PRETTY OKAFOR
Pretty
Okafor, President, Performing Musicians Employers Association of
Nigerian (PMAN), says he is on the verge of unlocking a gold mine of
wealth for Nigerian musicians; and indeed anyone in the creative
industry, through a scheme that ensures automatic payment when their
work is used. He spoke with Nseobong Okon-Ekong and Yinka Olatunbosun
Most
people think he goes by his stage name everywhere. Unknown to them,
Pretty is actually his real name. It was not easy to find an English
equivalent of the Igbo version, Mmachukwu (the beauty of God). Beauty
would have sufficed, but his mother thought it would point to a woman.
She opted for Pretty, which she considered modest and not capable of
raising wrong insinuations. Pretty Okafor and his music partner, Junior
who were known as Junior and Pretty would go on to make modest
achievements on the Nigerian entertainment scene, becoming one of the
pioneer rap artistes in Nigeria with the era-shaping album, ‘Monica’.
They set the pace in comical rap artistry but the laughter seemed to
have ended for their numerous fans when Junior passed on. Although,
Junior’s demise set Pretty back emotionally, a great deal, he pulled
himself back from the brink to pursue a full and engaging life.
Growing
up with Junior, his untimely exit left a vacuum that is yet to be
filled. Pretty became uncomfortable with the people they were working
with and the society at large. He couldn’t bring himself to drop an
album.
Being an introvert, every time he tried to sing in a studio,
he felt something was not right. Somehow, he knew he had to go out to
meet people. He could not remain a recluse forever. He has since
resolved to go back to the studio and do a lot of remixes of the older
songs and bar code them. He plans to get some younger artistes to jump
on some songs, in order to breathe fresh air into them.
Meanwhile,
Pretty went on to a very exhilarating period in the corporate event
promotion world. Following his partner’s death, he resigned his
appointment from the company where he was the operations manager. He was
not married at the time, but he felt he had to take care of his late
friend’s wife and three children. He set up shop and launched himself
into business. Today, he runs three successful companies under the name,
Pretty Boy Entertainment, including one of the biggest sound system
procurement and leasing companies, an events company and a logistics
company. From producing shows and concerts, his colleagues sort him out
and persuaded him to assume leadership of the Performing Musicians
Employers Association of Nigeria (PMAN).
That may seem ironical as he
hadn’t physically performed on stage since Junior died. His performance
only took a geographical turn-backstage, making behind- the- scenes
impacts.
Since he came on board as PMAN President, Pretty pursued
a single agendum. To him, nothing else matters if a musician is not
able to create sustainable wealth from his works. In the past few years,
he has devoted himself to a campaign to create structures that will
transform the living condition of Nigerian artistes. From a study that
he commissioned a consortium of Nigerian companies, it was discovered
that Nigerian music is number one in Africa and number three in the
world. Nigerian entertainment industry is worth about N9 billion.
That
mouth-watering revelation was received when we met Pretty, tucked in a
corner of a fast food outlet along the well-lit aisle inside the Ikeja
City Mall.
“I travelled to Barbados as well as Trinidad and
Tobago and I found out that they buy Nigerian music a lot. Their
government collects taxes on the Nigerian music that the citizens buy.
But in Nigeria, our government does not collect tax or royalty because
they don’t know how to go about it.”
A widely travelled person,
Pretty has witnessed first-hand, how the economy of certain countries
abroad are sustained through the entertainment industry. Today, many
free download sites are forced to shut down or redirect their culprits
to another site where viruses accompany illegal downloads. In the end,
it is more economical to purchase the creative works than to steal them.
It
set him thinking this can be replicated in Nigeria. As soon as the
opportunity came through his elevation as President of PMAN, he began to
engage relevant corporate bodies with several convincing presentations
loaded with facts and figures. It took repeated knocking on their doors.
And Pretty preaches it as a gospel. Thankfully, a lot of them have
started paying attention to the industry. “The statistics and the
research we did are accurate.
We can actually raise between N1516
billion every year. There will be a lot of tax coming to the federal
and state governments. The banks got excited; the corporate
organizations got excited and the research organizations too got
involved and they realized that there hasn’t been any monitoring scheme
in place. I will give you an example. In 2015, I said it on Channels
Television that Nigeria has already gone into recession. It was in the
last quarter of 2016 that government admitted that we are in recession.
The only way that the country can get out of recession is when we put in
place and operate a credible structure that promotes and sustains a
creative economy. I am referring to all the royalties earned from
intellectual property.”
Though we were tucked into a corner with
Pretty, that was not the reason we were not overwhelmed by excited fans.
Pretty may be the arrowhead of the musicians’ body in Nigeria, but his
face is likely to be lost in a crowd. To be sure, he enjoys the
obscurity. Often, he uses himself as an example in his homily as he goes
around the country, canvassing support from musicians for the wealth
creation cum welfare scheme that would not only take them out of the
woods, but ensure they live a modest live till they pass. “The active
live of a musician when he is famous and much sort after is about four
years. After that, society is hungry and ready for the next star who
will create a new round of excitement.
