Popular Nigerian music entrepreneur, and former head honcho of Chocolate City, Audu Maikori reminisced about his foray into music management, saying; “The story of Chocolate City started when I was in the University of Jos, and wanted to create an event; a rave of sorts something that would bring us some money while in school.”
According to Maikori who hinted that he got into it with a couple of friends, the name of the label cropped up in the course of brainstorming, and everyone liked it.
“We started Chocolate City with the promotional aspects of it. At the beginning, we went from one hotel to the other, and had a DJ; it was really more like a club, but more of a mobile club around school. That is really where it started from, later on when I started practice and decided to register my own company; I decided to use the name Chocolate City. So that is how it started.”
Going down memory lane, the label exec who is a painter, poet, and songwriter saw a gap in the industry, and believed that there was no platform for creative young people to meet, and rub minds, save for the regular artiste forums, which were cerebral, and enriching, but rather dry; totally unattractive to Millennials.
He said, “In 2001, my very good friend and business partner, Ben Okugbo and I were part of a literary society called the Abuja Literary Society. One day we attended a program, and on our way back we were very excited and I said, ‘it’s cool but I think it’s dry. I think we should create something that is more contemporary, closer to our demographic.’ I saw the problem; the twenty something year olds weren’t coming for the event. We wanted something that was different, which was a place where creative people could meet and enhance each other, so ALS was totally out of it.”
Maikori said he went into music promotion to meet the needs of creative young people, and before long things started to happen.
As he put it, “since nothing was happening, I decided to promote artistes. And I think that in the course of promoting them that it happened. The first month we had seven people, and in a couple of months we had thirty something people.”
Proving the truth of the saying that when you make things happen for people, good things will come to you, Maikori avers that in the course of running his music management gig, he met some struggling musicians, and decided to manage them. One thing led to another, and today the rest (as they say) is history. He concludes, “Sometime in 2003 or thereabouts, Paul was transferred to Jos, and that was how I met MI (Abaga). MI had just moved there and MI and Jesse Jagz were based there. And I started another branch in Lagos. And it was that interaction with them that made it clear to me that they needed management, and that they needed a vehicle to do that.”
