The Soft Issue
Interview
For those of us who have been privileged to attend
most of your program, we have discovered that you
tend to fashion most of your comedy and jokes to
Ibadan and the people living there. Is there any
reason for that?
Well, my parents are from Edo state but I lived all my
life in Ibadan. is just like I said the other time, most of
the jokes you hear are not things that you really sit
down to think about, they are things that I observe. So
almost everything I observed in my life was in Ibadan.
It is just a state that looks like a country on its own.
They have a culture and this culture; I lived with all my
life. Which is why even if I want to say something, it is
very easy for me to compare a scenario with where I
stay. Like since I have been in Kwara State now, there
are a lot of things that they do here in Kwara state
that looks nothing like what they do in Ibadan. So, it’s
not really like I have a thing with Ibadan. It’s just the
fact that I grew up there and it is easier to compare
another place to Ibadan. at is what it is.
August 2017
they have seen my video on Instagram, Facebook, and all my
social media platforms. So the thing is, if not for social media,
I will still need to explain to a lot of people about what I do.
But now they have not seen me before and they know almost
everything about my life. So I will say that, in this changing
world, social media is very important.
Can you tell us anything that set you apart from other
comedians?
I think someone had asked me that before and I told the
person that I do more of being a comic minister than being a
comedian. I don’t see a reason you will just laugh at jokes and
see nothing as a lesson to you. So apart from actually trying
to make them laugh, I have seen a reason to actually make
them laugh and see a reason to reminiscence on the jokes
and actually pick out points that will actually be life changing.
It will actually inspire them or motivate them apart from just
entertaining them which is definitely what I do.
We recently learnt that you have shared a stage with Wasiu
Ayinde. So, how was the experience like?
The audience landscape in contemporary comedy
is changing. What is your plan to capture the set of
audience who have changing taste and who tend
to consume comedy in digital formats than the
traditional stand-up comedy format?
Basically, even if you’re into stand-up comedy or
probably skits, social media has helped a lot actually.
For somebody like me now, even when I moved into
production of few of the skits I have done overtime,
I have used social media to publicise it. To me what
I will say is this, people that do the contemporary
things as you have said, I will say that it only increases
their publicity in the real sense. e major thing that
gets them paid is still stand-up comedy. But to attract
more publicity to themselves, they push their skits
online and they do this contemporary thing you’re
talking about. Okay, people like me now at least, my
Instagram page functions well. My Facebook page
and my Facebook fan page function well too. So
with this at least I can reach a whole lot of people
and follow the trend. But now the trend actually still
demands from you some few things. Which is you
carving a niche for yourself. I’m saying this because
people are watching a lot of things online. They will
still see need to open your page to check. So now I
can say that to blend into the contemporary world
you are talking about, social media has helped a lot.
How important do you think social media, the
internet as a whole and digital distribution is, to the
success of a contemporary comedian?
I would say that the social media is actually very
important. I’m saying this using myself as a case study.
When I started, I didn’t start among people that knew
me. A lot of them till date have not seen me before. e
only reason they know I do what I do now is because
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