My advice to people in Nigeria is simple: never think being popular is the solution.
Popularity can cause you nothing but grief in a country that lives and breathes cheap praise, bribes, corruption, tribalism, and people telling powerful men exactly what they want to hear.
Have the courage of your convictions or shut the hell up.
I ruffled a lot of feathers in Lagos. I had friends, but I also had plenty of enemies because, if you have not yet caught on, I don’t give a fuck.
I repeat: I don’t give a fuck about fitting in.
When I detect evil, stupidity, ignorance, hatred, or bigotry, I will say what I think and take the consequences.
In many ways I am a carbon copy of my late father, although it has taken me a lifetime to realise it. His strictness, discipline and expectations helped create everything I am today. Eventually, those same strong personalities made us clash. I went my way. He went his way.
Nigeria has taught me something else: you cannot play games with life forever.
You can take shortcuts to make yourself wealthy. I have known plenty of rich men in Nigeria who sold their souls and practically prostituted themselves for dollars. They became money whores.
And when I know you are nothing but a money whore, don’t expect me to bow because you have a big bank account. I won’t. I will embarrass you.
I remember the first time I saw Chief MKO Abiola at a society party in Lagos. I watched the fanfare around him, the praise, the people dancing around him, and the enormous attention he attracted. Something about it disturbed me.
I remember telling my Yoruba mother at a party in Yaba: “That man has a death wish.”
She told me to shut up and promptly went off to dance around Abiola.
I never forgot that day.
Years later, his political struggle ended tragically. I don’t claim I could have predicted the events that followed, but what struck me that night was the danger of becoming surrounded by praise until popularity itself begins to feel like protection.
It isn’t.
Power isn’t love. Applause isn’t loyalty. And popularity certainly isn’t security.
I have seen the same danger repeatedly in Nigerian politics: powerful people surrounded by praise-singers until they can no longer distinguish admiration from self-interest.
My own escape was different.
Music.
I grew up carrying pain of my own. Life in a household with a stepmother who chose cruelty towards her stepchildren rather than love was not easy. So I found refuge in writing music.
Music became my gin and tonic.
My escape.
Other people drink. Some smoke. Some take drugs. Some simply go crazy.
I write songs.
I don’t make music because I desperately need to be popular. Music is a vehicle through which I express myself and expand my message.
I watched too many rude, arrogant young men I knew growing up in Lagos die before their time. Behind some of that arrogance was pain they never talked about. Some found their relief at the bottom of a whisky bottle.
I stopped drinking years ago.
Alcohol made me obnoxious. It slowed me down. It blocked my inner self.
And I am no saint.
I too was once rude, arrogant and obnoxious. Life has a remarkable way of knocking some of that nonsense out of you if you live long enough.
The hard knocks sobered me up.
And frankly, Ikoyi Cemetery is not my idea of fun, if you understand what I mean.
Today I am blessed with a small number of very good friends — people who have no problem straightening me out, telling me when I am wrong, giving me advice and standing beside me when things get difficult.
That is worth far more to me than a stadium full of praise-singers.
Nigerians must stop looking for the easy way out.
Stop pretending.
Stop hiding your true selves.
Stop worshipping money.
Stop confusing popularity with achievement.
Look people in the eye and live.
And above everything else, educate yourselves.
Education is paramount, and education never ends. I learn something new every single day. At my age, I am still learning, questioning, reading, and changing my mind when the evidence demands it.
That is better than drinking yourself senseless. Better than living for applause. Better than spending your life trying to impress people who may disappear the moment your money or power disappears.
Because eventually every one of us reaches the same destination.
The cemetery has no exit doors. Just six feet of earth and darkness.
So while you are still here, be yourself.
Not the person society wants you to pretend to be.
Not the person your bank account allows you to impersonate.
Not the person praise-singers tell you that you are.
Be yourself in the best way you possibly can.
