She let us know that she was quite confident the
car would sell at the price she had fixed within days.
Here she was two months later, driving the same car, which, by
the way was looking worse for wear.
“Bros, I thought she wanted to sell that car. Why is she still
driving it?” I asked after she’d left. I mean, this woman was
supposed to be a ‘big girl’ in town and so the thought of her
being stuck with a car she didn’t want didn’t add up for me.
“Oh, she’s never going to sell that car,” he replied with a smirk.
He proceeded to extrapolate that the problem with a lot of
people who want to sell an old car is that they want to do so
at the same price they bought it in the first place, or at a price
close to the cost of the new one they intend to buy. He said that
they refuse to acknowledge the fact that to give up the old car
and acquire an upgrade, they must be willing to bear some loss.
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That right there is the elusive answer and formula to the
question of how to leave one level for another without feeling
any discomfort that most people are looking for. For example,
they want you to tell them how to leave the banking job that
they really don’t like to pursue their passion in fashion.
Oh, they don’t need you to tell them they have a natural flair for
fashion. They are sure of that.
Every time somebody enters the banking hall, they size them
up sartorially. They know that the lapel is too wide for that
man’s head and that he shouldn’t be wearing a three-piece but
a two-piece suit; that other man is too short for a three-button
and should stick to two-button jackets and no, he shouldn’t be
wearing black shoes with a brown suit and so on.
When at the cinema, their attention is divided. They follow
the storyline of the film with only half their mind, because the
other part is analyzing the fashion on screen and the wardrobe
and period pieces.
You know, the kind of folk who have watched ‘The Great Gatsby’
three times.
So they don’t need your help in figuring out what their true
passion is. What they need you to do is tell them how they
can do both at the same time; that is, their regular job and the
pursuit of their passion.
Or, that if they were to take a leap of faith and leave their regular
job to pursue this burning passion, how they can avoid the pain
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of the financial fallout they suspect will follow it?
Now, at this juncture, I should point out that I know the way you
think. You are a nice guy and so you are not looking for where
to catch Teju Babyface out in his assertions. Alas, everyone is
not like you and I can assure you that there will most certainly
be someone who is asking, ‘How does Teju know that? Has he
ever left a job before?’
I could proffer a defense and speak to the merits of observation
and secondhand experience garnered from counseling many,
but such ‘critics’ are not easily (or ever) swayed. So what do
you say we just move on, you and I?
Again, this is a good news-bad news-good news scenario.
Of course, the good news first. You can indeed leave your 9-5
and pursue your passion. Many have done so before you and
many more will when you have been committed to Mother
Earth, after what we hope would’ve been a long and productive
sojourn on earth.
That’s the end of the good news. Well, the first part of it.
The bad news is that, as we established in the last chapter, you
can hardly make this move without feeling the sharp breeze
on your forehead (a reference to the pain you feel when you
remove your hat on a breezy winter’s day). It is not going to be
seamless and you will, in all likelihood, have to abase, as the
Apostle Paul put it in one of his letters.
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You will have to scale down your expenses, batten down the
hatches and ride without a saddle for a while.
But you don’t have to starve or lose your dignity while at it.
In the book ‘Acres of Diamonds’, Russell Herman Conwell said,
“Of all the simpletons (foolish people) the stars shine on, I don’t
know of a worse one than the man who leaves one job before
he has gotten another.”1
So be sure that before you tell your boss to go jump off Third
Mainland Bridge in the presence of everyone in the banking
hall, you have at least done a little research and know more
than a few things about the direction in which you intend to
strike out; lest you resign and find out that what you intended
to do for profit has been legislated by the government and
zoned into the strictly ‘not for profit zone’.
Secondly and perhaps more importantly, start to amass what
someone once described to me as a WAR or TREASURE CHEST.
At the time, we had been discussing a new pricing strategy for
the brand Teju Babyface and while it was a more aligned move,
the principle applies just the same. Back then, I had just put a
premium on my pricing and services as part of a re-invention
strategy and was suffering the fallout, i.e. I was losing a lot of
emcee jobs. It was for this reason that I sought counsel and
the conclusion was to build a War Chest that would allow me
Acres of Diamonds, Russell Herman Conwell (His Life and Achievements by Robert Shackleton), a BiblioBazaar Reproduction Series. The line quoted appears on page 18 Acres of Diamonds, Russell Herman
Conwell (His Life and Achievements by Robert Shackleton), a Biblio Bazaar Reproduction Series. The line
quoted appears on page 18
1
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cushion the effects of ‘re-invention’, so to speak. You know,
something to tide me over until the market came around to the
merits of my new level.
