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Sonny Okosun and the Paradox of Nigerian Greatness

February/March 2025Nigeriavol9-no1
Sunny Okosun

Illustration by Ekundayo R. Baiyegunhi / THE REPUBLIC.

THE MINISTRY OF ARTS / MUSIC DEPT.

Sonny Okosun and the Paradox of Nigerian Greatness

Sonny Okosun was one of the most beloved artists of his time. However, the singer’s gentle perspective has not always favoured his legacy, hinting at a deeper cultural and societal disconnect.
Sunny Okosun

Illustration by Ekundayo R. Baiyegunhi / THE REPUBLIC.

THE MINISTRY OF ARTS / MUSIC DEPT.

Sonny Okosun and the Paradox of Nigerian Greatness

Sonny Okosun was one of the most beloved artists of his time. However, the singer’s gentle perspective has not always favoured his legacy, hinting at a deeper cultural and societal disconnect.

When Charles Okosun shared lore about his famous elder brother, he knew exactly the risk of erasure. In 2023, Sonny Okosun was dead for 14 years, and the interviewer wanted to know where it all began. In his purple outfit, sleek hat and black sunshades, Charles looked nothing like the storytellers of old, who gathered curious listeners under the moonlight. His modernity—or the insistence on it—was glaring, but the narrative rendered mostly in Nigerian Pidgin, was riveting even if pained. According to him, the story of Sonny Okosun began like so many others: with a dream bobbing across time and space. 

It was a period when everything could touch everyone. The expression of rockstar individuality was in its nascent stages. In the 1950s, Elvis Presley and The Beatles represented the glitz of pop music, drawing on forms that went past whiteness and its musical traditions. Although Presley was often criticized by Black people for cultural appropriation, his distinct energy and genius artistry made him one of the enduring figures of the time. It was Presley whom Sonny Okosun saw and thought: I really want to do that. So, he learnt to play the guitar from a friend when he was supposed to be working as a mechanic apprentice. 

A TV host, Mariam Okagbue, saw Sonny Okosun playing the guitar in front of their family residence in Enugu. Amazed by his talent, she invited him to feature on the eastern regional television station where she worked. After introducing him as the city’s own Presley, she gave him the air to perform. There is something about the performance that carries the weight of flight—the very act of playing an instrument holds a frightful and promising prospect, as though the immense future is blurred into that present. For Sonny Okosun, a teenager at the time, it surely did. He became highly demanded by the television viewers, much to the disappointment of his father. 

By then, the popular perception of musicians was as rascals, and the patriarch Sonny Okosun did not want that for his first son. Coupled with the fact that Sonny had failed college entrance exams, the youngster seemed to be heading towards a life of doom. Drugs, sex, and stark debauchery easily offered themselves to the musician, but Sonny Okosun was quite disciplined. He played music when he was called to do so, and when he was not playing music, he was writing songs and mastering the guitar—the instrument of his feverish hands. Yet, it was acting that led to Sonny Okosun’s first breakthrough, which came in the early 1960s when he started attending drama school in Lagos. During that period, he went past Nigeria’s shores as part of a troupe to London, where he showcased musical skill and even recorded a few songs. Upon his return to Enugu, he was given a hero’s welcome when his parents saw that he was not just gallivanting about the city as earlier thought and that he had indeed been to London. 

Proof of Sonny Okosun’s new status was the purchase of a recording player which his father gleefully carried about, one which Charles reckoned as the first in Enugu. Approaching the 1970s, Sonny Okosun was gearing towards a career in music, increasingly working to master the guitar. In 1965, he joined The Postmen, an Enugu band that covered British songs. When the Nigeria-Biafra war broke out and Ojukwu declared that all non-Igbo people should return to their regions, Sonny Okosun’s parents moved to Lagos. It was there, in 1969, when he joined The Maestros, a band led by Victor Uwaifo. He could not have known it then, but this was the conclusion of his first arc as a musician. 

THE MIDWEST CONNECTION: HOLDING THE CENTRE

It was the 1980s. Sonny Okosun and Uwaifo on stage: performing the latter’s global hit ‘Joromi’, to the excitement of the bubbling crowd. Uwaifo is the star, the master: wearing a vintage coat over blazing red trousers, a cunning smile emerging from his force field. Beside him, smiling as well, in more reserved colours of brown and black is Sonny Okosun, playing the second guitar. Both men are in control, fully in sync.

After the performance, Uwaifo pulls Sonny Okosun to face the audience. ‘He was my boy,’ he tells the cheering crowd. ‘He’s still your boy!’ someone responds with much enthusiasm, and Uwaifo continues the narrative. He speaks about Sonny Okosun asking for his blessing to start his own band, Paperback Limited (later changed to Ozzidi), which Sonny Okosun began in 1974. ‘Today, he’s a pride of Edo state,’ Uwaifo said. There—the ethnic roots. Nigeria might try as much to denounce its influence, but tribe and ethnicity have always influenced choices, both individual and communal—and here the musical. Was Uwaifo fond of Sonny Okosun as a fellow Edo man? I think the answer is in that clip. However, that fondness was not merely influenced by kinship. Sonny Okosun impressed Uwaifo with his rock-leaning guitar style, so musical competence was also an influence. 

