Laughing to the Banks

As you drive through the street, even on a hot afternoon, the serenity of the environment enraptures you. Birds chirp from the trees that wave from side to side brushing their exotic branches and leaves against the walls of the exquisite houses they line and shade. Opposite the buildings lined on one side of the street, the Lagos Lagoon beckons gently and peacefully heaving up and down as lazy waves ripple through the waters. One boat is anchored at the well painted, neatly tucked jetty at the lagoon and a few people in bathing suits are lounging under the trees beside the jetty. Queens Drive in high-brow Ikoyi is one of the most beautiful residential streets in all of Lagos. It is also one of the most expensive. With the beautiful tree-lined and well-paved houses with manicured lawns on one side of the road and the calm, peaceful Lagos Lagoon on the other side, it is a street that habours the rich and the powerful. Ali Baba lives on this street. Now, everybody knows Ali Baba. Born Atunnyota Alleluya Akpobome, Ali Baba is not one of those notoriously corrupt bank MDs, or an ‘idle rich’ who has made tons of money buying this stock and selling that one. Neither is he a corrupt politician whose pot-belly is now in proportion to the amount of loot he has stored in Swiss banks or a thieving civil servant who manages to mask his worth with his austere looks and humble lifestyle. Ali Baba is a comedian, Nigeria’s foremost, most respected and best known comedian. His elegant house on Queens Drive has all the trappings of great wealth: the latest automobiles, including a Monster Truck with customised number plate Ali Baba 1, a Dodge Ram with number plate Ali Baba 2, Lexus and E-Class Mercedes Benz sedans and Landrover LR3 and Toyota Landcruiser SUVs, big and well-fed dogs, an audio/visual library, a book library, and household electronics that would make Cash ‘N’ Carry green with envy. Ali Baba is a rich man, and the best reason why the words “millionaire comedian” slipped into Nigeria’s lexicon, without the hint of irony. And this is no joke. Comedy in Nigeria is now serious business and the term ‘millionaire comedian’ continues to gain ground as the entertainers drive flashy cars, live in exclusive neighbourhoods, and smile frequently to the bank. The fee for a top-notch stand-up comedian today is anywhere between one and two million naira, for a few hours of rib cracking jokes. Even the middle and low ranged comedians earn much better than the average salaried workers. Entry level comedians that are good earn between N300,000 and N500,000 today. But comedy has not always been this highly valued. About two decades ago, it was not even considered a profession. Hilarious acts were performed by penniless nobodies in third-class hotels or events to a largely undistinguished audience. Slap sticks were in vogue at that time. Those were performances by over dressed clowns or jesters, people who painted their faces heavily and had to be idiotic or stupid to make you laugh.
Today’s comedians are light years away from the clowns of yesteryears. With their well-cut suits and bachelor degrees, they are professionals who take themselves seriously. They are the Ali Babas, the Julius Agwus, the AYs, the Tee As, the Okey Bakassis and Basket Mouths of this world. But for two incidents, and a few others more, comedy might have well remained the monopoly of amateurs. The two fated events have to do with Ali Baba. The first occurred in 1988 at the then Bendel State University, BENSU. The other happened in Lagos three years after. At BENSU, Ali Baba, then plain Atuyota Akpoghome, had a reputation for being a loud mouth.
He was the guy who would make the loudest cat calls at shows, ridicule beauty pageants’ contestants and generally be a mild, if not welcomed, nuisance. Akpoghome attended a show in 1988 at BENSU that horribly went wrong. It was a huge flop. Students, as they are wont to do, became riotous. Some asked for the refund of their gate fee, while others wanted the head of the organisers. The chap who put the event together was at his wit’s end.
He thought fast and invited ‘mouthy’ Akpoghome on stage, even though he was not a professional performer on campus, to quieten the audience with his yabis. He did so well and the crowd loved him. Ali Baba was born.
The other “milestone” that shaped Nigerian comedy occurred, according to Ali Baba, “by divine mistake”. In 1991, the graduate of BENSU was a struggling entertainer, charging less than a thousand naira for his stand-up acts. So when he told a would-be client to pay “eight” for his services, he meant eight hundred naira. The client said he would pay “six”. Ali Baba insisted on ‘eight’ and the client finally agreed. But when the man brought the advance payment, it was six thousand; he thought what they had agreed on was eight thousand, not eight hundred naira.
Ali Baba recalls: “I figured we were under pricing ourselves. This is because the value we were adding to events was worth that amount, and for that guy to figure it out, it meant it was worth twice that amount.”With that discernment came the revolution in comedy. You can bet Ali Baba never undervalued himself again. He began
charging what he considered the right fee for his services. No, it was not easy. He lost some clients who felt he had suddenly become too expensive. But he says today that the risk was worth it. “There were sacrifices that needed to be made to let people know that comedians charge more than before,” notes Ali Baba.