As one of the pioneers of the Nigerian comedy industry, Yibotemeke Koko retains an uncommon composure that belies his towering achievements. A creative and innovative individual with a strong academic and professional background in the dramatic arts, Koko is an actor, director, dancer, choreographer and set designer. Forget that he has refused to move from Port Harcourt to Lagos, jobs with mega-bucks pay cheque continue to trail him to the famed Garden City.
Port Harcourt Kind to Him
Perhaps if Port Harcourt was not so kind to him in the early days, he would have considered chasing his dreams in the Centre of Excellence and Nigeria’s entertainment capital, Lagos. But as he hit the ground running, there was no need to shift base. Straight from National Youth Service in Kano, Yibo was employed at the then prestigious Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt as an Assistant Public Relations Officer. By the time he exited the hotel in 1996, six years after, he had risen to the position of Executive Assistant to the GM. He attended various trainings in Nigeria and abroad in banqueting and out-door catering. He was single, earning good money from the hotel, had a room to himself and also picked handsome pay cheques from various engagements as a stand-up comedian.
Yibo’s Vaseline Corner
Comedy was something he loved to do for the fun of it. For him, it was a lazy source of income. Incidentally, the challenging period of his life as a comedian was between 1988 and 1990. He was studying for a degree in Theatre Arts at the University of Port Harcourt. He did it then for attraction to the opposite sex and for fame. Everyone on campus knew that Yibo’s Vaseline Corner was where to go to if they wanted a good joke.
Then one day, the lead character in a scheduled play delayed his appearance, while waiting for him, Yibo was persuaded to go on stage. What was intended as a gimmick to buy time turned out to be a masterstroke that announced Yibo to the university community. His sketches, which were an improvisation of sorts, were well received and from then on, there was no looking back.
Stole the Show in Lagos in 1998
Yibo acknowledged that Mohammed Danjuma, Away Away and John Chukwu already had a following and an established presence on NTA at the time. His acceptance by the Lagos crowd and therefore the national stage was no fortuitous. It happened at the 1998 Fame Music Award. The previous year, Ali Baba was the comedian on centrestage. There was a need for a fresh face and Yibo came recommended. At the pre-awards event at La Campagne Tropicana at Adeniyi Jones in Ikeja-Lagos, the organisers grudgingly allowed him on stage. He recalled that his buddy and town folk, Daniel Wilson, urged him to go on and show them that he was a Port Harcourt boy. Of course, he went on to wow the Lagos crowd and needless to say that he was the favoured comedian for the awards proper. Again, he stole the show. “They had never seen anything like it before,” he said.
The same year, Yibo was back in Lagos to host and perform at a big reception for Nigeria’s Atlanta Olympic medalists at Waterparks. Nigerian Breweries sponsored the show. Having noted his skills in comedy and MC-ing, Nigerian Breweries would invite him again and again for bigger shows like The Star Wheel of Fortune and Star Mega Jam. It was to Yibo that the French Cultural Centre also went when they needed a dutiful comedian and host for Fela’s first post-humous birthday in 1998. He was among the first set of comedians who performed at A Night of a Thousand Laughs, but refused to allow his image on TV on the principle that the organisers needed to enter an MoU with him other than the one for which he was paid to perform on stage. “I couldn’t be paid the little thing I was paid and then you are maximising the gain.”
Created and Directed Owu-Amapu Ti, A Dance Drama
An Okrika man from River State, Yibo is experienced in initiating and managing highly successful events including those designed to raise awareness for cultural and development issues. For the glory of his people and in pursuit of academic excellence, Yibo created and directed Owu-Amapu Ti, a dance drama tracing the origin of the American tap dance to the Lower Nigeria Delta Region for the 10th Anniversary of The National Black Arts Festival, Atlanta Georgia, USA. The play premiered with a 48-man cast in 1997 at The MUSON Centre in Lagos and was sponsored by the then All States Trust Bank. This is one of the biggest projects he talks about with great pride because it brought out the scholar and the artist in him.
