From Basketball Africa League in Dakar to D’Banj…
If I was a believer in coincidence, I’d have put my meeting Mr Tunde Folawiyo in Dakar to one of those. I was attending a private event in the city until he handed me the experience that was the Basketball Africa League (BAL). He suggested to attend the games. Days later, attending with friends, we felt like we were watching a live NBA game. It certainly matched my NBA experience. Tunde Folawiyo, Amadou Fall, Tope Lawani, Mo Samba etc., can be proud of what they are building in BAL.
I don’t enjoy making Nigeria to United States comparisons. The only thing the U.S. has in common with African countries is that they are all geographical entities. Economically speaking, we should make comparisons between U.S. states/counties and African countries. If you put the top five U.S. counties in Africa, they’d have the highest GDP. The economies of Los Angeles, New York, Cook, Harris, and Santa Clara are bigger than every African economy.
Jazz Fest reportedly added $400m to the New Orleans economy in 2022. The Super Bowl brought in about 330,000 cash-carrying visitors to Vegas last February. “Afrobeats to the world”, is yet to bring the world to the capital city of Afrobeats, Lagos. Until then, Afrobeats and the entire culture it has helped to birth, will only enjoy the satisfaction of individual wins — this artist winning that award, that artist performing to this audience, etc., — in essence reflecting one of Nigeria’s failings, a country with many private jets and not enough private airlines. Because it can’t boast of a strong middle-class able to reflect the macro-benefits of collective prosperity.
As Afrobeats roams the world, I crave the day we will bring it home and bring the world with it. This is one of the reasons the Lagos Arena excites me. My visit to the Dakar Arena spurred some envy in me, then I asked my host, “I hope Lagos Arena is going to be better than this?” Even though if you offered me the Dakar Arena in that moment, I’d have returned with it to Nigeria. Especially on that day.
Governments support economic activities, but some governments need their eyes opened. To understand that some things that are perceived as “co-curricular activities” and left at that subsistence level, without encouraging the layering of more value chains, are goldmines that could create jobs, improve livelihoods, and make their cities the centre of global attention.
These are the caterpillar that could grow into butterflies, helping to breed hundreds of millions of dollars in value, if not billions. We have the superstars, the fundamental building block of a creative economy, we now must build the ecosystem to expand the value chain. Else we will continue to export raw materials whilst importing them as finished goods, like we have done with our non-human resources through the decades.
When in 2007 I followed ace event planner and then CEO Silver Platter Events, my sister Deola Demilola-Shitta to a Satzenbrau reintroduction event at the Civic Centre Victoria Island, with D’banj as the star artist for the evening, I was driven into a reverie as the superstar, dressed in a yellow jacket and singing, ‘Why Me’ waltzed through the room, entertaining the audience. Singing out his several noms de guerre, he rocked the stage and owned the room. Several years on, some of those dreams have become reality.
A few things remain elusive though. We do not have any venue in the entire country built purposely to accommodate the challenges an Afrobeats festival would pose. The event venues that were the go-to at the time remain same even now, with a few more additions. Even the performer that is D’banj continues to tower above everyone else on that front; who does performance like Banga Lee?
He’s had his challenges and the scars to show for it, through those times, the stage he left remained empty. With his return, ‘Since ‘04’ — hopefully with a new album to boot — not to suggest 2012 and 2013 did not happen, when with Oliver Twist he expanded the global pathway that was created by Nigerian music legends years before, the Snoop Dogg feature as a defining moment for Afrobeats, that he and Don Jazzy must continue to earn their flowers for.
The person who travels through the highway may not acknowledge those who first walked through the wilderness to create the path that the highway was eventually built, that the fast lane exists is an acknowledge of the labour of our hero’s past.
Today, we take international features for granted. We do not care as much as we used to when one of our own receives one of those big awards or appear at some big festivals. Big deals in the past, the norm now. What is yet to become the norm is the one thing that’d sustain today’s win: a thriving, layered ecosystem.
Since ’04, we have created a horde of superstars that have followed in Dbanj’s and others’ footsteps. We must now commit to creating the platforms and arenas. I was reading up on social media about Lagos Liga, a football tournament set to debut this December promising glory and glamour, and big prize money. One day soon, the Lagos Arena will host an NBA game, there with D’banj and those whose path and vision his success made clearer. And sporting events like Lagos Liga, the BAL and all the various forms of Afrobeats festivals will take place. Even then, it won’t be the final word! Because we must always aspire for more.
This piece appeared in the THISDAY Newspaper of 17 May 2024
