Tony Okoroji and his Vendetta against the Nigerian Musician!

Age does not seem able to temper down Tony Okoroji's craftiness. For someone who likes to associate himself with Nigerian musicians, talk-less him pushing to be our messiah, he sure has awkward ways of going about it.

I first met Tony Okoroji in the early days when EMI was at Oregun Road, Ikeja. He was part of the A&R team there and Odion Iroje was the rave producer of the moment, having been lucky to have run into Chris Okotie! 

Tony Okoroji, always the user, seized the insider advantage to make Juliana and flogged it to the limit with all the muscles that EMI had as a big and foreign record company. Tony Okoroji never did anything worthy of note musically after that. But, he is a born politician and knows how to take advantage of positioning. Oh, regarding EMI hiring him as A&R man he was able to approve one Dizzy K Falola of all the lot of talents that came his way.

After many years of being musically inactive, Tony Okoroji  warmed his way into the PMAN leadership, he and his train of users he calls partners. And it marked the worst years of the ever-fledgling musicians' body. 

Tony Okoroji after being deposed left and disappeared for awhile from music circles. I hear he sold spare-parts. But, business didn't seem to pay as well as manipulating issues concerning musicians, so he returned.

Then he came back with TOPS = (Tony Okoroji and Partners) and organized the then award for musicians. And you can be sure that a lot of money and goodwill rolled in supposedly for musicians on account of that. But guess who cornered it all?

The next, we started hearing of a musicians' rights organisation springing from the foundations of the big record companies. They called it PMRS, and Tony Okoroji was used to front for them. How on earth would record companies ever be trusted to protect the rights of musicians in anywhere, let alone Nigeria?

PMRS fought tooth and nail to destabilize MCSN which was founded by the fathers like late I K Dairo and living legend KSA, to mention but a few.

Ironically, people in authority seem to always fall for the manipulations of Tony Okoroji to the exclusion of the generality of the true army of musicians that abound in this country. One then asks what could possibly be in it for government officials in NCC to want to nullify our known and internationally-affiliated MCSN so to impose their own contraption of musical rights body on musicians? Do we have government subventions like for NFA or NFF that they would like to corner for themselves? They now believe there is money to be got from administering the rights of the created works of musicians, yet they treat and look down on musicians like we are riff-rafs!

PMRS eventually collapsed. But Tony Okoroji did not let go. Now we are hearing of COSON and seeing advertorials by it on TV stations like LTV8. And the agenda continues to run aground the true and genuine MCSN, so that usurpers can sit on the only aspect of music in Nigeria that musicians are not yet aware can make all their heartaches from making music worthwhile in years to come, when they do not think there is anything left for them anymore!

Tony Okoroji, our one-album, one-hit-song colleague at PMAN, should please stop this vendetta against whomever  at MCSN because he is using the lawlessness of our land to abuse our collective rights as musicians and spoiling something that has positive prospects for Nigerian musicians now and for tomorrow.

Tony Okoroji should search himself had, if left to administer our rights, would he not abandon us and run away again when his hands are full? Please, let the professionals trained and committed to this service do the job. If you have reservations about their integrity, institute action to audit them. 

Lets begin to get one thing right, at least, for music in Nigeria.

Those of our colleagues who seem to be exploiting and enjoying the present limelight, this matter concerns you all too. Don't keep aloof to the body that makes you count! Generation goes, generation comes. Be involved. Join PMAN today. Join MCSN for your rights. There are many ways your songs make you money that you are not claiming because you don't know.

We all know that those of us who dare to go into music are looked upon as loafers and less quality members of regular society. But we know better. Musicians are rhythmic people. We live by the beat. We keep time. We can't do wrong even if we tried! We'd be out of sync if we did.
SO, LETS ALL STAND UP FOR PMAN and MCSN today and take our due pay for our creations in this land and ALL over the world.
Thanks for agreeing with me, or at least, giving it a thought my musical colleagues to the left and to the right!!
Windie Storm.

That Justice Be Not Miscarried!

Any Good Men Left In Nigeria?!

