Audu Maikori needs no introduction. He is the boss of Chocolate Group. In this interview with our REPORTER, he speaks on his love life, why he is stepping down from Chocolate City Records and many more.
How would you describe Audu Maikori?
I believe that where there is a situation good or bad there is an opportunity to improve on that situation and I have always tried to be involved in things that improve things; if I believe in something it is more likely than not that I will do something, my own part to contribute to that cause. So, that is what I am. I am a passionate person, I am a person who loves to develop, who loves to share experiences with people and get feedback as well. I am a person who is passionate about where I am. So, if I work for a company I will do all I can for that company. If I am a Nigerian, then I must do the best as a Nigerian. That is really the story of my life; somebody who has been opportune to be able to add his own to whatever situation he finds himself.
There is no image of conflict in what you have just described?
How do you mean?
You are a lawyer and they tend to find themselves amidst conflict either personally or professionally
Conflict amplifies what I am saying because the lawyer comes into a situation and tries to make things better. He tries to improve things for both parties. So, whether you are the defendant or plaintiff, your lawyer is there to make things better for you and that’s why you hire him. In fact, you have just amplified what it is. Just like my first boss told me ‘the job of a lawyer and a doctor is no different; they both save lives. The only thing is that they just do it in a different way.’ So, when you are in trouble you call your lawyer and when you are not feeling well you call your doctor. The job of the lawyer is to look at a situation and make it better for you.
You have explained that after 10 years of being the boss at Chocolate City Music it is time to move on, is there really another reason besides the obvious?
We set up Chocolate City for a purpose. The purpose wasn’t really about becoming a billion dollar company and making money, that is the truth about it. Even at the time that Chocolate City started those of us that were behind it were already doing some other things, but we saw a need and that is why I have always said that it is more of solution finding. There was a problem and we needed to find a solution to it.
What was the problem?
We realised that you find artistes without proper representation and they had to go to Lagos to get a label. Then, they had to struggle with very few labels. We found an industry where somebody would just go and register a company and a label is done. There is no structure, nothing in there and that was why we setup Chocolate City to specifically deal with that problem and to show that it can be done properly, that you can take a local product and make it international and that you can also have a decent livelihood from pursuing your passion. One of the things we also wanted to do was to give opportunity for people on the other side of Nigeria to get into the music industry, without always travelling to Lagos for every single thing and I think to a large extent we have achieved that. So, you see that by 2012, we had won numerous awards and we had made a lot of global impact. So, I think by 2012 we sat down again and said what was our aim we wanted to do this within five to 10 years and as at the sixth year we have been able to get to that point, so what next? The next thing was to now develop the other part of the company which was the original plan. So in 2004 we put something together called the Chocolate City Manifesto, we had a manifesto and I have a copy of it with me up till now. We looked up different areas, movie, content, artiste management, event and because we didn’t have enough money to do the movie thing as at that time we decided to do music. Now we feel we have gotten to a certain level with music, we think it is about time to expand into other areas and we have been doing them since 2012 actually because in 2012 we restructured the company and created Chocolate City Music, Chocolate City Media, Chocolate City Distribution and FPM and in that year we also got Hakeem Belo-Osagie to become our chairman and helped us realign the vision. So, there was already that plan; it was not a decision that was taken suddenly, it was one that had been in the pipeline. Therefore there is a process of also ensuring that we were grooming other people to understand the working and that is why you find out that in the midst of the many things I do, the company has been running, has been going in spite of the fact that I have not been in Lagos permanently for the past three years or something like that.
You made mention of a perfect structure earlier, if Chocolate City Record have this, how come there are still crisis with artistes like Brymo?
What does it have to do with structure?
If you have given an artiste a contract and you meet all the terms of the contract I am sure he won’t walk away, will he?
I think that is conjecture. You have to be careful how you chose your question because you are dealing with a lawyer. There is definitely no correlation between structure and disputes. There is no correlation. The best-run companies in the world, Apple, they have disputes. So, if you have a contractual agreement with your supplier and something goes wrong. In fact, it is the structure that has ensured that sanity has come back to this industry. One day, they will look at the history of this country and say ‘Chocolate City sets standards’. Even as it is, there is nobody who is doing it as we are. That is the truth and I dare say that we have built a label that is Pan African and not Nigerian because now we have artistes from Kenya, from Ghana, we have won Pan African awards. So, you can’t say that the structure is in doubt. What you are talking about is disputes between artistes and contracts and guess everywhere in the world since the history of music started artistes have always had issues with labels. So, I think you should rephrase your question.
What then was the basis of the contractual misunderstanding between you and Brymo?
