Ajegunle

INSIDE AJEGUNLE


STARS OF MUSIC, COMEDY AND THE BEAUTIFUL GAME



By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu



The road to Ajegunle is rough. On this hot Lagos noonday the rickety, overcrowded kombi bus takes almost an eternity to get to Boundary Bus-Stop, the bustling gateway into Nigeria’s most celebrated slum. Another ride, this time on the ubiquitous motorcycle, alias “Okada”, takes one into all the nooks crannies of the shanty town that evidently lives up to its nickname: “Jungle City”. At the very busy Orodu Street, an odd spectacle arrests all attention. A drunken tall man was staggering on the very centre of the road and all the buses, cabs and motorcycles were mightily dodging him! A closer inspection of the drunk reveals a wounding truth: the fellow is from my hometown, a man I know only too well, Geoffrey, the son of Fara! Welcome to Ajegunle where everything is possible…

Away from the drunk and his wobble, in an open ground amid the jumble of churches and mosques and brothels, a group of bare-bodied teenagers are engaged in a pulsating game of football. The goalposts are formed with stones, and there is a heated argument over whether to allow as a goal a shot that flew past the stone. The argument nearly results in fisticuffs until an elderly man watching from a corner walks into the group to settle the matter. The game continues. A pint-sized boy of about 12 gets a pass, dribbles nearly all the players of the opposing team and scores.

“Okocha! Okocha!” the motley crowd intone, saluting the skill of the lad who had taken after the former Super Eagles skipper Austin Jay-Jay Okocha.

The dream of nearly every child you meet in Ajegunle is to be a star: in football, in music and show business.

According to Daddy Showkey, the musician who is arguably the greatest export out of Ajegunle, “In Ajegunle, you choose what you want to be yourself. A gunman, or you want to be a footballer, a musician, or anything you want.”

Daddy Showkey’s original name was John Odafe Asiemo. A very poor kid indeed, Daddy Showkey had a rough childhood in what he calls “the roughest neighbourhood, the strongest neighbourhood, the toughest neighbourhood in the world. That is Ajegunle.” His father died when he was only nine. His hapless mother had to face up to the daunting task of bringing up the five children of the marriage, all boys. He became a street hustler, selling stolen goods and was once shot for his efforts. The idea that he came from Ajegunle denied him legitimate jobs as all the boys from the neighbourhood were looked at with suspicion.

He even suffered the indignity of being accused of stealing a dog when he applied to a security company to work as a guard. He was taken to the police station, and when he was told that he had stolen a German Shepherd he taught they were accusing him of stealing a white man!

He was a street entertainer par excellence, performing all over Ajegunle as an acrobat, a boxer, an actor, as a comic, dancer and then singer. It was against this background of street entertainment that he got the nickname “Show Kid”. He would modify the name to Showkey, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Channeling all his energy into music, he became the dancer of the group, Sexy Pretty Boys, he formed with other Ajegunle boys in 1990. They were able to release an album entitled “Biggy Belle”. The band soon broke up and Daddy Showkey was left in the lurch. He eked out a living as the clerk amongst motor-park touts, and the manner he barked out orders with a funny tone amused his colleagues who advised him to sing with the voice. Without much ado Daddy Showkey sang his first hit: “Congratulation! Jubilation! Celebration! In our nation!” The song ended with the prophetic words: “Welcome Daddy Showkey, welcome!”

Daddy Showkey is the acknowledged master of the Ajegunle street sound known as “Galala”. Influenced by roots reggae, galala fuses Jamaican, African-American and highlife into pulsating dance music. The music is mostly delivered in pidgin English of the Warri, Delta State blend. Incidentally most of the Ajegunle stars hail from the Niger Delta axis of Warri, Bayelsa and sundry interlocking towns.

He has as many as five albums to his credit, and he is proud to be addressed as “Ghetto Soldier”. He has a professional management team run by the inimitable showbiz impresario Edi Lawani. He is married to Sandra, with a son, Raymond. He bears the title of Aare Onifaji of Ajegunle.