Beyond Sonny Okosun’s then-growing reputation in the Melody Maestros, it is the greatness of Uwaifo’s figure that makes their association noteworthy. That popularity was aligned with local aesthetics, adept at styles which included his fusion of the Akwete rhythm and Ekassa, wherein Uwaifo consecrated Benin folk into a distinct highlife riff. Such fusion was created elsewhere by the likes of Osayomore Joseph, Akaba Man, and Waziri Oshomah. The latter was sampled by the contemporary Benin-born rapper Shallipopi on a recent song, ‘ASAP’.

These figures, who rose to prominence between the 1970s and 1980s, embodied the sound that would generally be called Edo Funk. In 2021, Analog Africa released the Edo Funk Explosion: Vol. 1, which would record international success. Their press release noted that ‘unlike the rather polished 1980s Nigerian disco productions coming out of the international metropolis of Lagos, Edo Funk was raw and reduced to its bare minimum.’ Both Sonny Okosun’s parents were Esan, an Edoid tribe, and coming up alongside these greats, his music picked upon these influences.

Still, before Sonny Okosun matured into his own sound, he tended towards a nationalist gaze. A well-travelled man, he grew up in Enugu, lived in Lagos, and worked the aforementioned Edo sound alongside Uwaifo. These intermingling experiences went into his distinct reggae style.

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THE FORMATIONS OF A MULTI-GENRE CAREER

In the discussion of Nigerian music history, reggae tends to be overlooked. Perhaps, this is due to the popularity of its origin as a Jamaican sound or an undermining of the musicianship that goes into reggae. However, the genre’s greats have often been cast in a dimmer light than those from other genres. Majek Fashek, who is the most revered Nigerian reggae act, was the subject of some lore that oscillated between musical genius and spiritual fanaticism. Arguably, this bolstered his popularity, especially among the latter generations of Nigerians who did not witness his peak period in the 1980s. 

By contrast, Sonny Okosun had little flamboyance by way of narrative. In a period when musicians were in visible alliance with the spiritual customs of their respective birthplaces, the closest Sonny Okosun came to a mystified reputation was through his Ozzidi band. Some ascribed its name to that of an Ijaw river god, although in his interview, Charles clarified that the name was derived from the Igbo language: Ozi di, which translates into ‘there is a message’. 

That message, for better or worse, has become the defining mark of Sonny Okosun’s life and music. In place of a proper grounding within the Nigerian cultural landscape, the sociopolitical messages which Sonny Okosun propagated in his songs would come to occupy the fulcrum of his legacy, meaning that his actual musical prowess has been glossed over, although his lyricism favours generic admonition over lived-in detail. For instance, on his second album Ozzidi For Sale, the most striking feature of the record ‘Take’ is its warm riffing, punctuated by the saxophone. The music moves but even with occasional brilliance—‘Shouts of the bell all are ringing / Wait cos your faith will lead you to the end’—the overall form doesn’t strike a resonant tone. However, what Sonny Okosun lacked in detailed lyrics, he more than made up for with his rich knowledge of several sounds. This was what made his music so appealing. 

On ‘Festival of the Hunters’ a track on the Let My People Go album, Sonny Okosun’s roots in highlife are quite audible. Liquid in its groove, measured in pace, and optimistic—it is a musician’s song. Words are frivolous when such pristine composition is achieved, and almost throughout its eleven-minute runtime, that indeed proves the case. Halfway through the record, there is a break in tempo and drums, and an upbeat disco becomes more prominent—as though starting off a new record. When the horns return, it is in service of the established musicality, easily moving between genres. 

By the time Fire in Soweto, a short project, was released in 1978, Sonny Okosun had moved his artistry further towards reggae. Reggae, for those who know its history, know that it is intricately intertwined with Pan-Africanism. The teachings of Marcus Garvey, a prominent influence in Jamaican reggae, about a unified Africa sparked global interest in the continent, especially in the 1950s pre-independence era. As Jamaican artists sang for the freedom of Africa, it only made sense that African-based reggae acts would reiterate the theme. This was one way of fostering a productive cross-continental relationship. 

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Sonny Okosun was quite revered in the reggae world. He met with South African Lucky Dube before the latter became a reggae star and was influential in bringing Jamaican singer, Peter Tosh​,​ to Nigeria. Sonny Okosun performed often outside the country and due to his wide experience, became a pioneering member of the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN). He was popular in a period that had Christy Essien Igbokwe, the aforementioned Uwaifo, the Lijadu Sisters, King Sunny Ade, and Chief Osita Osadebe—all giants who created distinct music. By any definition, this is not a slim achievement. Yet, unlike Fela or William Onyeabor, there has seldom been a concrete effort to immortalize the music of Sonny Okosun. 