So, I say the same to you. It is laudable (and necessary even)
that you want to pursue your dreams, but don’t do so arbitrarily.
Calculate what your current level of expenses is per week or per
month and then save enough to get you through the downtime
that will be occasioned by your move. I recommend at least a
year’s savings.
I should let you know from my experience, however, that even
this kind of preparation will only cushion your discomfort, it
will not eradicate it. What happens if you have saved 12 months
worth of resources, but the downtime continues beyond that?
There is a level where, even when you have been diligent at
saving, life demands much more from you as a price for daring
to dream.
As I said earlier, you might also have to scale down on your
expenses for a while. Look, nobody is going to be paying you
a ‘holiday allowance’ now that you are on your own. All that
champagne popping you used to do with the boys every Friday
after work in the name of waiting for the traffic to ease up will
have to stop.
I know all this sounds scary and woe betide you if you are
married and your spouse is not fully behind you in this move.
You will know the true meaning of ‘hell on earth’.
Do not be afraid, however. The truth - as I know it - is that
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you are going to get to this point of discomfort sooner or later
anyways.
Let me say that again: whether you man up and bite the bullet
yourself by stepping out now, or you refuse and stay in that job
and subjugate your passion and true purpose in life because of
the comfort it affords, at some point in your life, you will feel
pain. The question is this; is it going to be the empowering pain
that comes from stepping out in faith, or the debilitating and
irreversible pain of regret many years down the line when your
opportunities to become what you were created to (become)
have all gone? Simply put, the discomfort and pain you are
seeking to avoid is unavoidable. Ask older folk, they will tell
you as much and more.
In conclusion of this particular treatise, I do not claim to be an
expert on all industries. I do, however, know a few things about
the entertainment industry and if you want to play in it, your
chances of success soar higher if you are fully committed to it.
Who knows? Maybe it works that way in other industries too.
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“Whoever doubts is like a wave of the sea that is
driven and blown about by the wind. People like
that, unable to make up their minds and undecided in all they do, must not think they will receive
anything from the Lord.”
- James
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SECRET 20:
THE SECRET OF
TITRATION
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SECRET 20: THE SECRET OF TITRATION1
Bambialla is alive, bambialla is alive…’
That was what the beggars who made the street rounds used
to say on Fridays when they passed by the front of our house
on the way to and from the worship places, begging for alms.
Well, that’s what my six-year-old self thought they were saying.
Come to think of it, I should ask someone in the know to tell me
what they really said.
That can keep though. For now, let me tell you another story.
A short while ago, a young man approached me with a request
for a meeting and I was impressed enough by his manner of
approach to oblige him as soon as I could.
At our meeting, he spoke of how he was ‘borderline’ depressed,
because nothing he had tried was working and that finally, after
a period of long introspection, he had gotten the idea for what
he considered a breakthrough TV show. His frustration now
was largely from the fact that despite his best efforts, he wasn’t
making any headway.
He even showed me the few episodes he had been able to
record on his laptop and then he asked for my help.
I had been expecting that.
Not the chemistry term involving the mixing of solutions but a Federal Government College Ogbomoso
slang for shameless begging
1
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I empathized with him, because I was able to identify with
exactly where he was. I once heard someone say that inspiration
without provision soon leads to frustration. In short, there
is nothing as frustrating as having a dream and lacking the
resources to fulfill it.
Especially when you see seemingly inferior propositions to
yours get the assistance you are repeatedly denied.
Been there, done that. Or have had that done to me.
I am sure a few of you can relate to this. You have this idea that
burns brightly in your heart and makes you so excited that you
can barely sleep. Yet, you have no means of fulfilling it.
I started to encourage him with some of the principles that I
had used and that had worked for me - basically, some of the
stuff that I am teaching in this book. Some deep stuff.
Or so I thought.
As I was saying these things to him, I noticed that he didn’t quite
have the look that someone who is being impacted positively
should have.
You know, there is a look that someone has on his face when
he feels that what you are saying is not what he wants to hear.
That glazed stare that says ‘Look, it is not all this talk that I
need. My situation has gone past talk.
He had a variant of that kind of look on his face and I got the
distinct impression that while he respected me a lot, he wanted
to say something else and couldn’t wait for me to be through
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with what I was saying so that he could.
