On Air Personality and stand-up comedian, Ajebo, does not hesitate to tell anyone who cares to listen about his passion for cartoons. Born Erem Emeka Nehemiah Kalu, this 28-year-old graduate of Mass Communication from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in this interview with Senior Correspondent, EKENE OKORO, shares his passion, his brand of comedy, and his personal life among other issues. Excerpts:
Ajebo
Why did you opt for comedy rather than something else along your line of study?
I always knew comedy was what I was born to do. I didn’t stumble on comedy. From when I was little, I already had the instinct, in church. I write drama, I also act and people will laugh and fall off their seats, I want to sing and people are laughing, I am talking normally and people are laughing. So, I already knew. If there was a course like comedy to study, probably I would have studied it, but in the absence of that, I studied Mass Communication at the University of Nigeria Nsukka and I am currently pursing my MSc at the University of Lagos, still on Mass Communication, and perhaps, I may consider the course yet again for my PhD.
The Nigeria comedy industry seems to be crowded with so many acts trying to fit into the scene. How were you able to find your own space?
You see, even God knows that everybody can’t be fair. Some people are dark, some are slim and others fat, some short and others tall. So, it’s about you loving yourself the way you are and then finding your unique selling point. I saw how saturated the industry was and I told myself that I am educated, I am on the radio, let us find how we can do humour on the radio and it worked. So, I felt we should take it a step further. So, we thought about a television show to make us stand out, but it has not yet materialised. You know, just like in music, when a track hits big, you then begin to think of an album. The television show in this case is the album, while we decided to drop our animations, which are just a segment in the show, and everybody loved it. Almost everybody who saw it felt like, wow, this is creative; it was out of this world.
So, I thought well, I had carved my own niche for myself, let’s move on to the next level. It’s going to come in series, we’ll drop the first series at the show coming up on November 30 tagged, ‘Ajebo Unleashed; My Cartoons and I’. So, I’ve always known I wanted to do animations, something different. You know comedy thrives on metaphors, puns and exaggerations. With cartoons you can exaggerate anything. With that, you save the audience the split second they use in digesting and understanding your jokes before they start laughing. So, we started with animations and here we are today, House of Ajebo; My cartoons and I, we do everything about cartoons.
What has been the response to your brand of comedy?
The response was fantastic, we dropped it with some television stations to use as fillers on their shows and the feedback has been awesome. As a matter of fact, I released just a few online and I don’t know how the thing went viral on people’s phones and almost everybody has it on their phones now. It’s been very awesome. You know, because its cartoons, people take some time to blend both faces. When I step out in the public and my identity is revealed as the brain behind the animations, people are overwhelmed and tell me how much they love the animations. But, I was worried because it was like my comedy was more popular than my face. So, I felt it was time to synchronise both characters. That is why it is called Ajebo Unleashed, My cartoons and I and basically we are taking cartoons to another level.
Cartoons and animations are often associated with children. But, some of your skits address societal ills. Is that a means to ensure it also appeals to the general public?
My contents are for general viewing. We understand that kids are very much attracted to cartoons, so we try to keep it as clean as possible in a bid to be funny. In fact, most of the people that have access to the full DVD, their children remember every single one of the skits and their parents will call me to say their children can’t let go. So, understanding that kids also love the cartoons, so what we do is to ensure that the contents are for general viewing and then sometimes, we try to use it to drive good messages, like discouraging drug abuse, internet fraud, and other societal problems. You will not see anything that has explicit contents in our cartoons, it’s for general viewing and it’s to make you laugh.
Why are most of your skits in pidgin English? Don’t you think this will discourage parents from letting their children get used to it?
Most of my skits don’t come in pidgin, it depends on what we are trying to achieve. We did some in pidgin and in English. The only reason why we infuse pidgin is that people know that the animation is cartoon, but it’s proudly Nigerian. So, people can identify with it and know we can do animations in Nigeria.
Talking about animations and cartoons in Nigeria, It seems like it was coming up at a time, but it has suddenly fizzled out. What is the challenge stopping us from getting it right?
First of all, we don’t have a lot of people that do animations or know about them. People love animations, but paying for animations and building a team is not easy. We are trying to set up a studio because we are working on a television show and a one-hour movie that will go to cinemas. So, we want to set up a studio where multiple characters come in and do their thing. Now, it’s actually more expensive, it takes time; you have to draw and illustrate, perhaps that is why a lot of people shy away from it. Again, people say it’s very expensive, yes it is, but if you look at what you can achieve with it, it’s not as expensive as people make it sound, that’s why people look the other way. But these days, a lot of people are going into it, more people are travelling out of the country to get knowledge about it. it wasn’t easy for me to build my team, but now we are getting there.
Talking about your forthcoming show, what’s the idea behind it?
It’s going to be a yearly show, it’s just that this is a maiden edition, but we just want people to know what we are about. I am a stand-up comedian. Beyond the skits, I do stand-up comedy and I am on the radio. People love me on the radio, they listen to me, they like my comedy, they like my cartoons. So, with the show, they can see all three in one in one stage. I will be doing a one-hour stand-up performance with the skits. I will be joined by the likes of Funnybone, Vector, Orisefemi, Julius Agu, Sound Sultan, Elenu, Seyi Law, The Don. Daddy Showkey will make a special appearance, Monica Oga, Akpororo, Pencil, Senator, and it will be hosted by AY and Funke Akindele. It’s going to be a star-studded night. After the show, we are already in touch with out marketers on how people can get House of Ajebo CDs in the streets, in all CD shops, in traffic. We already have enough contents for that. From that point, we begin to focus on the television show, and we are already recording for TV. It would be the funniest thing to hit television because the ideas are crazy. We are taking out much time to do it because there are a lot of comedy shows out there already, so if we are coming out now, we have to come out differently and come out fresh.
