Emeka Erem is not a popular name but at the mention of Ajebo or Tegwolo, you would have both kids and adults laughing non stop. Erem aka Ajebo started his career as a radio presenter as well as a standup comedian but decided to test the waters with animation with special affinity for kids. On YouTube, he created a cartoon character, Tegwolo, whose naughty antics as a Warri kid is always up to some mischief.
The animation has gotten so popular that it has been cited as a means of teaching Nigerian children abroad and even foreigners how to speak pidgin English while Ajebo the comedian has taken a back seat. Ajebo speaks with The Nation Assistant Entertainment Editor, GBENGA BADA in this interview about his career trajectory, his positive influence on African children and more.
Hare some insights into the man Emeka Erem otherwise known as Ajebo
I am Emeka Erem but known by many as Ajebo. I have been on the radio for about 10 years.
I was a radio presenter. I started in Enugu when I was at the university’s Lion FM, UNN. I worked at Rhythm FM, Awka. When I graduated and came back to Lagos, I worked at Naija FM for five years. So somehow, it felt like we are not taking advantage of the media. But now, I just thought this is time to let the world know what I have been doing. After COVID, the digital space started to thrive. The character, Tegwolo, after COVID-19 lockdown, boomed a lot. First of all, we hit 1 million subscribers. As I am talking to you now We are about to hit 2 million subscribers on YouTube. In 2021, we were number one on the top 10 list of Top 10 breakout content creators of the year. In 2022, we are still on the top 10 list You know. And we have won several awards with the Tegwolo series. It won the Humor Award 2021, 2022 And the just concluded Nigerian
Comedy Awards put together by Wale Adenuga Productions. We won the Animation Comedy Brand of the Year.
Now that you have mentioned the Kiddies character Tegwolo, tell us more about it
So basically we’ve been doing great stuff and it’s globally recognized. As a matter of fact, we have audiences across the world because it’s YouTube. It’s the most popular cartoon brand in Africa And we are telling the African story. If you watch it, as long as you grew up in Nigeria or in Africa you can relate. It’s about a boy growing up on the streets with an African mom. You
know how African moms are with all their rules like not eating in people’s houses. It’s about growing up with an African mother and all the mischief that the small boys would do. A lot of people can relate once they watch it, so the whole of Africa accepted it. It’s big in Ghana, it’s big in Sierra Leone, it’s big in South Africa, It’s big in the UK, and in the US. And you know, there are back-end numbers to show for this. So what I decided to do was; at House of Ajebo, we are the king of animation comedy in Africa. Let’s talk about it. Let’s show the world. The internet can be very tricky. Because it’s online, you don’t need to come out to show everybody, so we don’t really blow our trumpets.
A lot of people love Tegwolo. A lot of people love Ajebo but they don’t even know that it’s the same person. So, people don’t know that it’s the same person Right? Now, what the Tegwolo brand did for me was, it showed me that children really want to hear the
African story What resonates with them Right? Because Every child can relate. The boy is dressing like a street kid. The boy is speaking pidgin. He called Tegwolo, Champion of
Warri, so he is exporting our culture and we get a lot of feedback from ajebota children in the UK, and the US. People say this is the closest touch of home their children have because once their children start to watch it, their children start to speak a little pidgin. So we want to let the world know that House of Ajebo is taking its place in the children’s space right now. We are about to launch a new brand which will launch on the 1st of November. Now what we are doing is, now we know that these children, we have the animation. We have taken our place as number one in the animation space in Africa, so we are like let’s give something that the next four generations of African children will talk about. So we are delving into learning and entertainment. House of Ajebo and the great things we’ve accomplished about Ajebo being the king of cartoons in Africa, the numbers are there, we do like 6 to 10 million views monthly on House of Ajebo, right? So we’re trying to create a background that will prepare the state for the long November 1. We want people to know, okay this is House of Ajebo, this is the person that has been doing all these great things. This is the take one, not that you all love, but because it’s Katsun you don’t get to see his face.
