By Charles Okogene
My close relationship with CB. It all started when my news editor at the Evening Times, Mr Kazie Ukoh sent me to his Gbagada house to obtain his views on the forthcoming Performing Musicians Employers’ Association (PMAN) election scheduled for that year.
“Charles, you will go and interview Charly Boy for me tomorrow,” he decreed.
You know, in the newsroom, then, there was no democracy and you rarely question or turn down assignments from the news editor or the editor.
As soon as I heard that, my heart sank, and I only managed to say, “Me, go interview Charly Boy? “
And he repeated, “Yes, you go and interview him.” And immediately, my heart began to run riot whether to go or not to go.
Something within told me not to go and that I can come back the following day and tell him that I did not see Charly Boy, the maverick one, some of us affectionately call ‘CB. ‘, at home.
Another quickly asked me what if he gets back to Charly Boy, and he says he did not see me. So I summoned courage and decided to go.
The following day, I set out early from my Agege residence straight to his house in Gbagada.
On getting there, a gentle tap on his gate was met with an equally gentle ‘yes’ from his gateman who sought to know who goes there and who I wanted to see.
And I mentioned my name and that I wanted to see Charly Boy.
‘From where’ was his next question, and I answered from ‘Evening Times’, and the gate was quickly opened as if he knew I was coming.
Inside the compound , he directed me to the container that Charly Boy used as an office then and in there, I saw a lady, his secretary, who also sought to know who I wanted to see and I told her and she said ‘take your seat while I go to the studio to inform him’.
The studio, which the late M. K. O. Abiola, equipped for him in the early 1990s, was also inside another container on the right-hand side in the compound and was manned then by a guy we know then as Yemi.
While in there waiting for his arrival, my heart was pounding as I was thinking of how he would receive me, a rookie reporter, coming to interview him.
Meanwhile then, he was also one of the die in the wool supporters of Chief Tony Okoroji, president of PMAN with the likes of Skid Ikemefunne, Dochess Maria, then wife of Skid.
Just as I was perching on the edge of the chair offered me by his secretary then, my eyes kept roving around the reception looking for something newsy and behold, somewhere in the far corner of the office, my eyes caught his famous two left leg shoes he was known with in the hey-day of his royal punckness.
On the wall behind the secretary was a wall clock that worked anti-clockwise; which was one of the news stories I wrote for Evening Times, then apart from the interview.
On his arrival, he shook my hand, and I again noticed that the five fingers of his right hand were painted in five different colours while the five right fingers had different types of rings.
Then we went into his office properly, where he entrained my questions and responded accordingly.
There, I saw a lot of artists’ impressions of skulks. One big one served as his ashes trail.
And at the end of the interview session, which lasted for about an hour, he was so elated by the kind of questions I asked and commended me very well not knowing that that was as a result of the lecture and background Ukoh gave me a day before.
And when it was time for me to go, he asked one of his aides to drive me to Agidingbi my office in that his famous red Mercedes Benz 200 open roof car that was converted by local panel beaters here in Nigeria to make it look like ‘follow come’ coupe.
Despite the fact that I was chauffeur driven back to my office, he still appreciated my coming with N200 then.
Since then together with the late Amadi Ogbonna of the Vanguard Newspapers, Justin Akpovi-Esade of the Guardian Newspapers, Jude Nwauzor, of the Daily Times then and Uzo Chikere of the Champion Newspapers, Charles Nwagbara, we have ‘done this and that’ with him.
We accompanied him to stage a protest in the Victoria Island premises of Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), in solidarity with the late Onyeka Onwenu, who alleged then that the television station infringed on her copyright.
I severed on the publicity committee of one his albums, ‘I give my life ‘ and his author biography, ‘ My Private Part’.
One thing, however, I know about him is that he is a good man with a large heart, that beyond the hard face and the ‘gragra’ he puts up in the public, he is a very gentle, humane and generous person at home.
To date, I still maintain a close contact with CB, and I personally call him ‘Charlie Nwamama’ or obodo grigri, which is the title of his first album.
Happy birthday ‘ogbu agu’ of Uguta!
Watch for this and many more in my book with the working title, ‘Close Encounter with Nigerian Artistes of Yesteryears’.