I have been assimilating the information being unearthed on the above national tragedy and, in as much as it would seem suicidal to hold a contrary opinion to the bandwagon, I do have a number of things to say so that justice be not miscarried on the issue.
In my mind, when I considered the likely length of this submission I was discouraged. But when I also thought that a lot of people who feel differently about all the hue and cry being raised on the matter would probably do nothing and thereby let more likely innocent people be sacrificed in satisfaction of public or bandwagon sentiments. So, I am going to write as briefly as I can and expect you to think through the rest.
1. The Police should not have so self-righteously immediately bundled the arrested people to court. I imagine that no legal representation would have been found for the accused people, nor thorough investigation made. Their lack of thoroughness accounts for the embarrassing conflicting public statement they made before findings revealed otherwise. What makes them so sure that they, the Police, should not be joined in the suit as encouraging the act when it was in their power to stop it.
2. The NBA's protest is a clear ground for a plea of mis-trial because they are seen to have espoused the notion that the Aluu community have done an indefensible wrong. I am not a lawyer, but my sense of natural justice and fairness tells me that such a sensitive professional body should not have allowed itself to be propelled by emotion. The lawyers that are going to be in court all belong to the NBA. You might as well go ahead and hang those people without trial.
3. What has been the standing relationship between the 'Uni Port' and the Aluu Community. The University administrators, the police and the community members would dispassionately throw some light upon this from historical records. I say this, because one does not just wake up one day and see fire burning. It would have been festering, smoldering over a period of time until that opportune spark! Is there a history of the Aluu Community suffering some form of loss, abuse or threat to life suspected to be from the student community. What did the authorities do about issues and complaints that may have risen between the students of the school and this particular community, as well as others also around the school? You see, if justice had been hard to obtain in the past, it would frustrate a people into taking the law into their own hands. What makes for harmony in society is if we can get fair redress for wrong suffered. Where this is absent, society turns lawless and it would be unfair to punish any one for the omission or failure of system.
4. The Students of Uni Port also committed a crime - arson. It does not help dispensation of justice to excuse one crime while condemning another. In the light of fairness, the students would be deemed to have extracted their own pound of flesh! Although it did not bring back the dead, and innocent people may have suffered the subsequent loss; they have taken the law into their hands nonetheless - the same offence. Why is everybody keeping mute over it, the Police, the NBA, the Press. You are eager to show your kangaroo court to the world without genuine investigation. Even though nobody bothered to video the burning of the property at Aluu, we know that it was done by the Students. Should they not be arrested too and speedily charged to court? That is why we have a system failure in Nigeria. Justice must be black or white, no shades in between! And I was beginning to think  Mr Mohammed  Abubakar was a finer breed of officer.
5. Parental Failure in the Land.  
My genuine condolences go out to the mothers and fathers of the lynched young men, but I came across a telephone conversation between one of the mums and a certain TV station where she owned up to knowing the other 3 young men as friends to her son. pretty much like they were family friends, they took their friendship home. The boys followed themselves to death. Why did all four of them go to make a demand on one man? Seems to me like a threat party, gang-style  They threw a stone from a glass house and got it back! Possibly they have been carelessly indulged by the parents without check, till the fatal moment. What a pity. We should not spare the rod on our children for, on the day of reckoning, it might make the difference between life and death, as in this case. Four jolly good friends, but none with the good sense to escape the lynch experience. It also brings forward the need for us to pay attention to the company our children keep. How could all of them suffer such fate if something is not amiss? No matter how affluent or lacking you may be, your world is not in isolation to society. We must all conform, accommodate and respect the rights of others in the world.
I really think the mother under reference missed the issue. She seemed to think that because her son has a room full of i Pads and gadgets that makes it preposterous that her son was accused of stealing laptops. It's very much like saying 'I bought an helicopter for my son, how can he think of stealing a Honda car?'. I actually heard her say '... do they even still use laptops these days....?'  Meaning it's worthless for her level. So the lowly owners should be grateful that her son and friends ever considered  relieving them of such offensive burden!  It's thinking like this that probably misguided her boy. Parents should mindful the life they live before their children because our children become us ultimately, unless God intervenes.
6. What is the outcry about? We have been willing to look away while people are being kidnapped for ransom  which are often paid; while the armed services do nothing.
We have always looked away while government officials embezzled monies meant for projects that would save lives or make life more livable  And we just settle for making TV talk shows out of them. What are these four un-lived lives worth against the many who die unaccounted for from such unprovided services?
Was it not four months ago that about 170 lives perished from a plane crash in Lagos, but we have so quickly looked away and it is back to life as 'un-usual', if you allow me.
Lamely and weakly, just like our president, we have accepted that the group, Boko Haram, should as it pleases them target and bomb to smithereens any of us they take a liking to during religious services, especially christian. Commentators have said they are politicians. And I say, wouldn't it have made sense taking their war to the politicians, particularly the ones in office!
We live in a land where duties are required of us, yet the most basic of rights, right to life and safety , is not guaranteed us by the state. But we look away!
Just before the Aluu killings, 40 plus students were called out by name and executed in a polytechnic in Mubi by unknown gunmen. And we looked away. What makes it right for them to die, and not these Aluu accused?! At least the 4 were accused before being killed. What was the case against the Mubi 40?
I think that those who are feeding fat going through the pretense of running our government do not want to accept they have no control over the land anymore for that would mean their giving up their ceremonial offices and all the easy life.
They don't love Nigeria. Are we too blind to see that? But I pray that the spirit of our fore fathers will rise up and wrestle  our land and life from these strangers who are pretending to govern the land.
The government schemers know how to take advantage to score a political point. Killing a few innocent lives to assuage public anger is nothing compared to the ones that they have already allowed to die so that they should continue in the foolery they call governance.
Other than the Police men who shirked their duty, if anything should be done to anybody from Aluu it should be after finding such a person guilty beyond absolute reasonable doubt!

Nigeria, To Be Or Not To Be? Running Towards 2015!

Congratulations Nigeria! I hate to say 'I told you so!'
Truth has been murdered in your public square.
Jonathan's government is looking very much like Shagari's. Oh! forgetful Nigeria, is Umaru Dikko not a senator even today?! Let me remind those who are aware that he once said, as a serving minister under Shagari, that not until he saw Nigerians scavenging food from waste bins would he believe that poverty was in the land, back then. Shehu Shagari was neither here nor there, but the world was an easier place to live in than today. 
Jonathan is also a 'free-for-all' ruler, and looters are having a field day. By the time he is done with Nigeria, you will not have much left to call Nigeria. Wouldn't that be in 2015? The year prophesied by an American that Nigeria will no longer exist?! Is Nigeria not running towards fulfilling that prophecy? 
If Nigeria wants to live, she should get OBJ off the back of Jonathan. The Chief is pulling the president like a puppet. Why are you burying your heads in the sand, oh foolish Nigerians?! Do you not see the usual trademark of Obasanjo in all that has transpired lately?
All probes will end up against Obasanjo, if they are allowed to run their full course. Whichever side you are on, and everyone really needs to take a position on goings-on here; the Yorubas should make up their minds if they will not interfere with exposing, disgracing; and if it comes to it, destroying the man that is known to have publicly declared "no one will tell me how much to sell my oil!" The man who appears not willing to let go the reins of office perhaps until he dies. The man is Chief Olusegun Aremu Mathew Obasanjo. 
Enjoy your bumpy ride ahead!