Very few people can boast of the wealth of Dr. Don Pedro Obaseki. He may not have all the money in the world, but he is rich in ideas and achievements. Among other things, he is a playwright, moviemaker, teacher and public speaker. He spoke about his art, life and family with OLUMIDE IYANDA recently.

Where did the idea for your new video kiosk project come from?
Actually, I was in the U.K about three years ago and an Indian man wanted to sell me a CD in my neighbourhood. He was trying to sell me blockbuster movie by selling them through the back of his truck and I told him he was selling pirated movie. He said, "I got to live and you got to watch the CD". The thing now struck me that we can take the product to the consumer in a country where people love the product in the first place irrespective of the quality control problem. I now said if I could take it to everybody, and I’m able to sell, then a good movie should make a million copies. That was what brought the idea about. I now started looking for models that could drive the idea. The first one I did was in 2004 with Simba. It was actually like a motor powered by a generator engine; something cheap that I could mass-produce and deploy. That model was discarded because of overheating. The next one I did was Keke Marwa model but it has a very weak axle, so that one collapsed. I now went back to Simba since I have a couple of power bikes. We were talking at Simba one day and one of their guys said he could tie a truck to my power bike and that was how it started. So we used a kiosk with all windows open with a television and DVD player and 400-watt speaker. When it is going on the street, it is like an ice-cream truck and a mobile advertising truck. When it’s packed in a place and sealed, it becomes a kiosk. We worked on it and somebody designed a power inverter for me in the UK and that was how it started. I sold the idea first to my people at FCON of which I was president but I guess they didn’t take me seriously. They even impeached me actually based on this but I thank God that we are where we are today. Later they decided to call me back, and I went back as their president. I later resigned as president.

When are you kicking off fully?
We are kicking off commercially in Lagos on Saturday (today).

Is this the pilot scheme?
We don’t want to use the word pilot. We have already done the pilot.

Will it be all over the country?
It will be within Lagos now, by December it will be. You know the vehicle has to be produced and when they are produced, we’ll fix the TV and other things.

So you’ll be selling videos irrespective of who the producer is?
Yes, the video kiosk is not a video production company. It is an entertainment dissemination company because we are going to be involved in mass marketing and publishing. Those are to be our areas of core competence. We are going to pioneer DVD. Our first DVD title will enter into the market this December by God’s grace. We want to produce the best of RMD on DVD. Same for Genevieve, Amaka Igwe and others. What we will just seek for is the marketing right. I just signed an agreement with Ego Boyo for her movie, 30 Days, to be marketed by the video kiosk. We are going to do DVD for niche market while the normal video CD will be for the regular. We are also going into publishing because we feel if we don’t let people know what we are doing is like winking to a lady in the dark.

Do you still make movies?
Yes, Don Pedro Media makes movies.

We are talking about Don Pedro as a person
Yes, I just finished shooting a movie for Fountain of Life Church with a cast close to 300 people. It is coming out on December 10, which is the first anniversary of Pastor Bimbo Odukoya’s death. I have never been a prolific producer. I am also going on location in early December to shoot a film on Governor Bola Tinubu.

Did he commission you for that?
No, the man wasn’t aware until about a week ago. And the plan has been on for about seven months. I am not the originator of the idea. I’m not interested in politics but on looking at the story of the man’s life. I know he has a story to tell. And if you have a story to tell, we will do it. The story of Bola Ahmed Tinubu is worth telling. If you have a story to tell, whether you are governor or pauper I’ll do it.

You threatened some years ago not to do the live presentation of your play Obaseki. Are you sticking to that?
Yes I am. The truth is that I was upset with the establishment especially with those who should be supporting art and culture. Whether we like it or not, with all humility, we resuscitated live theatre in this country with gut and gusto, but I have never got sponsorship. If my name was Obasheki, not Obaseki or if I were Yoruba, I would have been inundated with a lot of sponsorship. Since that is the case, I decided I am not touching it again. Ironically, without my being directly involved, my stage art and craft is moving to into international dimension. As I am sitting here, they are doing my Idia to take to Brazil. My play The Bridge was Nigeria’s entry at an international festival in Cairo, Egypt. It was the only play the judges insisted they had to see twice. A publishing firm in Australia wants to take up all my short plays.

Obaseki had become an institution that people look forward to on a certain date every year. Don’t you miss that part of it?
I don’t only miss it, I feel sick. But you see it comes to a time when you just get tired. I will make two million naira somewhere and I will plough it into the production. I got the business model wrong from the beginning. I thought I could make the audience pay the cost of the show. You see, the audience should not pay the bills for culture. What they should do is augment the bill so that the artiste can survive. What I try now is concentrate on art as pop culture. If I am doing a movie on Tinubu and it is, funded that is okay; if I’m going to do any other movie it has to be pop fiction, what is most likely going to appeal to pop culture so that I can pay the bill. the name doesn’t pay the bill it actually put so much responsibility on you that you have to live a false live. But I have been too educated a little bit to fall into that cull de sac or blind alley. That is why some artistes live in the nightclubs and parties but can hardly feed. If I cannot find the economic sense in a peculiar art venture, I don’t get involved.

Is the problem of sponsorship particular to Obaseki?
I think to a large extent, it is general to almost all the productions outside the southwestern origin and also peculiar to even production of southwestern origin that is not within a particular select culture elite clique. The problem we have with art and culture in this country is a select elite clique made up of a couple of my ex-lecturers. I have been telling them since I was in school that the elite clique thing might be broken when they die.

May be you guys are not doing enough to challenge them.
Oh boy, imagine Uncle Bayo (Oduneye) is doing a play at the National Theatre sponsored by Chartered Bank and I am doing a play on the same day at the Law School. Uncle Bayo becomes a member of my audience because in terms of art, craft and attraction I have challenged him. I have created a brand name not only for myself but also the product. That the director of a play of about the same genre running at the same time is in my audience which means he has found his play not worthy enough to sit and watch or he finds mine challenging enough to want to know what I’m doing. At the same time he goes home with a fatter bank account because irrespective of whether people come to see his show or not the bills are paid. But mine is a private venture or my ‘papa money’ and at the end of the day, I can’t balance the books and I have to pay RMD, Stella Damasus, Segun Arinze. Once in a while, they see the way things have gone and they give me transport money to go back home. The show ends, everybody goes home to eat, I go home, licking my wounds. The only time I would have actually done Obaseki to my satisfaction would have been last year for Mrs. Stella Obasanjo when it was chosen as command performance for her 60th birthday but the woman died and not a dime was given to us. What was written on the paper and forwarded to us as offer would have been enough for me not to do anything. In fact, I was telling my ‘waka pass’ that I would pay each of them N100, 000. It was going to be payday for the artistes. I’m not talking about the lead o! I was going to pay the lead up to a million naira. It would have been this highest paid stage play on earth. I hope those who sent me the papers did not collect money from the woman or anybody related to her for Obaseki because if they did, it would have been like stealing money from the dead.

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