Today is his birthday – 60 years, I’m told. Very strange, that I’ve known of this man, and closely subsequently, since he was 12-13 years old! Whaoh…it therefore presupposes that I’ve been in physical acknowledgement of this man’s prodigious talents for the better part of 40 years! So, I can speak or write with clear and distinct passion, felicity and frankness of fewer persons.

Though disturbed that I wasn’t invited to any of the plans and meetings set up to strategise for this epochal milestone, I cannot resist the craving to salute the dexterity, humility, dynamism, gumption, artistry, incandescence and huge dose of joyous nonchalance of Irawo Oluwasina Akanbi Peters!

I was quite thrilled to receive a call from Dr. Ambrose Somide, Raypower’s head honcho, two days ago…on a live radio show, Faaji FM! It was a special package to serenade Sir Shina Peters as part of his 60th birthday activities. Brozuma and Bashiru Adisa (Baba Gboin) are the lords of the longstanding and immensely popular radio magazine show, Minijojo! And SSP was live in the studio – the duo wanted to surprise Shina with a blast from the past, kind of. And since I haven’t seen Shina in about a decade, it was a pleasant surprise for both of us.

My radio telephone tribute lasted about ten minutes, principally because of my need to reminisce about my first “face-me-i-face-you” encounter sometime early in 1989! It warrants putting it words here now. I was privileged to anchor The Punch’s high-flying weekend entertainment center spread, Saturday Highlife, after the unceremonious exit of the mercurial Azuka Jebose Molokwu. I believe it was Jude Arijaje who wouldn’t let me rest about one fellow he and his friends couldn’t resist his gigs! When with this crowd, “Onfoooo… Wale nfo…” was chanted with raucous, mischievous guffaws of laughter and wicked winks!

So, a day saw me at Stadium Hotel, behind the National Stadium, Surulere… Wednesday or Thursday, I cannot remember… It was an electrifying spectacle… Young folks filled with booze, bucks and booties rollicked to this syncopating music which sounded like juju, but not really so… nor was it Fuji, calypso, highlife or soucous. It seemed to have swallowed all sorts of influences of other rhythmic genres and regurgitated them in a brisk, brash and bullish calvacade of music, colour, dance and trash talks. I was mesmerised!

Filled with the urgency and desire to probe this undulating fresh spectacle, I decided to have a chat with the young sweaty loud-mouthed band leader, after the early morning break – the day had broken, Lagos was fully away. I needed to get back to the office at Onipetesi, Mangoro area, near Lagos Airport. But his minders, thick-chested and randomly rude, shove me, and basically flung me out of the venue like an overused napkin. I dusted myself…made my way to Onipetesi, and wrote my eyewitness account of the throbbing return of a star-studded performer, as electric and spontaneous as the best anywhere in the world! Well, I was a little more eloquent then, and it was not as a result of hangover! Thereafter, in my gist column, I wrote about the highhandedness of the brutes at Stadium Hotel – and I abused the living daylight out of them – as much as permissible by my editor!

Now, the moral of the story came during the week, after the weekend publication. Guess who showed up at Onipetesi? Prostrated fully on the floor, with my colleagues and I struggling to keep him away from the wooden flooring of Punch’s Features department… Shina was amazed that despite what I wrote on my gossip column (Goldfish, I think) I could still find space in my heart to write such a glorious article about his performance! I didn’t really understand the fuss – but I was touched and humbled by his humility, thoughtfulness and child-like warm and earthy appreciation. And we’ve been friends ever since.

So, just before we turned into the millennium, in 1999 – ten years after the iconic Ace album – I wrote series of mementoes in honour of the creative glow lights who had made the Nigerian 20th century a benchmarking potpourri of ingenuity. Below is my brief memento to SSP, about 19 years ago:

“SHINA PETERS
He’s 41 years old, yet this young titanic has logged over 30 years in Nigerian music industry!
Isaac Irawo Oluwasina Akanbi Peters became a consummate instrumentalist at 14; a media hero at 18; a band leader at 19; a meteor at 21 and a star at 31.
Arguably, Shina Peters holds the record as Nigeria’s best known “band-boy” ever – as a member of Prince Adekunle’s Supersonic Band.
Yet, about 29 years ago, Shina Peters’ major worry was his failure to get into Ebenezer Obey’s band.
In 1989, Sir Shina Peters changed the face, pattern and instrumentation of Juju music, and incredibly, the focus of the entire Nigerian music of the 90’s with Ace – the new musical idiom he calls Afro Juju.
Today, we regard the boy of the 70’s as a giant of the 90’s.”

Happy birthday, Akanbi. You’re now, officially, an Elder…stay on your lane, and spread your tentacles far and near! That’s the stuff of legends. God bless you!!