Daddy Showkey has an alter ego in the other celebrated Ajegunle musician, Daddy Fresh, who stresses that a cordial relationship exists between the duo despite media reports to the contrary. A very sensitive artiste, Daddy Fresh reveals that the most traumatic experience of his life was losing his 57-year-old mother on May 23, 1996. It took him all of five years to get over the trauma. Happily married with a daughter, his latest album is “Nwon Kpariwo”.

Just as musicians from Ajegunle dominate the charts, star footballers are daily being minted from the slum. Celebrated national team players such as central defender Taribo West, left wing-back Ifeanyi Udeze, and strikers Jonathan Akpoborie and Samson Siasia were all born and bred in Ajegunle.

Taribo West started life as a local roughneck in Ajegunle, being a member of the shanty gangs. He narrowly missed death before his skills in the beautiful game of football attracted the attention of soccer scouts. He distinguished himself in the Nigerian football league, playing for the elite cubs, notably Sharks of Port Harcourt, Rangers International of Enugu and Julius Berger of Lagos. He later took his talents abroad, first to the French top division side Auxerre and later to the two Italian giants Inter Milan and AC Milan. He was a Trojan in the central defence of Nigeria for many years, capping his achievements in the 1998 World Cup in France.

On his part, the flying left-sided wing-back Ifeanyi Udeze was a star in the Korea/Japan World Cup of 2002. Jonathan Akpoborie starred as a striker in the Nigerian Under-17 team that won the maiden FIFA cadet world cup of 1985 in China. He would go on to star for the Under-21 and the Super Eagles.

Samson Siasia stepped out of Ajegunle to be a schoolboy international soccer player, barely completing his secondary school examinations to star in the 1983 Under-21 world tourney in Mexico. He was a pivotal player in the Super Eagles for many years, helping the team to qualify for its first ever World Cup in the United States in 1994 where he scored a spectacular goal against Argentina, complete with Diego Maradona. Since quitting active playing, he has turned into a successful coach, winning the African Under-21 competition and leading the team to the silver medal in the World tourney in Holland in 2005.

Even as Ajegunle justly celebrates its established stars, many wannabes are coming up fast to dominate the world stage. Simon Okwori, a 20-year-old from Benue State, and Nimikini Mackintosh, 19, are masters of Ajegunle Street soccer. Okwori happens to be one of the twelve children of a retired soldier living in a one-room home in Ajegunle. Mackintosh’s parents have moved back to their native Bayelsa State, leaving the boy behind to fend for himself by sleeping with friends. The two young footballers have found a measure of fulfillment in the “Search and Groom” street soccer initiative of FIFA.

The young achievers in the field of music are the Dixon Twins, Anthony and Andrew of the Mamuzee singing group. Their father officially has 10 wives and nine concubines, with their mother ranking as ninth in the official wives’ list! They are proud of their album “Born to Reign”, and readily admit that “Life in Ajegunle is a do-or-die affair.” They shot into the limelight with the 1999 single “Bobo” and consolidated their presence on the scene with the gospel track “Abi you no know say Jesus na God?”

Ajegunle boasts of its resident philosopher in the poet, musician and activist Aj Dagga Tolar. By way of explanation, the “Aj” before Dagga Tolar stands for Ajegunle! Aged about 40, Dagga Tolar is tall, wears dreadlocks and is gap-toothed. His tiny shack of a room is crammed full with books and CDs. He accommodates several artiste types of Ajegunle in his digs. A big poster of Tupac Shakur, the murdered American rapper, dominates the blue wall. He writes committed poetry and has just been elected the vice-chairman of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Lagos Branch. He recently led the body to protest the proposed privatization of the National Theatre which was broadcast on Lagos Television (LTV).

“Ajegunle has become a metaphor for the entirety of the Nigerian nation,” says the angry Dagga Tolar. “It is in this part of the country that you meet the poor of the poorest, and we try to survive day in and day out.”