Ergo, I decided to help us get there quicker.
“Is there something else you would like to tell me at this point?”
I asked.
“Yes sir!” came the anticipated reply.
Whereupon he proceeded to tell me how he knew and had
tried some of the things I was speaking about and they hadn’t
worked. So, what he really needed at the moment was my help.
For a minute I didn’t understand. Principles don’t fail.
Experiences differ, but principles are universal. ‘What do you
mean you tried them and they didn’t work?’ I wanted to ask.
Then it dawned on me. Ah, I knew what he wanted. I decided to
goad him on; you know, get him within range of the salvo that I
would surely unleash shortly.
“My help?” I replied. “You mean all these things that I am
spending my time to tell you do not qualify as help?”
And he walked right into the trap. I was almost giddy with
perverse joy.
He said, “No sir, I don’t mean that, but what I really need is
your help to record my TV show. You have cameras, please give
them to me. You have connections, please help me sir, I am
desperate…” and so on.
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At this time, he was almost on his knees and looking very pitiful.
That didn’t stop the tongue-lashing that I had been cooking up
for the past minute. I duly delivered it.
“DO NOT EVER BEG!” I roared.
Okay, I am getting carried away now. I didn’t roar like that
really. I had raised my voice, but nothing like I am making it
sound. Just very stern, you know.
“Man up and do what you have to do including asking for help,
but do not ever beg.”
Then I softened my tone a little, because I had also groveled
like that before and I had learned, only from experience, that
begging never works.
I say the same thing to you now that I said to him then: WHEN
YOU NEED HELP TO FULFILL YOUR ENTERTAINMENT or
CAREER DREAMS, ASK, DO NOT BEG.
It may not be obvious to you, but there is a marked difference
between begging and asking.
One of my mentors qualifies beggars with a definition that is as
amusing as it is apt: a beggar is someone who wants something
for nothing.
You know the type; someone who wants to get help or favors
and neither has nor is willing to give anything in return.
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An online source defines it in more or less the same terms:
‘the practice of imploring others to grant a favor, often a gift of
money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation’.
I can just see you squirming in your seat upon reading this,
because those qualifications have come closer to home for you
than you would prefer, right? Especially in light of the fact that
as things stand right now, you do need help in your career but
the truth is, you have nothing to give and yet you know that you
are not a beggar.
I mean, really, what if one has nothing? How do you approach
someone who seems to have everything with something that
will appeal to him, seeing how - in your estimation - you have
nothing?
Rookie assumption and mistake. You are never without
something; you always have something.
Remember the rich man to whom I went for help, the one who
wanted to help his own kid instead? Even though I didn’t quite
throw myself at his feet like this, I must have had that same
desperate plea in my eyes. That in itself is not a bad thing; you
can’t help feeling vulnerable when you are in a position of need
after all.
I qualify my approach to him now as begging and not asking,
because while I told him what I wanted him to do for me, I
didn’t tell him what I would give in exchange.
Actually, between, you and I, I don’t think anything I said would
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have made him assist me any which way it panned out. Still, it
would have helped my sense of dignity if I had approached him
with a mutually benefitting proposition.
It would take me a while to learn that lesson, but learn it I did
from another wealthy man. In this case, we had managed to
produce the first season of The Teju Babyface Show and what I
needed at this time was help on how to get it on TV.
After showing this rich man what we had done, he asked me a
question I hadn’t anticipated; “What is in it for me?”
The thought that such a rich person could be interested in
getting anything out of my project was foreign to me. I thought
that successful people just helped people without any strings
attached. I was stumped and so said, “Anything you want sir.”
He smiled (he’s a great guy) and then he proceeded to explain
to me that nothing goes for nothing and that people have to see
how the project or idea for which you need their help will also
pay them.
Well, I was able to work out a rough and rudimentary structure
that would reward him in the future and I got the help I needed
from him. I will be forever grateful to that gentleman for telling
me what needed to be done because he could have sent me
away with nothing, like the first man.
So, there it is: the one thing you do have is your future, even
if you think you have nothing now. Write a business plan at
least. So, your next question is how does one write a business
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plan? Well, there are at least a thousand books on that subject,
not to mention that the internet is awash with that kind of
information.
The truth is that you are never going to make it on your own.
I have heard some referred to as being self-made. Emcees do
that when they enter ‘garrulous’ mode.
