My Father Still Thinks I Made A Wrong Career Choice – Don Pedro Obaseki
By Olumide Iyanda
Published: November 14, 2006
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Now that a bank is coming into the video kiosk project, don’t you think if you had been more tenacious you would have got that kind of deal for Obaseki?
Obaseki was a journey of 10 years. The first major production of Obaseki was October 1, 1995. I mortgaged the only car I had then, a Toyota Carina2 for N80, 000 to be able to pay for the hall. Only 25 people came then. I was lucky that Prof. Laz Ekwueme and a young intellectual, Okey Ikechukwu, were in the hall along with their friends from the Danish Embassy. Outside the six people that were in that group there were only 19 others. But out of pride we went on stage and performed as if it were for a full audience and it changed the dynamics of everything. I remember The Guardian wrote in their opinion page ‘Between Obaseki and Ovonramwen’. I think Ikechukwu guy wrote it. I didn’t know he had watched the trial of Ovonramwen by Ahmed Yerima who was trying to use it to attack Ovonramwen Noigbaisi by Ola Rotimi. That changed a lot of things for me and I still have the piece at home. The Guardian wrote that Obaseki "was written by one young man called Don Pedro". That was how uniformed about me The Guardian was. I think Reuben Abati who later told them I was his roommate in Ibadan. The Danish people came to collect the script and took it Denmark, and from there it went to Sweden, Holland, Russia and festivals, now Nigerians wanted to watch ‘that play’. But nobody showed support apart from Raymond Dokpesi. There were time where we did not have money to paint the set and I would come on the stage to say ‘we do not have money to paint the set but we promise to give a good show,’ and at the end people forget the stage was not painted. that was it till 2003 when I said this is my final battle and I think we won the battle.

So that some people reading this will not call you ‘one man called Don Pedro,’ tell us where you are coming from
Don Pedro Obaseki is the first son of a retired civil servant and a small-scale businesswoman. I was born on the 25th of April 1967 and I have being around entertainment atmosphere for 30 years. Precisely April 17, next year. I started out by mistake as an entertainment person when I walked with my mother into NTA Benin on April 17, 1977 as a young boy and they were doing audition for who will present a programme called Children’s Time. As I strolled to the place and my mother went one side and me the other somebody asked, "Hey, you, have you read?" I said no. I didn’t know what they were doing. They gave me a sheet to read and decided I was the best reader among the lot. Before my mum knew what was happening, I was in the big studio doing a mock presentation.

The next morning, I was recording and in another three months in Benin I was a household. From there, I went into disk jockey and I was to be a dancer. Twice or thrice I got to the finals of the John Player Dancing Competition. I read Theatre Art at the University of Benin, I wrote my first published work for pacesetter, Days of Rage at the age of 14. I’ve always wanted to be a Soyinka but my dad didn’t like that. My father actually said an Obaseki cannot be a Papy Luwe. For somebody who was Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance I could understand. By God’s grace in 1989 March I became a lecturer at University of Benin; I was 21 years at that time, I got my Masters and PhD from University of Ibadan and by 24 or thereabouts I was ASUU Financial Secretary and by 27 I was already ‘retired’ as a lecturer from the University of Benin. I joined DBN as consultant and later General Manager, Programmes. I joined AIT as Programmes Consultant. Since 2000, I’ve been a member of the American Culture Initiative. I am a consultant for the Kennedy Centre and I was given Visiting Professorship by New York University in 2000. I still do some teaching and talking here and there. My present private project is doing seminars for banks using storytelling as the best way to get new businesses. By the time you have 25 banks selling the same products I will only buy into one that has a good story to tell. Presently I am involved in the video kiosk project, a way to create direct to consumer initiative for the Nigerian home video. I actually did a work on standard model distribution for the Nigerian home video industry when I was rounding off my MBA. We are also involved in building cinemas in partnership with the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Frank Nweke. I’m in the open market ready to raise 600 million to assist some theatres in Lagos. By God’s grace, under two weeks they may start building the one in Surulere. I’m trying to pull big players to be able to create the right environment for filmmakers in Nigeria.

That means you’ve arrived finally
In terms of cash in my pocket, not at all, but I’m an ideas person and I think ideas will change the world. My whole life is built around my laptop. I cherish sleep so much but I can’t sleep. The demons that haunt me are not the ones that haunt other people. I’m not interested in being rich. But I know already I’m very wealthy in the sense that I have tools that can influence a lot of people. I’m not looking at people on the street who just care about my personality but those that are directly involved in the area within which I have chosen to work, I mean other filmmakers who are actually becoming extinct. Presently the generic filmmaker is dead; what we have now are people who are "bolekaja" filmmakers. That is not really because they want to. I have been to many seminars where I talk and what I am saying right now is not any different. The man who made Igodo in three months shooting in seven states is now beginning to make a cubicle film, is not because this is the kind of film he wants to make, and it doesn’t show that is the kind of film he can make, it only shows that a extraneous circumstances have boxed him into making that kind of movies. That is what happens when a man is not empowered. The dream will die first and something else dies later. If I am able to get the Nigerian filmmakers to earn a lot more, they will do a lot more. Because when you have, you’ll do a lot more and you are more relaxed. When you don’t, you will always scavenge. I think if we are able to sell about 10,000 copies of a man’s CD in Lagos and I’m able to replicate that in other state and the man knows that it takes him 15,000 CDs to break even and I’m able to help him sell 50,000 CDs which is a lot short of what I think I can do, the man will not shoot 40 films a year. he will shoot just one or three because he has enough. Presently we are just involved in commerce, not in the business of film.

What role does your immediate family play in this?
When you talk of my immediate family, what comes to my mind is my wife and my kid brother. If you give my wife the room to pray, she will go like this: ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost and Pedro.’ It gives me a sense of fulfilment. You know when you meet a woman and she feels she was privileged to meet you and you know in your mind that you are the one who is messed up. She makes you feel you are Prince Charming. She says a hard workingman can’t be ugly. That makes you want to stay up late because you have her support. My kid brother –although he is married now- is like my kitchen cabinet. Once I convince him then I can convince anybody. The boy is shrewd, critical minded and very smart. Because he is a trained engineer, he thinks life is a design. Before now, it was my mother but I deliberately relegated her in the last half a dozen years. You know when you are too close to your mum, your marriage may collapse around you. As for my dad, the only time he comes into the picture is when I fall into financial problem. He still thinks I made a wrong choice. Imagine him telling me, ‘he too know book’.

Don’t you think you’ve read too much for your own good?
If you don’t read very well, you don’t notice simple things. I tell people that the first fruit to be given a generic name in the Bible is apple. Adam was given an apple plucked by Eve. Apples have been falling for millennia but an apple changed the way the world is today. Just because an Englishman called Isaac Newton sat under the tree and an apple fell, he came up with the law of gravity. As long as your brain does not leave your body, reading too much is good. I read in the toilet, I read to eat and I read to smoke. When I go to a restaurant or I am meeting someone in whose presence I can’t read a book, I read the menu or calendar. I don’t love to read, I have to read. I like writing, or better still, I love scribbling. That is why it is easy for me to get women because I can write lines to turn their heads.


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