The Chocolate City Entertainment executive and CEO of Loopy Music, M.I Abaga, open up on reason why some of the artistes did not donate or rendered assistant for the kidney transplant of veteran music producer OJB last year.
The talented rap star M.I Abaga, had a chat with My Africa Podcast, where he disclosed some of the reason that make few of naija artistes not to support OJB, with money during his struggle with Kidney complications.
During the scenario last year, many fans had blasted entertainers for not coming to the aid of their colleague OJB, while the likes of 2face and D’banj were openly called out by their fellow colleagues in industry.
OJB had asked the public to contribute to help him fly to India for treatment, the money was raised and he is now well.
Here’s what he said:
“First of all, I have the utmost respect for Nomoreloss as a human being. He was definitely one of the people who had a platform that put us on. He is always showing me love, always giving me good advice.
“I haven’t seen him since, and I dread seeing him because, I can imagine that for that one comment, he’ll be disappointed. ‘Yo M.I, why didn’t you reach out to me.
“But this what happened; OJB was sick and people were trying to raise money. I all of a sudden went 0-100 broke, like instantly. All of a sudden there was letters going out, ‘like this person didn’t contribute, why would you ask a publicist (to write a letter), and it became a big thing. What caught me was the fact that Nomoreloss who was a fellow artiste, and he’s writing letters saying, ‘Why won’t artiste come out, why won’t D’banj speak out and say he didn’t donate this money?”
“Everybody was confused, every artiste was confused, so one or two things started happening. A certain artiste told me that he went and contributed the little money that he had, and by the time he got home, it was put in the broadcast, ‘this is how much you gave’.” And it was embarrassing because somebody else is giving N5 million, and you have your little N100,000.
“Already, everybody was in that N100,000 category, of which there was maybe 20, 30 people. Automatically it’s like ‘Yo, I’m gonna keep my N100,000, I’m not trying to be embarrassed. On the second-hand, you have artistes, like myself, who were just confused, if we were to go, what would have happened, what would we see, because it had become a media thing.
“At the end of the day, Nomoreloss can hold his head high because OJB did get help. But the comment in the song came from the fact that I remember reading back to back articles and people were just insulting 2face (Idibia); this guy gave you all the music and you couldn’t even even help him. People didn’t know at the time, 2face’s Dad who had later gone on to pass away from kidney complications was in India undergoing the same thing.
“I was privy to one moment when they needed money right there and then, and 2face was caught between Lagos and Abuja, he was trying to get money for people to send. It was rough for some people. People had issues every day, you know Iyanya lost most of his family in one year, but we never see that side. What we see is what you should be able to do based on our perception of who you are.
“At least not from a fellow artiste. A fellow artiste should understand, and thankfully it didn’t become controversial. That’s the truth of what I wanted to say in the moment.”