His poetry boldly says: “This Country is not a Poem.” His poetry as well as his singing is primed on protest against a system that supplies no light, no water, no infrastructure for the teeming masses he loves so much.

As Ajegunle musicians such as Baba Fryo of the “Denge Potz” fame and Papa English play up the numbers, the multi-ethnic ghetto of Ajegunle thrives and throbs, lending a way of life like no other for her five million or so inhabitants. This trip on the rough roads of Ajegunle ends as a beautiful game of soccer on a sandy pitch comes to a pulsating end with a penalty shootout and the moving music of Daddy Showkey:



If you see my mama

Hosannah

Tell am say

Hosannah

I dey for ghetto

Hosannah

I no get problems

Hosannah…

























AJEGUNLE… THE WARRI CONNECTION



Richard Mofe-Damijo, popularly known as RMD, is arguably Nigeria’s most famous actor, but he simply introduces himself to me as a “Warri boy”. Clad in a flowery shirt with two buttons seductively undone to expose his hairy broad shirt, he is full of passion anytime the topic is Warri, the city in Delta State where he grew up. His father was a wealthy landlord who let out his house to a multi-ethnic mix of Nigerians – Urhobo, Itsekiri, Ijaw, Igbo etc. RMD was then known as “The King of Boys” as all his friends from the neighbourhood had access at all times to his room. It is in the drive to promote his beloved city that RMD in December 2004 founded the “Made-in-Warri” show, a music-and-comedy concert showcasing musicians and comedians who remarkably mostly have a bond with the Lagos shanty Ajegunle.

The celebrated comedian Bright Okpocha hails from Abia State but was born in Ajegunle. The Sociology graduate of University of Benin uses the city of Warri as fodder for his jokes, quite like other comedians such as Ali Baba, Okey Bakassi, Julius Agwu and so on. The blending of Ajegunle and Warri can be likened to Siamese twins joined at the navel of jokes.

Ali Baba, who is generally acclaimed as the godfather of comedians in Nigeria, is an “original Warri boy” as he unabashedly admits. He has taken comedy to such heights as to compete with top-rated corporate gurus in the field of take-home cash. Ali Baba is a splendid advertisement that one can rise from the ghetto to take over the high street. Struggling comedians from Ajegunle and sundry slums such as Orile, Amukoko, Badiya and so on have been mentored by Ali Baba. Some of the comedians have taken after his Warri style of delivery, with a particular young comedian actually taking the name Omo Baba, after the maestro.

Marvelous Benji of Ajegunle combines the music and comedy of Ajegunle while Fragrance (real name: Bright Kayo) was born in Warri but is today recording his music out of Ajegunle studios.

Obus Bezalee Brodo formed the music-and-comedy group known as DC Envoys, a group that has wowed crowds from Ajegunle to Warri. The legacy of Warri and Ajegunle is extended by the likes of Rymzo and Gzay.

The jokes combining Warri and Ajegunle are so much such that there is hardly anybody who can truly trace the copyright of the jokes to any particular comedian. The multi-ethnic jumble of Ajegunle and Warri makes it imperative that the lingua franca is Pidgin English. The galala music that accompanies the jokes is equally rendered in pidgin or broken English.

The comedian Okey Bakassi laughs at my mention of Ajegunle and tells matter-of-factly: “A poor Ajegunle man was in church with his wife and the pastor asks the widows to step out for special prayers. The woman leaves her man, stepping out. The man protests only for the woman to retort that a person as poor as him cannot claim to be alive!”

Then he reminds me of Warri thieves who would ask you if you wanted to buy a watch. When you ask him where the watch is he would point at the watch somebody passing by is wearing!

The Ajegunle-Warri connection is the Nigerian spirit writ large. Nigerians across the ethnic divides find fruitful communion in the abode provided by the waterside of Ajegunle and Warri.