“Our next guest is a man of timber and caliber, mahogany and
obeche2. He’s known at home and abroad, he’s a self-made
man…”Blah, blah, blah.
I laugh at that. There are no self-made people as far as I can
see. Everybody had help on their way to the top; nobody made
it there alone.
I have heard it said that famous author Alex Haley, the man
who gave us the book Roots that was made into the popular TV
mini-series about Kunta Kinte (remember they used to show
it on network television many years ago?), had a particularly
intriguing picture in his office. It was of a turtle sitting on a
fence and whenever he was asked about it, he would explain
that the picture was there to remind him that he did not get to
where he was in life on his own.
When you see a turtle on a fence, even the simplest-minded
person knows that it must have been someone that put it there.
A turtle cannot climb a fence on its own.
Obeche- a tropical tree of Africa often used in guitar making
2
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Therefore, from time to time, you will need help on your way
to fulfilling your dreams and sometimes it will be financial in
nature, but you must ask and not beg.
A note of caution here: Somehow, somebody reading this
would have concluded that I am advocating arrogance; that
Teju Babyface said don’t beg for anything, just demand it. So,
barge into someone’s personal space and look him straight in
the eye, yielding no ground on your part.
You will suffer eh!
After you are summarily thrown out of a few offices, you will
‘get the gist’ and adjust accordingly. Somehow, you must have
glossed over the part where I differentiated begging from
asking, right? I wish you the best of luck with your broke
arrogance.
The Yoruba people have nomenclature for broke arrogance:
Talaka Alagidi. Poor and stubborn, a tragic combination.
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Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are
always asking ‘what’s in it for me?’- Brian Tracy
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SECRET 21:
THE SECRET OF
‘WETIN YOU BRING?’
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SECRET 21: THE SECRET OF ‘WETIN YOU BRING?’
R
ichest man who ever lived or not, King Solomon was
a pretty sharp guy. When you are called the wisest
man in the world and people came from all over to
seek your counsel in days when they basically had to
trek to get anywhere, you must be the boss. Of course there
were camels and horses in the mix. Still, can you imagine going
from Lagos to Benin on horseback? I read that they came from
much farther.
It was he who said, “A man’s gift shall make room for him and he
shall stand before kings and not mere men1.”
Well, with contemplation such as that, the guy deserved all the
veneration he got.
What I’ve always wondered is this; with a thousand luscious
women needing conjugal attention, where did he find the time
to do any productive thinking and write such deep thoughts?
Because that thought is deep.
It is a text that I have been familiar with for quite a while, having
spent not a few hours listening to preachers and teachers of the
Bible. It was, however, always taught with a particular slant.
Those who taught it always emphasized the importance of
honing one’s gifts and talents to the point of mastery so that
Proverbs 18 verse 16
1
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the same inherent abilities could take you to the top by opening
great doors that lead to great men.
Not bad counsel that and very true.
Only after many years did I find that this text was a double-edged
knife and that there was another obscure but no less powerful
interpretation, and it is to that less popular application that we
will give our attention in this chapter.
Of course at this point, you are expecting another story.
One day, I was in a church and I needed to use the bathroom
or toilet, as we call it in this part of the world. I had timed my
exit from the main auditorium with as much precision as I
could manage and I made a break for it when the next round of
prayers was called.
It was my hope that I could make it to the loo and back without
being asked to pose for a picture or pawed by people who
recognized me from television or stage, or wherever else.
Don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate the appreciation of my
fans, but as any popular person will tell you, sometimes, you
are not just in the mood for it.
My plan worked well too. I was almost at the bathroom when I
heard the dreaded “Excuse me sir” coming from a 100 yards or
so behind me.
I suddenly became deaf at that point and resolutely marched
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on, but the fellow wouldn’t give up.
“EXCUSE ME SIR!”
I sighed and turned around.
Sure enough, there was a young man running to catch up with
me. He must have suspected that I might step out of church
at some point and had kept his eyes on me throughout the
service. He must have felt rewarded.
He soon got to me and delivered the usual niceties.
“I like your show on TV sir and I admire you and you are my
role model” and such and such.
That was the end of the familiar. What he did next took me
totally by surprise.
“I figured you’re an avid reader sir and so I bought this book
and I thought you might like it.” And with that he took a book
out of the polythene bag he was carrying.
He handed the book to me and turned to leave.
Just like that!
“Wait, wait,” I called after him. “Is that all? You don’t want my
number or a picture?”