“After that time, we did it in Shell, Warri. We did it at the LLNG, Bonny. The dance drama traced the American tap dance down to the lower Niger region.
“I did a research on the dance. It was a most spectacular and beautiful dance. The story line is that fishermen went out to fish, from nowhere they heard drums and singing and they saw spirit beings dancing. They hid somewhere and watched it and when they got back to the village, they narrated the story. It is a similar story in Greek mythology.
“This part of the dance was done by theatre art graduates, but for the so-called spiritual part of the dance, I got the original dancers from the villages. We had a marriage of theatre and traditional dance. We needed to allow the traditional people to conform to theatre. We had to teach them on stage, the use of space with the lights, just like you go to see the Lion King. So when the troubles started in the state, most of those who danced for me are dead. That was a huge project.“
For Yibo, No More Challenge in Comedy
It is curious to hear from Yibo that he no longer finds any challenge in comedy. Except for very private engagements, presidential dinners and top bank jobs, he has stopped riding on the populist comedy stage. His earlier reason for jumping off the comedy train was to pursue his life ambition of becoming a scholar. “Some people don’t know that part of me. I wanted an academic environment to research and discover our cultural art form in a way that was very academic. “My ambition was to be a professor of culture. I wanted to study film too. I have some level of serious mindedness inside all these comedy stuff that people don’t even know about me. I see comedy as the castigation of redundant morality.”
That dream is unrealised, at least, for now. At 46 years, he might yet pursue his dream to a logical conclusion. But why did he put it on hold? “Unfortunately the Nigerian academic system is in a quark mire and has an epileptic life cycle. In fact, it is paralysed. In 1997, when the University of Port Harcourt introduced a Masters programme in Theatre Arts, we were to be the guinea pigs, it would have been interesting.
“I actually did the registration and then I noticed that my lecturers were the same ones who taught me for my first degree and I can tell you that from when I left school in 1990/91 till that time, I know what I had done with my life in the same business that I wanted to upgrade myself educationally as a Doctor of Drama or Theatre or whatever and then I discovered that the same people have not left the campus in those seven years. They have not done any research work. They have not gone on any workshop. I am even more vibrant on the Internet than they are, so what am I going to be studying than the same notes that they had when they went to school in the 70s? Why should I deceive myself because I want to get the prefix of a Dr. attached to my name and I know that I am a Dundee United? I had to do other things with my life. That is why I didn’t go.
“When I was in Uniport, I had Prof. Ola Rotimi. If I had the Dapo Adelugbas, the Wole Soyinkas, the Femi Osofisans to teach me, you can’t miss out on those. But now I had to return to the same people who taught me with four students, now they have to cope with 4000 students, how will the students learn? How will the teachers give their best?”
But he did not throw up his hands in the air and resign to fate. He grabbed the next opportunity that offered itself. “ I was in London to do a show for Timi Alaibe’s birthday and I saw a bus carrying an advert about film studies at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University in collaboration with the New York Film Academy. As the bus was passing-by, I was copying the number. I called them and they said there was no opening, but I could go to their website.
“One year after, I got an email inviting me if I was ready. That was it. I paid. It was good. Amazingly, I got a scholarship with two other guys. They said the school was willing to send us to either the Universal Studios or the New York Film Academy for a Masters programme, that we should make a choice between that or continuing with our one year programme at Oxford. On paper, it looked for me an opportunity to have a Masters in film making, but knowing that the background for film in Nigeria was not strong, I needed to do hands on training. All the time I would have spent on a Masters, I was like a mechanic. I got an internship with the Universal Studios, but because I did not want my family and I to become friends as opposed to my responsibility of being a husband and a father, I chose to return home to become a consultant to the Rivers State Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which I was for about two years; now they have the Rivers State Tourism Development Agency. I am Board Member 1.”
