27th April, 2022
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
The man bears a heavy-duty name, and it is not funny at all trying to pronounce or write the name (or names?) down.
Let me contradict myself by saying that the tongue-twister of a name can generate some fun in trying to pronounce it.
I am not sure anybody in the whole wide world can get the name correctly, but let me put it down thusly: Alleluya Atuyota Akpobome (or Akporobomeriere, according to one Warri babe who claims to know the guy more than everybody).
To keep matters short, let’s just call him Ali Baba – without the forty thieves, of course!
This dude called Ali Baba is so rich now that poor blokes like yours truly cannot afford to buy tickets to be in the audience where he tells his rib-cracking jokes.
The wonder is that not so long ago I used to see him hanging around in Lagos, poorer than veteran Nigerian journalists like me!
To give him his due, Ali Baba is a true original who knows where he comes from in his rags-to-riches story and gives deserving appreciation to the personages who supported him from the get-go.
Edi Lawani brought Ali Baba to a show at the University of Lagos, Akoka, and the young wannabe comedian brought the roof down with his unbeatable jokes.Then Ali Baba was taken to a bigger show at Lekki Sunsplash and he roused up the audience with entirely new jokes. Edi Lawani advised that Ali Baba should have repeated the Unilag jokes at Lekki because the show was bigger and the crowd was different. He happens to be so fertile and prolific that he hardly ever duplicated jokes in his steady march to superstardom.
The comedy mogul does not forget my buddy, the music impresario Edi Lawani who encouraged him from the beginning to come to Lagos after his studies in Ekpoma, Edo State.
If memory serves me right, I can remember the early days when Edi Lawani brought Ali Baba to a show at the University of Lagos, Akoka, and the young wannabe comedian brought the roof down with his unbeatable jokes.
Then Ali Baba was taken to a bigger show at Lekki Sunsplash and he roused up the audience with entirely new jokes.
Edi Lawani advised that Ali Baba should have repeated the Unilag jokes at Lekki because the show was bigger and the crowd was different.
He happens to be so fertile and prolific that he hardly ever duplicated jokes in his steady march to superstardom.
He truly deserves celebration for raising the stakes such that comedians can no longer be looked down upon as clowns.
From its rustic analogue base, Ali Baba took Nigerian comedy to the digital platform of pagers and onto the stratosphere.
For him, any talent given to one by God must be extended to others and the community at large for total sharing and enjoyment.
His old jokes are being told all over the place by younger comedians, sometimes barely refurbished and most times wholly copied without any attribution whatsoever to the original source.
He turns down jobs that are lowly priced so that the other comedians can feed off these jobs initially offered to him.
*Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, journalist, poet and socail critic, writes from Lagos