You remember that we were not the one who kicked Brymo out. Remember he was the one who decided to leave the label and I think that question would have been best directed to him, but like we said there are rules and regulation of a contract, when you are in breach of those regulations there are means by which those disputes are resolved. If you chose not to go though the contractual means which this disputes have to be resolved then you are going into litigation. After that wasn’t explored properly the only thing was to go into litigation and I have said it on many platform and I will say it again that the media has a duty to educate people about the sanctity of contracts. You see it is okay for people to sit down and say the underdog person is the artiste; these guys are wicked because that is the general assumption, because you have to think about it. If you have run a label for 10 years and you have never had a dispute about one person and you have had 15 to 20 artistes in that period then if you have one person then its more likely don’t you think that it is that person and not the structure because the structure has existed with more bigger names and there have been no problems. So, I think its common sense. You just have to think about it and say look there must be something wrong, but guess what it is not as if the label never had issues with artistes it is that the artistes and label knew how they resolve their issues in a proper manner and the moment when someone decides he is bigger than that mechanism then you have to go to court. One of the things we as a company decided to do is that the issue about Brymo is not personal at all. Few weeks ago when he had his baby we exchanged messages, how are you doing. Even on twitter we even exchanged messages its there, its public records that Audu Maikori and Brymo that is not Chocolate City and Brymo they are two different issues. In Nigeria, we are always quick to say that’s Audu Maikori, but its not. Audu Maikori has no issues with Brymo, but Chocolate City does because he has a contract that is running which he has not fulfilled its obligations and the reason why Chocolate City as a company has decided to pursue it legally is because of one thing that if artistes are allowed to continue to do this and they have been doing for the past 10 years then investors will not put in their money meaning that they do not respect the Law and that is the problem across Nigeria, the fact that when they write contracts or they do things they do not understand that they are liable for those things they sign. Again, it was part of our crusade to ensuring sanity in the industry and shoring up investor’s confidence. What is so interesting about the whole thing was that as the time that that matter happened there was an international company trying to invest money into our company and when the issue came up this guy left. With the Jessie Jagz situation, his contract had expired and he decided he didn’t want to extend it, so that was fine. Before then, he came to meet us and said thank you for my time here, but I want to try my own thing and see how it goes, but in Brymo’s case he had an outstanding contract, so they are asking why should we put money in this company if your artistes can wakeup and say I am not happy with this company and he can go. So, it apparent that what we are fighting was not just for Chocolate City, what we are fighting for is the entertainment industry. For sustainability to ensure that people will feel comfortable to put their money in and know they will get their money out.
There was also speculations that Jagz left because his contract was supposed to see him more as an artistes than a producer, but Chocolate City turned it the other way round, how true is this?
That is not true. The funny thing is that when we signed Jessie, he wasn’t that good a producer when he was signed, his skills actually developed in the course of the relationship. So, that is totally not true.
You belonged to a group which a lot of people said worked for President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in the recently concluded election, what was the aim of the group?
I think that I need to state very clearly that I never was an official part of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), campaign in any way; I wasn’t part of their team in anyway whatsoever. A couple of us business people and entrepreneurs got together and said that look we feel that in spite of the ups and downs and the lot of propaganda they were hearing we felt that President Jonathan had still done quite a few things which were always under reported or deliberately obscured to make it looked like he was a total nuisance. Initially, when we were watching the political landscape we were like let everything take its course, but we realized that when one person says he supports President Jonathan it became like you are supporting Boko Haram and we thought that it was unfair. In the spirit of democracy let them vote for whom they want to and let us vote for whom we want to. That was really what the platform was. In the course of our discussion we discovered that there was a big disconnect between Jonathan and young people. The young people brought him to power and he had disconnected with them. So, at that point in time just talking to some people that are close to me we said this man need to start talking with young people, they need to hear for themselves because they have been hearing many stories about corruption and stealing. We want you to talk to the young people directly, no media because a lot of the media handlers were doing rubbish. They spoilt the campaign for him insulting people online and all that. So, that was what the initiative was all about, but just to make it clear that I was not officially part of PDP campaign. It was just an initiative of four, five of us who came together and said let him present his case and let the people make their judgment and the people have made their judgment.
So basically it was an enlightenment forum?
Yes, it wasn’t anything official.
Your artiste Victoria Kimani is getting a run for her money from Cynthia Morgan, how would you rate both of them in a competition?
They are in the same space. Cynthia is brilliant and she is a class act. She is a show woman and she is a musician as well. She is a performer and a whole brand with a distinct identity beyond even the music. We don’t have that many of them in Nigeria. I think they are two divergences. Vitoria is actually a singer, a vocalist while Cynthia is in that Dancehall and Reggae place which is a place between vocal and lyrics. So, the delivery styles are quite different. But remember too that Victoria is based in East Africa, so the fact that she is giving Cynthia a run in Nigeria I think is a testimony of the globalization of music because ideally Cynthia should be giving her a run for her money in Kenya and not the other way round. It really shows you how things have changed. Bringing Victoria here was an experiment I don’t think there is any Nigerian label that has done that bringing somebody from outside and has promoted that person. Again, that is how we think we are ready to try we might not get it perfect, but we will try. I feel that you have just given us a compliment here by comparing them in Nigeria, in this region. A foreign artiste living here doing things. So we are excited about that. I fell that the collaboration that they did with Emma Nyra showed everybody’s strength and I think that you will see a lot of collaboration coming up with her.
Your label also signed Femi Kuti, how do you stand to benefit knowing he is most likely going to do his things abroad than in Nigeria?
