Alibaba is crazy fun. His huge office is adorned with pictures of black and white comedians who have inspired him. His story has been told over and over again that it’s beginning to annoy me. They credit him as the father of modern comedy, and I ask — how long does he even stay in the toilet?
Do I really like this my junior? Yes, he is my junior, as he was a little k-legged boy at Command Secondary School in Ipaja, where we were both sent to suffer by parents who didn’t want to personally inflict pain on us and got third parties to do the honours.
I never met him in school; he was too junior. But I may have sighted a junior with a long head — the type we called Ogo — during manual labour, crying in a corner from blisters on his palms inflicted by the cutlass better known as Langalanga.
Professionally, I was first introduced to Alibaba at the then popular celebrity watering hole in Onike, Yaba. Jazzville was owned by the diminutive Majek, who, with his wife, had turned their backyard into a spot where we would all crawl in on Fridays to jam.
I also first met skinny-legs Edi Lawani there too. Alibaba would take the stage and reel out his fart jokes, and the whole place would “scatter.” He would hold the audience almost all night, dropping one “bad” joke after another, and the whole place would erupt in raucous laughter.
He was a genius and had just taken comedy away from the slapstick style of the Yoruba comedians whose idea of comedy was the Baba Sala and Baba Mero variant. He fine-tuned the performances of heroes before him and turned them into a cleaner version, introducing Nigeria to the beauty of stand-up. His predecessor in this space was the sweetly talented John Chukwu, whose jokes also held us spellbound.
Before Alibaba, we oscillated between Art Alade’s Bar Beach Show — which came with a sprinkling of comedy — and the one-touch one-liners of people like Sam Loco Efe. Comedy for us was the chalk-headed, loud bow-tie, wall-clock-wearing pundits that were Papi Luwe and the rest.
Alibaba is often credited with pioneering a whole new industry and building it from a non-revenue-generating genre into a multi-billion-naira industry, making comedians bona fide millionaires and stars.
Soon, corporates started chasing him. Government also started knocking on his door, and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, whose comedic timing is legendary, made Alibaba a mega star.
He lived the life, married his woman, wore the clothes, and moved to Ikoyi. He became loud and noisy and started driving gbongboro — big trucks that used to damage the roads that Tinubu, then as Governor, was building, putting up signboards announcing: Taxpayers’ money at work.
A graduate of “something” from one university in the sleepy town of Ekpoma, Alibaba has refused to remove Ekpoma from his résumé, unlike some of his other colleagues who are as successful as he is. Instead, he carries the toga of an alumnus very proudly as he traverses the world.
Alibaba’s January 1st Comedy Show is a must-attend event for all that matter in Nigeria. We all stroll in like zombies, eyes still dazed from the previous end-of-year celebrations, to watch and listen to Alibaba and his coterie of comedians yab and abuse us while we sip expensive wine or pure water — depending on the positioning of your table in the hall.
That event, on the surface, marks the start of the entertainment year, which usually heralds the beginning of a brilliant new season. But in truth, it is just Alibaba massaging his ego by calling all of us and also telling Mummy B “sorry” for another wahala — by giving her the complimentary suite at the elegant Signature Suite that normally comes with the hall.
A soldier’s son and a father himself of many children — a bona fide Father Abraham — Alibaba just got delivered a brand-new set of triplets and promptly forgot to invite me to their naming.
His dutiful wife, who is a wise woman and a well-respected finance professional, rushed in some plates of Afang to calm frayed nerves because she knew that the caricature of Alibaba that would follow the misdemeanour would not make for fun.
I cannot even remember who nominated Alibaba into the Power List, but in justifying it, the person said that comedy has created thousands of jobs, impacted different sectors, and most importantly, taught Nigerians how to laugh at themselves even as we suffer — and all of this could be firmly placed at the feet of the little boy with the long head who came to Lagos from only God knows where, naked and with a bowl in his skinny hands.
Congratulations, my oga. You truly deserve to be put on the MaddTimes Power List — because nobody in this country just yet has the level of madness that has propelled you to legendary status in your space.
Duke of Shomolu
Nb Alibaba’s profile for Maddtimes power list Coffee table