Animation in Nigeria is capital-intensive and less financially rewarding. How have you been able to sustain it?
I started House of Ajebo in 2013. I broke even in 2021. So for those years, I was just making the skits for the love of it. The day I have money, I will make and post. It trended about a year after
I posted the first video. It was after the lockdown that it started to pick up. I had even started giving up on it. I didn’t have the money to do it. After the lockdown, it was like this is the only thing I can do from home. There were No shows. And then we started afresh and we became very consistent. In one year, between 2020 and 2021, we moved from 120, 000 subscribers to
one million subscribers. Meanwhile, I had been doing it since 2013. As a matter of fact, my first Tegwolo skit was in 2016 but it was not consistent.
How did you manage to pull the Tegwolo character despite not being from Warri?
A lot of people will see me commend my pidgin. You know how comedy became popular when everybody wanted to centre their comedy around Warri. Everybody wanted to speak Warri Pidgin.
But first of all, Tegwolo is my story. I was stubborn as a child. I was a prayer point for my mother. I was a third child but I was that child that anything I watched I must replicate it. And I liked Jackie Chan a lot so if he kicks somebody’s stomach in a movie, I kick somebody in school the next day. The fact that I did not jump off as Superman from a building is because I didn’t see a high building to jump off from. I was very stubborn. I was a smart kid but I was stubborn. My knees were always dirty from being punished. I just like to do what I see in movies. So most of the things you see Tegwolo do are my personal stories. But to sell it at the time, It was easier to model it after a Warri character because they were stubborn people. As for his long head, I had a classmate we used to call bicycle seat head. Of course, I exaggerated it in the cartoon.
You achieved a lot without making noise about it. Why are you coming out now?
You know, because of social media, any information you post on your page goes out there. As somebody who has experienced media and PR, I did not put enough focus on my achievement. I
was building the Tegwolo brand, but now, we are expanding and we are about to launch Something new. It’s like we are going higher.
How many views do you garner and how does it translate to money?
I have a subscriber base of 1 .9 million but what converts to money is actually watching the videos. Not just your subscribers, but the views. You can have fewer subscribers but have people who just want to watch and go. What happened was, over the years, we snowballed into a proper animation company. So, I have a team of animators who go to Nigeria outside of Nigeria. All
I do is to make sure that every month, at least four episodes must go up on YouTube. So, it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of expenses but then, the show must go on. But what has happened now is that Tegwolo was created as a cartoon brand. It’s a cartoon series, but children started latching on. So now we are saying there is a vacuum somewhere. Children do not have enough of African
content. Don’t forget, he who pays the piper dictates the tune. If somebody is creating cartoons from abroad, they will do it according to their own mindset, their culture, their biases. Do you know that cartoons have now started adopting modern-day family dynamics? Those foreign dynamics are now being infused.
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We can either keep quiet or do something. I have three daughters now; 4, 2 years and 8 months. So I’m actively involved in what they are watching. I’m like, okay, let me create something for this generation that they can grow with that is healthy and is informative. When we were growing up, the only child star that I remember at that time was Benita Okojie. Kids these days, there is nobody that they can role model after. That is where we are coming in. We are saying, and we’re not even trying to be religious. We are singing values, kindness, and happiness. You are beautiful the way you are, giving, respect, and love for family. It is what you expose to these children at this time that they grow up to manifest. So it was kind of a push for me to produce something that my children can relate with. And they are my first audience. We are addressing a lot of issues that can dent the destinies of children using music. And most importantly, it’s coming in Afrobeats.
How do you create the characters for your cartoon?
I studied Mass Communication for my first and second degrees. In my second year, I was already doing stand-up comedy but I wanted to be unique. That was the era when Basketmouth
started doing skits. I told myself that I wanted to be able to do this. So I said it somewhere that I’m going to crack jokes using animation. That was the beginning of my journey. While I was still in school, I was also opportune to work up close with AY and I met an animator. That was how we produced our first sets of characters. I was the main character. But then after a while, we
wanted to do something more unique and Tegwolo came in 2016. But right now where we are, we are expanding to the point where we can be the Disney of Africa. That’s what we’re trying to do. There are several things that we have put out. We have worked on it.