“No I don’t sir,” he replied and made to leave again.
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“Wait, wait, wait,” I said again, totally perplexed. “Okay, I insist.
Take my number and email address. Feel free to call me any
time, okay?”
Of course I had gotten gifts from total strangers before, but
usually they were sent to my office or given to me at events the
public knew I was attending. More to the point though, they
were few and very far between. On a ratio, I probably got 1 gift
to 1000 requests; i.e. out of every 1001 people that approach
me, only one is not asking to take something from me.
At least that is how it feels to me.
And that right there is one of the deepest secrets of meeting
important people, including that mentor you have had your
eyes on. Most people approach them from a point of need and
to take. It’s always ‘what can you do for me sir, I need your help
sir, I need sponsorship sir’ and so on.
Grabbing, grabbing and grabbing.
It is a rarity when somebody shows up with a gift and asks for
nothing in return.
Even when they ask for something in return, it is still a rare
occurrence.
Would you believe that some people get my number from our
TV show or the Internet and send me a text asking for phone
airtime? Unbelievable, right?
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The thinking of most people is what do you give a man that
seems to have everything? Nothing that I can give will make a
difference.
Not true. You see, because most people think this way they
bring nothing and consequently, Mr. VIP gives nothing. It’s
an endless perpetuation of selfishness really and that is good
news for you, because it gives you a chance to get noticed.
Now, when buying a gift, don’t be cheap. I have received some
ridiculous gifts that serve no function in my time; just clutter
really. Some wooden carvings of doubtful provenance, some
shoddily worked framed picture with a clock incorporated, a
portrait of me that looks nothing like me and so on.
Your gifts must tick two boxes as far as I am concerned. First,
they must be functional, e.g. a pen, a pack of handkerchiefs, a
recently released autobiography etc.
Secondly, they must be ‘best in class’. I would rather you give
the best quality handkerchief that is available than the most
expensive painting that you can afford. Chances are that
the best handkerchief available will cost less than the most
expensive painting you can afford anyways. The CEO of that
conglomerate is likely to use the handkerchief, whereas the
‘Merry Xmas’ picture you bought under a bridge somewhere
is as likely to end up in the trash as on the wall in the servants’
quarters.
In the end, it’s a matter of taste. Factor the personality of the
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person you want to give a gift into your purchase. Some other
person might prefer the picture to the handkerchief. There is
no exact science to this thing really and that’s why you have a
reasoning faculty. Tackle each challenge on its own merit. If you
can’t take the time to examine the personality of the person
you desire to meet, maybe you don’t deserve to meet him/her.
I mean, have you ever really stopped to contemplate why the
wise men took gifts when they went to seek the Messiah at His
birth? And they weren’t looking for sponsorship!
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“You want to meet an important person?
Take a gift”.
- King Solomon
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SECRET 22:
THE SECRET OF
THE LAST CARD
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SECRET 22: THE SECRET OF THE LAST CARD
I
was in Kenya some years ago to attend a television content
market and we were to pitch our show to a cross section
of judges from Africa and the United Kingdom.
We eventually won the pitch and afterwards at the exhibition,
the MD of a leading TV station in Kenya was introduced to me.
“What a good production,” he said. “We have one like that here
in Kenya hosted by one of our leading comedians; very popular
indeed. And it is not cheap I must tell you. Maybe there’s a
way we can work together. So which TV network backs you in
Nigeria?” he asked.
“No TV station sir. We do almost everything ourselves.”
“What?!” He almost passed out!
A salvo of questions ensued: “How is that possible? Where do
you get the money? Who does the marketing? Who owns the
studio?” In the end he walked away shaking his head, still in
some shock.
Apparently the way we do TV here is a complete anomaly.
Something that is peculiar only to us. This wasn’t really a
revelation to me as I had always known that our approach to
TV was unhealthy, but his reaction drove home just how almost
unsustainable our media system is in ‘Naija’.
I had a wry smile on my face through all of this.
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In ‘developed’ places, there is support for projects. In a manner
of speaking, television is not just a medium of entertainment
for them. They see it as a tool for the propagation of values and
themselves as custodians of their culture. Before I ever traveled
to the United States, I knew more about it than many who live
there. I remember that the first time I visited LA, the Americans
with whom I stayed could not believe that I hadn’t visited tinsel
town before. “How do you know the names of the streets and
places?” they wanted to know. Well that’s the power of TV and
movies.
