Irony
They appear to have a certain aversion for the profession. Those in the institutions of higher learning, educators, among them former popular music practitioners fare no better. From their Ivory Tower they look down upon the popular musicians and disparage them.
The civil service is the worst culprit. Civil servants exploit popular musicians. They usurp grants, benefits and programmes destined for popular music, and musicians, and still treat them with contempt.
Come to think of it these are the offspring of parents who thirty to fourty years before, vehemently opposed the function of popular musicians and calling them all kinds of disparaging names in the book. Today their children conveniently forget that had the musicians not performed and recorded their music, they would have no source and material to administrate in an office. Yet they consider themselves better than the muscians who are hardly consulted on National issues of musical nature. Indeed, if they were well informed as they exude, they will know that their arrogance is ill informed. An irony of the most comic order. Society cannot sweep aside musicians, they are the interpreters wheeling the power of the message of music.
They, in the course of their work, influence the minds of billions in the world.
A clear antecedent is what happened during the Two million March event. If the thinking in high places saw popular music participation in politics as merely atmospheric, and cosmetic, they certainly got it wrong and were wide off the mark. Music in essence is the power to fire the spirit of human beings to higher sensitivity and creativity.
The whole nation saw what happened when the PMAN President Christy Essien - Igbokwe decided to emotionally support the Abachas in the "Two Million March charade. The reaction and the uproar generated in the press in the after math of her and the musicians participation in that rally, reinforces once more the strength of music in society. The name calling and accusations levied on those musicians who took part in that rally as traitors and having betrayed the national struggle to oust Abacha and instal democracy in Nigeria is not only hypocritical but frivolous and biassed. Those musicians after all, were serving their clients like any other professionals and were within their bounds. Musicians like everyone else have the right to hold their personal political opinion and be ideological and not having them interfere with their professional business. In normal circumstances if I may say, musicians cannot be partisan and held to ransome in pursuit of their profession and lively hood. Hence this paper is intended to sensitise and mobilize popular musicians against second slavery and for them to stand up for their rights. It is high noon musicians stop behaving complacent as if all is well and fine in their line of business. Musicianship in Nigeria is aggrieved from years of denial, repression, neglect and unrepresented.