This is what I have been
telling my colleagues. Remember that PMAN had been moribund for over 15
years before we became executives. I had to do a lot of work, a lot of
mass mobilization, campaign and communication to redirect the
association, corporate bodies and individual musicians. You are working
with artistes who are spread across the country in 36 states and the
Federal Capital Territory, there is a lot of funding needed to reach
five million members. We have talked about how to use the biometrics
card to get loan. Not up to one thousand artistes have the biometrics
card because we are yet to launch it. It was released last year, in the
first quarter. All PMAN executives have the card. We had it before the
last PMAN elections. It was because of this work that I was voted to
remain as PMAN president. I wasn’t going to come back. I wanted to face
my business.
I own a marketing communications firm, events
technology firm and an event leasing firm. I am doing a whole lot in
entertainment. We are working with the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigeria
Interbank Settlement
System, Heritage Bank, Union Bank, Airtel and
Hogg Robinson. If any artiste is critically ill, he can be airborne
within 12 hours to any part of the world. The family of the ailing
artist also gets N5million
from Hogg Robinson. We started this in 2014. We don’t have to go begging for anyone to contribute for an artiste who is ill.”
“Luckily
for us, the younger generation of artistes have bought into the concept
and it has become a lifestyle. We made the structure look like the
normal day-to-day activity. It is something that can be done using a
smart-phone. It is nothing extraordinary. You can do the registration
using your smart-phone. You can go to the bank to make your payment and
you can also pay through your phone. You will automatically get all your
benefits. Around the world, we have the same structure running. It
includes a pension plan, welfare, life insurance, bar coding and
encoding of IP. As persons in the creative industry, we are known as the
informal sector by the banks.
Because of this, we don’t have
access to funding. But the card we have introduced is connected to your
BVN, that is all your accounts, it is your collateral to have access to
bank funding. A lot of people say this is Nigeria, it is never going to
work. I don’t believe that. It is working. Some artistes have been
getting their royalty. What we have done is to globalize the creative
industry in Nigeria. If you go to South Africa, all their CDs are bar
coded. But you can never see any CD that is bar coded in Nigeria.”
Much
of what he is doing as President of PMAN comes from his ability to stay
the course in the music industry. “I am active. I have been a producer
of concerts. I have been producing road shows. I have not been on stage
since Junior died 12 years ago. I have been interested in the welfare of
artistes long before I stopped performing. When Junior was alive, we
talked about getting our career back on track.
When we released
‘Monica’, our first album, we didn’t get our royalties from Premier
Music. That was when Junior and I would go on the streets and chase
pirates. We would take our works from them. We would go to Alaba Market.
We were frustrating them. We made money from concerts and events
management. We performed in South Africa and UK with the help of Red14.
They were the ones managing the Benson and Hedges Golden Tones Concert.”
Pretty
is not at all perturbed by the naivety of artistes who voluntarily
release their music for free download. “Once your songs are
automatically bar coded and encoded, it goes viral. There’s a key on it
so every time it is downloaded, you will get paid. Some pirates don’t
want the structure that can reorganize the industry to work.”
Such
retrogressive attitudes are not to be found only among pirates only.
Unfortunately, some of his colleagues are hell bent on throwing cogs in
the wheel of progress. This explains why PMAN is permanently at war with
itself. “I think as musicians, we are stubborn in nature; coupled with
poverty, because no PMAN member had received royalties in the past 35
years of PMAN’s existence. They don’t have any other means of survival.
PMAN was like a means to an end. Whatever they got were not proper
royalties. That is not what can make an artiste become a billionaire. We
are talking about getting money from sale of creative works; the number
of times the album is sold and the copies sold worldwide. The older
ones don’t understand what we are trying to do.
You can put a
call to Charly Boy and Daniel Wilson, they will understand because they
are enlightened. But the much older ones don’t understand. They want a
union that can move from table-to-table, begging for them. That is not
the kind of association I want to run. I want to run the kind of
standard where musicians can afford a house on Banana Island.”
Pretty
does not share the view that the exit of international recording
companies from Nigeria in the 90s is the reason for mainstream piracy.
“They left because they couldn’t make return on investment and the
structure had become so porous. They left because Nigerians started
buying on the streets instead of buying from the shops. Pirates chased
them away since they couldn’t recoup the money invested in the
musicians. They were not making sales anymore. This same structure that
we are talking about is the only thing that can bring them back. You can
track and collate sales with this new system of bar coding. We are one
of the biggest entertainment industry in the world because our brand of
music is played around the world.”
One gridlock that Pretty has
to deal with is the general apathy of artistes to this new structure.
Groomed under the regime of piracy, many artistes still believe that the
system will fail. For Pretty, it is never-say- never for a system that
will save artistes from being eternally oblivious to their album sales
and end the shame of perpetual begging for huge medical expenses from
the general public. When you read about well-accomplished musicians in
other climes, their album sales and ratings are essential part of their
history. In Nigeria, not even the top flying artistes have proper
documentation of their album sales. But with this
technologically-enabled tracking system, it is goodbye to the era of
poor musicians and family.
With Pretty’s wealth creation and welfare campaign, even a dead artiste is assured his due.