From their government to the private sector, there are systems
for the propagation of creativity. That is how Johnny Carson
became the legendary host of the Tonight Show.
Same as Oprah on the Oprah show
And most recently, Trevor Noah on the Daily Show
With Carson, he would eventually become the producer, but in
the beginning, he was hired to be just the presenter and was
paid a salary. However, he reserved the power to choose whom
he would work with in certain areas, e.g. Ed McMahon and
some other people on the staff.
Oprah also worked the system the same way more or less; from
hired talent to being the head honcho in charge.
So that is one way to have a show or be in a show in ‘developed’
countries; be chosen to host or act on a show produced by the
network, based mostly on merit and talent.
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Some other times, someone pitches an idea to a network and the
network commissions the show for a few episodes, depending
on how much they like it. For example, the TV series, Seinfeld.
Jerry Seinfeld was just a comedian who pitched his idea of
a show to a network and even though it had a rocky start, it
became a massive hit.
The guys who come up with these ideas and run the shows with
the backing of the networks are called independent producers.
There may be one or two other ways, but whichever way
it happens, the television networks abroad are principally
responsible for bankrolling the hit shows that you watch on TV.
Ah, now to Naija; a markedly different story entirely. In this
part of the world, you are everything - scriptwriter, producer,
network, costumier etc. In short here, an independent producer
can be defined as the guy who does everything. What choice
does he have otherwise?
The best part? If you do eventually manage to produce your
show, you will have to PAY THE TV STATIONS to air it! Yes, you
read that correctly. After the miracle of production, you will
have to master the miracle of broadcast.
Here, the business model for most TV houses is the anomaly that
is called ‘selling airtime’. Some of the TV stations are visionary
of course, but precious few. A pity, that. Well, visionary to the
degree that they will agree to partner with you to broadcast
your show, but you must market it by yourself so that whatever
proceeds you make can be split by agreed percentages. Of
course, sooner or later those deals collapse. You are a creative
person and not a marketer after all.
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Most like to claim ‘it is not our fault, it’s the environment’ etc.
They particularly like to cite the lack of power as a reason (‘you
know we have to buy diesel…’).
I refrain from commenting. Maybe they do have a point. That
point, however, was the part the man in Kenya could not fathom.
“What do you mean you produce and broadcast the show ALL
BY YOURSELF?” I can still see his shocked look.
Now do not be fooled into thinking that it is that easy in those
‘developed’ countries either. In those places, it is the survival of
the fittest and result-oriented.
Here, you can start a show with any half-baked idea and if you
have the money, you can get any kind of tosh on TV. Overseas, it
is almost impossible to get your ideas across to the networks.
You must really be favored to get a network’s nod.
Even when you get on TV over there, your show had better
do well in the ratings or it’ll be cancelled after a few episodes.
This is why you hear that one show has been cancelled while
another one has been renewed for another season.
Not so here. You can practically be on TV forever if you know
the ‘how’ and the ‘whom’. Never mind the merit of your content
or lack thereof.
So, the bottom line is whether here or there, you will confront
giants in trying to fulfill your TV/entertainment dreams.
Frustration is inevitable. This, therefore, is not an argument
about the merits of ‘there’ and the demerits of ‘here’. You have
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your work cut out for you in whichever market you intend to
play.
Now, I don’t know much about counseling you on how to ‘make
it’ abroad, but I know quite a bit about beating the TV odds
around here.
I have stated a few related points in other chapters of this
book, but this is not about not giving in or about dedication
and commitment and other such virtues. This is about what
I call DELIBERATELY OCHESTRATED DESPERATION aka THE
LAST CARD APPROACH, because as far as I can see, if you are
interested in doing entertainment business here, you must
approach it as if it were your last card to play.
That’s how I saw The Teju Babyface Show when we started; my
last chance to make anything of myself. My ‘taa tan’ (play to the
finish) card.
You know how they say always have a plan B, a sentiment that is
further qualified with counsel such as ‘diversify your portfolio’
and ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’?
Sound advice, yes?
Em, not in this case.You cannot have options. Otherwise at the
first sign of trouble, you will bail! Trust me, as sure as night
follows day, the troubles will come. You are in all likelihood
dealing with some, even as you read this.
While you should have strategic options of achieving the same
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goal, you cannot have a back-up goal. For example, if television
or singing doesn’t work, well I have my fashion business to fall
back on’.
Unless you are already a fashion mogul of course and why
should TV not work then? You should already have tons of
money to push anything through.