Both Fela and Onyeabor had the benefit of European audiences, whose efforts have been effective at sustaining their legacies. In the case of Fela, his sons have also kept up the Afrobeat sound, which had the benefit of being a novel sound. Sonny Okosun was not ‘special’ in that sense, as he played music the way he learnt it all those years back in Enugu—in service of his heart, even though he had to face an audience. His message, as earlier mentioned, was also not unique. 

Still, Sonny Okosun portends a greater lesson on the risk of erasure. Undoubtedly great and touching base with a lot of the great musicians of his time, that his profile does not resonate strongly in the cultural landscape further reveals something about the African consciousness. 

The culture journalist Ayomide Tayo believes the same. ‘Often forgotten in the pantheon of Nigerian music icons, [Sonny Okosun] deserves a posthumous celebration and renaissance of his musical works,’ Tayo said to me over a chat. ‘He is more than a footnote of secular artists who later answered God’s calling.’ 

Furthermore, Tayo sees parallel inspiration between Sonny Okosun and the other multi-genre artists operating today. ‘While much is said of afro fusion today, Sonny Okosun’s Ozzidi is a mix of several genres,’ he affirmed. ‘He can therefore be perceived as one of the main artists who have helped cultivate a culture of genre-mixing or genre-bending that is important today in a world where artists are demolishing music classifications. More than just a footnote in Nigeria’s storied music history, Sonny Okosun stood as a voice of truth and creativity with no boundaries.’ 

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WHICH WAY NIGERIA?

Conscious messaging is constantly pined over by the global Black audience—that insistence on the musician to speak to the struggles of life. In Nigeria, those struggles consistently include the political, since successive bad governments have marred the overall landscape of the country. In Sonny Okosun’s time, the situation was critical, even though hope generally loomed around. There was a sense of the fact that if one spoke—or sung—loudly enough, some change was bound to come around. 

When apartheid was finally abolished in 1993 in South Africa, Africa stretched with tired satisfaction. At this time, the gloss of independence had melted away, and African countries were fighting new oppressors. These were familiar oppressors, which is a different psychological challenge for the beaten-down and oppressed. How to rise against the enemy that looks like you? Politics in that decade boiled to intense levels, and when the conscious song was needed, it was often found in reggae music; from the wisdom of Ras Kimono to the quaint prophecies of Alpha Blondy. 

Sonny Okosun’s embrace of gospel around the same time was not surprising. It was a natural evolution of the man who had shunned typical entertainment vices such as drinking and smoking and whose music reflected a striking purity of spirit. If one meets Sonny Okosun through his music, the image perceived is just some streets away from saintly. Granted, he had his shortcomings as the founding president of PMAN. Yet industry politics did not taint that musical perspective. Ironically, that refusal to be tainted, exemplified in his lyrical style and in the switch to gospel, makes him quite Nigerian in a way that is best observed in the current sociopolitical landscape. 

Turning away from politics and holding tight to the assurances of a supreme being has been the foremost reaction of the conservative Nigerian, which remains the majority Nigerian. Even as more young people have become politically aware, especially prior to the 2023 general elections, it remains to be seen that the average Nigerian can hold the idea of God and nation on the same level. It is the reason Fela is the most resonant Nigerian musician ever: every beat of his funk was in service of Nigerian life. When he evoked religion, it was either to propel his traditional beliefs or to expose the hypocrisy of the dominant foreign ones. It was a liberal perspective that Sonny Okosun could have benefited from. 

Thus, when Charles Okosun shared lore about his famous elder brother, he knew exactly the risk of erasure. He was painfully aware of how Nigeria was failing his brother’s legacy, and he could not fathom it because the musician ruffled no mighty feathers. He existed peacefully with the Nigerian political elite. With talks of a book since 2019 yielding no concrete result, Sonny Okosun’s stories—like those of so many others—remain locked in a cellar of unyielding dreams. Charles Okosun currently runs a YouTube channel, an attempt at bridging the chasm and freeing these stories. 

In the visual of the aforementioned interview, the camera allows a sweeping view of the surrounding area. The location is Ogba, the town settlement some kilometres away from Ikeja in Lagos. We see a building that doubles as a church and museum, which Sonny Okosun started in the early 2000s as he stepped away from the life of records, though he kept the microphone. As Charles Okosun shows the interviewer Sonny Okosun’s records and other memorabilia, a damning sense of ‘what if?’ hankers down the scene. In those moments we are brought tantalizingly close to legacy, but because of the way it has been handled, the reward is diminished⎈

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