M.I Explains why some artistes couldn’t donate cash for OJB Jezreel's ailment
M.I in a recent chat with My Africa podcast, blamed it all on the fear of being ridiculed made many artistes not to give cash to the producer
“This is what happened; OJB was sick and people were trying to raise money. I all of a sudden went 0-100 broke, like instantly. All of a sudden there were letters going out, ‘like this person didn’t contribute, why would you ask a publicist (to write a letter), and it became a big thing. What caught me was the fact that Nomoreloss was a fellow artiste, and he’s writing letters saying, ‘Why won’t artiste come out, why won’t D’banj speak out and say he didn’t donate this money?”
“Everybody was confused, every artiste was confused, so one or two things started happening. A certain artiste told me that he went and contributed the little money that he had, and by the time he got home, it was put in the broadcast, ‘this is how much you gave’.” And it was embarrassing because somebody else is giving N5 million, and you have your little N100,000.
“Already, everybody was in that N100,000 category, of which there was maybe 20, 30 people. Automatically it’s like ‘Yo, I’m gonna keep my N100,000, I’m not trying to be embarrassed. On the second hand, you have artistes, like myself, who were just confused, if we were to go, what would have happened, what would we see, because it had become a media thing.
OJB later got the help he needed when the Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, funded the surgery. M.I Abaga recognizes that, but believes that more discretion and understanding should have been applied by Nomoreloss.