Therefore, unless you are a trust fund kid with the
appurtenances of a privileged birth, or have a million dollars
under your bed, entertainment on its own will demand from
you a lot more emotional energy than you presently have to
give. Adding something else to that mix will just about level you
out. You will feel like you are in over your head most of the
time. And you are.
It is ironic isn’t it? The reason why you are contemplating
investing in a side project is for insurance, so that you won’t die
should your nascent entertainment career go bust. But that’s
exactly what diversifying too early will do to you; kill you! All
this advice about buying plots of land for the future is nice on
some levels, but not when you have a raging passion that needs
the initial commitment and faith that can only be expressed by
giving ALL you have to it.
Unless you doubt your own dream of course and if you do, why
should others believe in it?
As long as you have no ‘alternatives’, a way will open up for you
just because it must. When all your eggs are in one basket, you
are likely to handle that basket with utmost care. Many times
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I would have given up on The Teju Babyface Show, but in my
mind’s eye, I had no other viable alternative.
I remember telling people that “if the idea for this show does
not work, na the end of my entertainment career be dat o.”
Truly. At the time we decided to do that show, it was my last
toss of the dice. If it didn’t work, I could literally see no other
alternatives for myself in the entertainment industry. I put
EVERYTHING I had into it. It just had to work.
I shared a story once on The Teju Babyface Show to illustrate
this same point. (A young lady in the audience had asked a
question at the time). It was of a certain army general who took
his army overseas to fight in another land. On getting there, they
realized that their enemy outnumbered them considerably. He
promptly took a radical decision.
In a move that resembled lunacy, he ordered his men to burn
all of their boats!
His men couldn’t believe what they were hearing. ‘Oga don
craze o’ (the boss has run mad). But there was method to Oga’s
madness. As he had cut off their only means of retreat, the only
way off the island for them was to win the battle. And they did.
Some other author described it as deliberately burning your
bridges behind you.
Be careful now, WE ARE NOT ADVOCATING ARSON!
Neither do I support the wanton and senseless waste of
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resources. Those to whom I speak understand what I mean.
Usually, when you get to that point of ‘burning your boats’, you
are without many options anyway. This extrapolation is just to
give you spine and encouragement to let you know that your
lack of options could and should be an advantage.
Sometimes, you have to deliberately put your own back to
the wall. This will include stopping some things in order to
concentrate on others.
A teacher I respect recently said, “To get to the next level,
sometimes, you have to deliberately kill what you built.”
So, while it helps to have options, sometimes, the only way
to beat the odds is to cut off all your means of escape.
Hey, but I have been talking about TV and entertainment. What
do I know about real life? Maybe this is all fiddlesticks!
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“Stop telling me not to burn bridges. Some bridges are meant to be burnt, some roads are never
meant to be traveled again.”
― Steve Maraboli
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SECRET 23:
THE SECRET OF
‘THE LATTER SHINE’
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SECRET 23: THE SECRET OF ‘THE LATTER SHINE’
his chapter right here could very well be considered
controversial. In fact, I have refrained from teaching
it anywhere until now for that very reason. Lest I be
strung up for heresy.
T
Why? Well, it is an axiom of life that people take exception to
you pointing out a valid principle that they might have been
in violation of for a while. I mean think about it, if you are a
55-year-old accountant who keeps all money in his mattress
and a 30-year-old ‘brat’ suddenly starts extolling the virtues of
banking (and conversely the demerits of ‘mattress deposits’),
how pleased would you be?
Having said that, I am quite excited about it too.
Remember when I said earlier that if you are to take anything
from this book, let it be the importance of finding a mentor?
Okay, so don’t scratch that out, just add this to it and take at
least two things.
One day, shortly after I had started gaining momentum as an
emcee of some repute, my father asked me an earth-shattering
question. It wasn’t earth-shattering to me when he asked it
though. It was more of a time bomb that would explode in my
mind years later.
I had gone to take leave of him, as I was off to be emcee at yet
another event. It was a 40th birthday party and I was in my
early 20s at the time.
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“Okay,” he said. “Have fun. Before you go though, there’s just
one little matter I need you to clarify for me, if you don’t mind.”
“Yes sir?” I replied.
“So, this emcee thing is what you intend to do all your life?” he
enquired.
“Yes sir,” I replied again.