Will you confidently say that comedy today is paying your bills?
Comedy can comfortably pay my bills. As a matter of fact, I think I was still in the university when I said I would do comedy till I am 90 and people didn’t understand. At that time, I was doing stand-up comedy only and also on the radio. So, people wondered how I could do comedy till I am 90. Before now, I used to write for AY Magazine where I was once an editor. So, I write comedy, I act comedy, I sing comedy, I do animation comedy. So, comedy can comfortably pay my bills. Right now, we have some of our audio skits on the radio, we have it available for downloads, because we had to monetise it. For a very long time, people were only having my skits for free on their phones, I was not making any money out of it. So, we decided to monetise it on our You-tube account, so it’s available as caller tunes. The idea is to see how we can reap from what we have sowed. The show is the first place where intend to go fully commercial with a total package plus musical performances and comedy performances.
Is Ajebo pondering about getting married anytime soon?
I said this before now and somebody called me and laughed. I also laughed at the person because he didn’t see where I was going. I said I was going to get married until I have N100 million in my account. The truth is, when we were growing up we all had this dream of getting married on time, at 26 or 27, but when reality strikes, you adjust. Nothing is stopping me from getting married right now, but the kind of plan I have for my family and my children, it’s out of this world and I can’t afford not to give them. So, its not like marriage is far, trust me, it’s in view already. It’s really close, perhaps in a year or two, I should walk down the aisle.
So, in that case, there is already someone on the line waiting for you to pop the question?
Yes.
You want to let us in on who this lucky girl is?
(Laughs) Let’s keep this one private.
If you were not doing comedy, what would you have opted for?
I am a very creative person. As a matter of fact, I still do other stuffs; I probably would have been doing advertising, which I still do because I’ve done a couple of adverts. I might branch out to advertising someday, because I have a couple of animated adverts where we merge humour and the message, such that the humour is the message and it sticks. So, if I wasn’t doing comedy, perhaps I would have been singing or something. Truly, if I put my head to do anyone, I would do it and I am a perfectionist, I like to do it and do it well, if I can’t do it well, I won’t even venture. So, if not comedy, I would have probably been sitting in one office and doing ideas generation and making so much money. I actually wrote the template for a television station in my final year, I also made my first N500, 000 in my final year in the university, so when it comes to head work, I am thinking.
If you had an opportunity to change or add something to yourself, what would that be?
Hmmm. You see, the truth us that a lot of people have identity crisis. We can’t all have six-packs, I love my one-pack. I try to tell people, don’t look for how to change yourself, look for what is within you and blow it up and let people try to want to be like you. So, I am not the kind of person that wants to change something about myself. I love myself, every bit of it. Right from when I was growing up, I always learnt to love myself for who I am and I know that everybody was born with a survival kit, that thing that God gives to every individual to make money even if you do not have education. But if I was to add something to myself, perhaps a few more zeros to my account balance (laughs).
The picture is big. I am a very ambitious person. The animations you see today, I started writing the dream as far back as 2007. Sso, in the next five years, we should own companies that can teach animations in Nigeria as well as owning a television station and commercialise comedy beyond standup comedy.
There are so many acts coming up in the industry wanting to take after Ali Baba, AY, Basket Mouth and the likes. You are also getting to the height of being an A-list comedian. What’s your word of advice to them?
Talent is raw material, you need to convert it to skills, people won’t pay for talent, they would pay for skills. So, you need to build your talent, refine it, know what to take out and what to add. A lot of people have good sense of humour. A man can make his wife laugh or anyone laugh, that’s a sense of humour, but how do you convert that into stage craft and turn it into skills. Until people learn and understand branding, packaging, and understand that you are a product and know your unique selling point. AY knows his unique selling point is acting, that is why he would never go down. Even when he does his comedy, there is a touch of acting to it and people love his show. Some others have their own unique talent that they are blessed with, some have also come out with music comedy. The first point is identifying your passion, you might face challenges, people will talk down on you and make you think less of yourself. Loyalty is also key. I’ll always be loyal to AY, who was instrumental to my own rise. He gave me a platform. He is my ‘Daddy GO’ in comedy.
Did your parents support your career choice?
Wow. My mother is my girlfriend and my father is my guy. They supported me all the way. They are both pastors of Precious Jewels Church. My mother said when I was in secondary school, when I started comedy and it opened a lot of doors for me. They used to call her Mama Alibaba. Quite a lot of times when I performed at shows, I was hoping to get paid aside handshake of commendation. She would count money and give me, she would pay me. When I perform in churches, she will advise me to do it like I was performing for God, but she will still pay me. My father will release his car for me to attend shows and take a cab to where he wants to go. This is the kind of parents I had. That was where the name Ajebo was coined. So, when I appear in events, I appear fresh. Even when I don’t get paid, I don’t bother, I will drive to shows and drive home too, so some of my contemporaries felt I had no problem and said I was an Ajebo. But really, we were not really rich, but we were far from poor. We were an average family, but my parents invested their resources in me and made sure I went to the best of schools.
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