As an animator, are you restricting yourself to YouTube?
We are not limiting ourselves, but for now, we are on YouTube. It is better to do it on YouTube. No pressure. That’s why I said that technology created a disruption. If you had to do it on TV, we probably would have to buy airtime and look for sponsors. But with YouTube, we have the platform already. YouTube has about two billion active subscribers. The advert is already waiting for you. Just get attention on your brand. So that’s why we are starting with YouTube. You may even make more than you want to go and discuss with the cable channel When the time. When the time is right, you will see our movie. At the right time, with the right partnerships, with the right collaborations, you will see us on other platforms.
Where do you draw inspiration for your skits?
I have always been a creative. I have always loved to tell stories. I have always loved to tell stories. And basically, with my comedy background, I just wanted everything to be comedy. I resigned from radio in 2016 and became a full-time entrepreneur. So right now my children are inspiring me. If you take your eyes away for a second, one advert with adult content might just pop up, so I have to monitor them all the time. So they are my biggest inspiration right now. They are my first audience and I look at them and I say I will give you enough content to keep you going. It’s time we let children be children. That’s my slogan, because we are forcing a ‘Buga’ on our children. These are adult songs with no disrespect to the song. These are songs that are for adults. Allowed them to sing about what children should think about You know, and it’s a very huge vacuum in the entertainment space. Nobody is looking, talking about it, nobody is looking at it. I was one of the fortunate ones in my time. Because in my time, when everybody wanted to be Papa doctor or Papa lawyer, I said I wanted to be a comedian and I got the support of my parents. From the beginning, I wanted to be a
comedian.
Tell us about your fatherhood journey
So I think that something that has changed my life forever. I have three girls. Three adorable daughters. I work from home, so I am like a stay-at-home dad so they have access to me all the
time. I spend a lot of time with them. They want to be with me at all times. They want to argue when they come to me. Fatherhood has saddled me with a serious responsibility. I don't exactly go out to a lot of places that I want to go normally. I had very good parents who invested in me. So somehow I have that connection with them right and I’m intentional about every phase of their growth. I spend a lot of time with them. If they learn a new word, I know. That is how close I am with my girls. I am so close to them and you know they say I’m a great dad.
What’s next for House of Ajebo
Right now, we're going into the children’s educational learning and entertainment. We have realized that we don't have a lot of made-in-Nigeria or made-in-Africa content for children when it comes to learning. When we were little, we had Superman, Spider-Man and all that and our children are watching the same thing and they are shaping their mindset whether we believe it or not. Every cartoon we saw was white guys being superheroes, so somehow he gave us the impression that if we want to be great, we have to want to speak like them. We want our children to be comfortable in their skin, in their accent and learn values as Nigerians. Let them see us and admire us and want to be like us. That’s what is next.
Secondly, we’ve realized that people and if you go to children’s parties, you hear adult songs. When last did you go to a children’s party and from the beginning to the end they were
playing child-friendly songs? We are bridging that gap. We have created a library of over 200 songs that you can do a full children’s party for hours and play what children should be
listening to we'll reveal more as time goes on.
The songs on your playlist, are they all yours?
Yes, they are all part of the Ajebo collection. After the lockdown, while we were doing Tegwolo, we were creating nursery rhymes and key theme songs. We created those songs after the lockdown but somehow, Tegwolo took over. So we let Tegwolo play out it’s time well. Tegwolo showed us that children, African kids and the world are interested in our local content. Look at Wakanda, it's not our story. But the plot is African it’s one of the highest-grossing
movies of all time Look at Woman King. The world wants to see the African effect. But we who have the story are not doing anything about it. It's almost like neocolonialism all over again. So I always say this, we are out to tell the African story as it should be told.