Found Another Avenue for Self-expression
Yibo who was the best graduating student in directing in his set, has found another avenue for self-expression in the arts-set-design and float construction as a gateway to expressing an art-form. “Where I don’t do comedy, I have started investing in the carnival art even if I studied film making. Right now, I am the consultant and artistic director for the Masta Blasta Band in Calabar and it is on record that last year, the Masta Blasta was the Best Band. Prior to our coming, the top spot belonged to Passion 4. At the Nottinhill Carnival, as part of the recognition of our competence in float construction, we are the technical partners for People of the World Band.” Yibo, who runs Yibs Ensemble, an entertainment consulting and events company, has been working with Alhaji Teju Kareem’s Zmirage as technical partner for the past 10 years. “I don’t need to say that to anybody. We have done a whole lot of things together. In Benin Republic, we were the ones who handled the swearing-in of the new president and when the Pope came visiting. The business is going well. I am a judge on Nigeria’s Got Talent.”
Yibo whose wife hails from Mbaise in Imo State said he met her at a show. Incidentally, she is also a Theatre Artist from the same university. They have three children: a 13 year-old girl and a set of twins (two boys). “They were in the UK, but because I wanted my daughter to have her secondary education here, I begged my wife to return. She is now in JSS 3.”
Declined to Take a Stage Name
From the on-set, he declined to take a stage name, choosing to allow his name also as his fame. “There was no need for me to get any other name-a prefix or surfix attached to it or just something out of the blues. Primarily as a comedian, it had to do with me being on stage. If I could use my body and apply to the same character that is okay but beyond that it was comedy and this is my name; so I didn’t want to search for how to divorce Yibo Koko from another name that I have attached to my name. From the beginning, I sorted that out.”
“I’m Upset with Federal Government’
Yibo is a recipient of the ‘Outstanding Achievement in Film Making Award’ at the 42nd Brooklyn Arts Council International Film Festival, Long Island University, New York and the 'Award of Excellence' - 10th Anniversary of the Women of African Descent Film Festival Brooklyn, New York. He claims to have started the marriage between music and comedy, which was perpetrated by Kint Da Drunk and given further verve by Julius Agwu and MC Miracle. But he insists he does not need to announce how much he is making. “A lot of people go on air to say they were paid fantastic sums of money, whereas, they are broke. There was no need for me to do that. I was working at the Hotel Presidential and that was a big deal. I just loved comedy. I loved to write my jokes. I did not need to be a king. I was good at what I did, but because I was not in Lagos, some people think they own the crown, but I was getting big shows.”
Lamenting the opportunity that may be slipping out of the hands of float designers, he blamed the federal government for not having a clear-cut direction for the Abuja Carnival design. “In Nigeria today, there are very few of us that build carnival floats to an international level. I have built floats for all the major carnivals in Nigeria-the Abuja Carnival, the Rivers State involvement in the Abuja Carnival. I did everything from the scratch, the costuming and everything. Rivers State has been tops in the Abuja Carnival.
“I am upset with the federal government. You cannot have a diverse culture such as we have and the Abuja residents don’t even know that we have a carnival in Abuja. They are stuck between the Nigerian culture and begging to copy the Trinidad and Tobago style. Cross River has invested a lot in trying to do that. We are still groping in the dark about the kind of carnival we want to do. Because of that, it becomes a joke to the performer and the man who is there to watch. On the day of the carnival, Abuja people don’t even know that there is a carnival. You have floats and cars struggling for the right of way. Abuja people don’t even know that there is something as good as this being put together in Abuja. Look at the Cross River State government, which has invested immensely or the Rivers State government as well that is trying its best so far. Look at the dividends they are getting from these carnivals.”
Giving Back to Society
Yibo has since conceived a platform to give back to society. “I have a photography workshop as part of our social responsibility to people in our state-Rivers. It is called Photography as a Tool for Social Re-Orientation. I have two resource persons coming from the United States of America.
As part of that photography workshop, we are doing a photo exhibition titled, Carnivals in Nigeria Through The Eyes of Yibs Ensemble. It was originally fixed for early August but because of the tense atmosphere in the state right now, we moved it to October. Hopefully, after the independence celebration, things will be calmer.”
Source: Thisday Live
No comments:
Post a Comment