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Barely one month after United States' top female musicians, Anita Baker, disappointed Nigerians fans when she failed to perform at a concert in Lagos, another international start has done the same.
Barely one month after United States' top female musicians, Anita Baker, disappointed Nigerians fans when she failed to perform at a concert in Lagos, another international start has done the same. As a result, the Okoye brothers and music wonder boys, P-Square, who broke into international limelight a few years back with a special brand of music, are paying the price for this.
Indeed, the two brothers have suffered huge financial losses resulting from a business misadventure between it and the British rapper, Busta Rhymes. The deal was a concert, tagged, 'Da Independence Blast', where P-Square and Busta Rhymes were billed to perform on September 30 in Asaba, Delta State 'to celebrate Nigeria's 48th Independence anniversary as well as promote peace in the Niger-Delta'.
According to Kiss Events Planners, promoters of the failed concert, all necessary arrangements had been concluded weeks before the date. The firm said that hotel reservations, in Lagos and Asaba had been made as well as flight bookings for Busta Rhymes and his crew, as well as Nigerian artistes, among others.
It was gathered that Busta Rhymes did not show up in Nigeria nor sent a word of regret, thereby causing the cancellation of the concert.
According to P-Square, Busta Rhymes refused o come to Nigeria because his agent failed to pay his full advance performance fees - as agreed. An official statement by Peter Okoye, published in a website, says in part: '… I was surprised to learn, upon reaching UK a few days to the concert, that the agent had not paid Busta Rhymes his full advance fees even after we (P-Square) had paid over $200, 000.00 (N23 million) weeks before scheduled date of the show.
Men of integrity
Unlike the current norm in business, in which investors engage in cutthroat bulk-pass to avoid blame and attendant responsibility, the P-Square group however, has shown itself to have a rare virtue - integrity. The Okoye brothers, despite their huge disappointment and the possibility of not ever retrieving their money from the agent, have demonstrated an uncanny grace, at concert day at Grand Hotel, Asaba by refunding the N5, 000 ticket fee to everyone that turned up.
The gain
Just a few days after suffering a monumental business fiasco, P-Square is on the verge of achieving a zenith rise at the international level. From far away Geneva, the world headquarters of World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the influential global body of WIPO has nominated P-Square, among a few other Nigerian musicians, for its prestigious award.
According to WIPO's published statement in Geneva, being merely nominated by it in any category is equal to winning the OSCAR or the Grammy award in the actual sense!
On what possibly attracted WIPO to P-Square, as a possible winner group, the global body said a couple of factors were responsible, chief of which is that P-Square has been consistent in its music genre, and that their last album sold over an estimated seven million copies, thereby putting them in the league of the world's best-selling artistes.
The full list of Nigerian nominees (in music) and their categories, according to WIPO are: Seun Kuti (Afrobeat); Asha (Folks music R & B); P-Square (R & B African Hip-pop: Pasuma (Fuji) and Yinka Ayafele (Juju).
Meanwhile, Tee Mac Iseli, President of the Performing Musicians Association (PMAN), while reacting to these nominations, in a speech during the recent Federation of International Musicians (FIM) 19th Congress in South Africa, said the Nigerian musicians have indeed come of age and are a force to reckon with all over the world.