By this time, he was beginning to sprout one of those wry
smiles he would often have on his face when he considered that
he was talking to someone who was as dense as a mahogany
plank. I was starting to get uncomfortable, to say the least.
“Oh, that’s good,” he said. “Very good. So, tell me, when your
mates with whom you went to school are MDs and chairmen
of major institutions and are celebrating their 50th and 60th
birthday ceremonies, they will pay you to come and make them
laugh at their events?”
My reply?
You guessed it.
Without skipping a beat I replied, “Yes sir. Why not?”
His wry smile was very broad at this point, but something else
had joined it. In his eyes, I could see something akin to pain and
pity.
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“Okay then, have a great outing,” he said and turned back to his
morning papers.
I was indignant, to say the least and happy as well. As far as I
was concerned, I had scored one over the old guy. What did he
know about entertainment anyways? He didn’t know how big
and celebrated I was going to become, I told myself.
Like most of our interactions, it would take a few years for me
to catch up to that level of thinking, but one day, it hit me like a
thunderbolt.
He wasn’t disparaging the emcee or comedy industry at all, as
I had assumed. What he was simply trying to establish was his
knowledge of his son.
What he was trying to tell me, in not so many words was, ‘I
know you my son and I have watched you grow and I can tell
you that it is too soon for you to conclude that you have hit
upon your life’s purpose. Being an emcee and comedian is all
well and good for now, but cast your gaze further afield and
open your mind to other possibilities, as this may very well be
just a means to an end’.
As I like saying, if I say nothing else at this point and close this
chapter right here, I have said enough.
It would take a while for the point of his statement to dawn
on me, but I started to finally realize that the gift of comedy
that I had been given was not an end in itself, but a means to
an end. With this realization came curiosity and I carried out
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an informal research of sorts, which is to say that I didn’t wear
a lab coat and move around with a clipboard. It was more of a
study through observation.
I started to look at the careers of the great American comedians
and I discovered that for most of them, stand-up comedy acted
as a springboard. From Chris Rock to David Letterman and
Steve Harvey, most of these guys started as comedians, but
soon graduated into something else. They either became major
movie stars or moved into TV to have hit shows or both, or
more. It seemed that for them, comedy was just an entry ticket
to the party.
Steve Harvey, in fact went one better and in 2012, he hosted
his final comedy concert in Las Vegas. He literally hung up
his stand-up comedy gloves (well, microphone) after years of
doing it. He’s now a celebrated author, TV and radio show host
and entrepreneur, amongst other things.
Ali Baba can hardly be referred to as just a comedian can he?
He transcended that level many moons ago and he’s now a
motivational speaker, businessman and ambassador for several
brands, amongst other noble pursuits.
Ah, I can now see the light of comprehension dawning in your
eyes. You can see where I am headed with this extrapolation,
yes?
I put it to you most humbly, that the reason why most
entertainers seem to faze out after a while is the lack of
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invention.
I must confess at this point that re-invention is a more advanced
subject that ought to be taught to established entrepreneurs
and entertainers, so I will not go in as deep as I could in this
chapter. I will explore that subject deeper in another book, but
I believe that even as an upcoming entertainer you need to
know this now, as you will be far better equipped to succeed if
you understand it from inception.
Even at the aspirational stage, you must understand that
the career you are about to embark upon is, in all likelihood,
just your landing point in the industry. I believe that you are
supposed to go on and be more than what you can see now.
You are not supposed to live from show to show, from event to
event, just hoping that your phone will ring and that you will
be paid to entertain again.
Expand your thought process and try to see further. You may not
be able to see it all at this point and you might not understand
what or where the next level is. Don’t worry about that; it will
come to you. Life will literally push you along (remember the
Secret of Jamb Question?). As long as you understand that
there are higher levels to ascend to and are open to such
leading, then you will be fine. Just be ready to yield yourself to
what will most assuredly be an uncomfortable (but eventually
rewarding) process when the time comes.
So, riddle me this: what’s your bigger picture here?
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–“Igba owuro l’awa, Baba je k’ale san ’ni, jek’ale
san wa o, Baba je k’aye ye wa” (May our latter
glory be greater than the former)
- Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey
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About the Book
While it is my hope that this book will provide answers for
millions of young people across Africa who desire to have a
successful career in the entertainment industry, it is more than
just a book written to that industry. Even though the experiences are personal (of course), the principles remain universal
and will be instructive for young people who desire success in
any industry at all.
Apart from crime
Teju ‘Babyface’ Oyelakin
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