It sounds cliché when I say it, but the truth of it is that we love music. We have been fans of the Kuti family not just Femi, Seun, Fela of course they are all a class act. One thing which we found out was that the real reason why Femi was more abroad was because there was no family here to help to localize what he was doing and we saw the opportunity and in our normal way of thinking. We saw that there was a problem here and there was an opportunity, can we add value, is there something we can do to add value and that was why we got into the conversation. And initially when we got into the conversation we just said this guy is going to be impossible, but he is such a pleasant person. His image outside and what he is are two different things. Very intelligent and very cerebral, and just even working with him it’s been a long time and I will say I am used to teaching people now am learning.
From him?
From him. Do you understand what I am saying so, for me again that is growth leaving your comfort zone and going to a place that is not so familiar, but is an opportunity for you to grow. And it’s been interesting of course with every new relationship we are trying to understand how to get each other’s bearing, but I feel that we have one purpose and the purpose is that we want to make sure that the Afrobeat is at home here as it is outside in the world. It is only in Nigeria that we don’t appreciate Femi Kuti, we were in France three weeks ago and even last week he was in France for the international Jazz Day and who are the people he performed with, who were playing instruments this are Grammy Award, multi Grammy Award winning artistes Anley Lennox, Marcus Miller, Fredie Hancock who are all top of the line in their genre and he is there amongst them and when he comes you see the amount of respect they have for him for what he has done. So, we felt that they are respecting him there, but he is our guy how come Nigerians are not feeling him. So as we speak we are working on his next album. We were out here in Paris a few weeks back to begin to lay some of the tracks and then he is touring. We are back and forth, next month we are in Washington DC, then we will be doing a small thing in Europe and we are also working on certain collaborations. So, we are excited about the project such that for the first time we will have that album released in Nigeria as well. So that has not been done, everything he has done has always been done outside. So, we are trying to do it locally.
Away from music, what was growing up like?
I was born in Kaduna State, my father is a Lawyer, he was the Chief Registrar of the High Court during the time I was young, so when I was about five or six we moved to Lagos. I went to Kings College in Lagos. I grew up in a fantastic family environment. My father was a choir master my mother was in the choir as well. So, what I know about music my father basically taught us. How to sing, how do the alto, how to do the tenor he taught us all those things. Of course we sing hymns in our family every morning and evening, so singing was part of it. We learnt a bit about that then everybody loves music in the family.
So it wasn’t difficult balancing the legal practice on one side and music on the other?
Let’s just say we inherited both of those things. What set me up in Law was the fact that we grew up in a family that Law was already in practice. So, he is a lawyer, he had Law books, my elder brother was reading English and later switched to read Law. My sister had a Diploma in Law before she went to the States; I have a degree in Law as well. So, the first three of us all have a Law background from my father and I recall the day I left part of the practice and I was going to set up Chocolate City, I was talking about what we were going to do with my father and he said yeah, but you guys should also do movies and the foundation of my knowledge in Entertainment Law was the volumes of books he bought many years ago when Nigerians were still thinking of the basic family land law he was thinking entertainment law, so industry, books on music, films. So, we had that background, he had always realized that we had the background and he was artistically inclined so he encouraged us music lessons, piano lessons, art lessons. We had all that while growing up.
There is this conjecture that the average northerner is a member of the dreaded Boko Haram, how do you feel about this been from the north?
I feel nothing. I feel nothing whatsoever. I feel that stereotypes are there. Days back we heard that Wole Soyinka said something about Igbo’s or Oba Akiolu, these are stereotypes and they will not leave us. It takes time for us to assimilate. As a country we are about 50 years it will take us about 100 plus years to properly assimilate. But I feel like when you say someone is Jew they say he is stingy, they are stereotypes, when they say someone is from the north they say he is dumb he doesn’t know how to read. They are stereotypes, so I grew up with those stereotypes, I have shown and all of us have shown they are all in your mind you can be anything or anybody you want to be if your mind is there.
Let’s talk about your wife, how would you describe her?
My wife is one of my greatest blessings. I couldn’t have asked for a better companion. There is nobody in life that compliment and understands me and I her. She is from Anambra State, she is a Medical Doctor. In a way we are so opposite, different size and different orientations.
What has been the secret of your marriage?
I tell people that marriage is not mainly about love it’s about compatibility. It is very important. People forget about compatibility so you could love somebody and but you are not compatible. I am not saying that it is perfect. I am just saying that so far it has been fantastic. It’s better than I thought. When I was getting married I was told if you marry the wrong person you are finished you know how it is if you are in a wrong marriage as well, but God has been good. She is somebody who has helped to make me better; she has polished the rough edges. So, we are quite opposite in a way and I think that is where we find a balance.
How did you meet her?
We went to the same University actually; we weren’t friends in school. Medical students were so serious and we were so unserious. We knew each other but we didn’t use to talk and then we met again in Abuja when I started something known as the Guild of Artistes and Poets, something that we started that was a kind of foundation which led to Chocolate City been established after a while. She came for one of the meetings I knew I had seen her before we got talking and just became friends and that was how it started.
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