By Sani Idris
The Unified Nigerian Youth Forum (UNYF) on Tuesday expressed concerns over the spate of killings, kidnapping and wanton destruction of public infrastructure in the South-eastern part of the country in recent times.
The Forum, which was reacting to media reports that 48 people, including 4 policemen, were killed in eight states between Friday last week and early Sunday morning, condemned the acts and called on the actors involved to retreat in the interest of the country.
President of the Forum, Abdulsalam Mohammed Kazeem, in a statement, lamented that bloody attacks recorded in eight states within three days was emblematic of how widespread insecurity in Nigeria is, “excluding those kidnapped across the six Geo-political zones within the same period”.
He noted, “the South-Eastern region has been engulfed with serious insecurity activities most of which are been carried out by some unknown gunmen with the support of the faceless Eastern Security Network. the act is baseless and lacks respect for constituted authority.
“Again in less than 24 hours, it was reported and confirmed that a police station and INEC office were burnt for no tangible reason. Such attacks are not the first in recent times in the region.
“Specifically, the spate of attacks in Imo, Ebonyi, Enugu, Akwa Ibom and Abia states in recent times had once again called for serious concerns by all and sundry given our peculiar history, political orientation and the dynamics of our federation.
Burning private and public properties in the region and other untoward acts in the region have thrown up the greater need for all of us to be more retrospective, introspective and proactive on the issue of our common interests.
“This is the right time for all leaders of thought from the region to meet and sincerely discuss and act firmly on the current happenings in their region and by extension to the entire country.
This is important because those people burning police stations and INEC offices in different states of the region are from within.
“We saw it coming that after attacking police stations, correctional centres and other public/private properties and critical infrastructure, they would go out of control to destroy communities.
“If not check now, they might turn the region to a war zone like what we are witnessing in North East today and make life unbearable for the masses in the area”, he warned.
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Matthew Baus discusses how he ignored Wizkid but signed Burna Boy
In 2017, Burna Boy met Adesuyan and his business partner, Kirk Harding over dinner at 805 Restaurant in South London.
Matthew 'Baus' Adesuyan is the owner of Bad Habit, an imprint of Atlantic Records, to which Burna Boy is signed. He was born to a Nigerian father in the US. At the age of 14, his dad used to put him on to 2Face and other older Nigerian artists. But as he got older, he discovered Wizkid, who was closer to his age.
On April 27, 2021, a video of Adesuyan chatting with Samson Shulman surfaced on YouTube. Adesuyan says, "At first it was like 2Face, which was like when I was 14. 2Face had a song called 'African Queen'... Then [My dad] put me on to Wizkid and Wizkid was close to my age and I was just like 'Naw, this ain't it.'
"I think it was like a competitive thing. Like no, it could be better than this... Then I got deeper and deeper into my own culture and just listening to music... One day, I cued Burna on like a PartyNextDoor playlist... Six years ago.... I played this artist and I was like this artist is fire. I go to his page and I had no idea he was Nigerian, he sound Jamaican on the record... I was like this is sick, this is cool.
"Then one of our A&Rs sent a list of artist we should listen to and on it was Burna Boy. I was like, I f*ck with this dude.'"
"I'm like this guy is next level, he is the most versatile artist I've ever heard period, not from Africa or [The US]. He could do everything; he could do Afrobeats, he could do Dancehall, he could do his own sh*t, he could rap, he could sing..."
In 2017, Burna Boy met Adesuyan and his business partner, Kirk Harding over dinner at 805 Restaurant in South London.
He continues, "We had to go to London and at the same time, Burna was doing his homecoming show, first time coming back to London... We had been exchanging with [his mom] and she was still freaking out... We came in a day after his show. Two days later, we had dinner at 805 Restaurant in Peckham, South London... Me, Kirk and Cody...
"Dinner is at 8 [but] Burna shows up at like 10, walks in and everyone in the restaurant starts going crazy, waiters were crying and I was like 'What the f*ck?'
"We talked for like two minutes and he was like 'You wanna go smoke?' We were in his car for two hours, smoking and talking about everything and playing music. We did go back into the restaurant at like 1 am, but he wanted to know how serious we were... He had been talking to labels, but it was just the regular label bullsh*t...
"We even talked about Grammys and I told him that he could become the biggest artist in the world. I was like, 'You could change the way people look at African people and we could break down the walls, that's what this music is about...'"
You can watch the video below;
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