Nigerian man Ufomma has taken to his Instagram page to share a never seen before story of how MI Abaga helped Phyno as an upcoming artiste become a star.
The man at the time the story happened was a project manager at Nigeria Breweries PLC, the sponsor of Star Trek, a nomadic event hosted at different parts of the country. Ufomma recounted how MI Abaga gave up his time on stage for Phyno who at that time was unknown. Read the full story below:
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@mi_abaga has always been a special guy and a very selfless one at that. I witnessed this first hand in Jos with how everyone lived with him and Jesse in their Inner hub studio back then.
I witnessed it again in 2012 during the Nigerian Breweries sponsored Star Trek musical tour that I was working on as project manager. MI was billed to perform in the Awka leg of the Trek, along with PSquare, Timaya and flavour I think and he was to perform just before Psquare, the headliners.
The rule to Star Trek is that each Artist gets allotted performance time, a call time to be back stage and are duty bound to come for around check. MI came an hour earlier than he was supposed to and he came with one lanky fair guy to asked if the guy could perform? I said it was too late because the upcoming artistes were done performing. He tried convincing me that the guy was very good but every upcoming artist on the trek is usually good because they go through very rigorous screening before they are allowed onto the Trek stage. So I told him that it was impossible to plug him in because the show had already started and we were on a strict clock.
He then shocked me by saying he will sacrifice 10 minutes from his 40 minutes set to allow the fair lanky guy to perform. I was surprised but needed approval from the brand manager @obafagad and senior brand manager @odukpani, since it was going to significantly alter the structure of the show that was being recorded for broadcast. They both expressed reservations since the lanky guy wasn’t known but I reassured them that if MI said he was good, then i am willing to gamble.
They gave their blessing and I gave the lanky guy’s name to @gbengaadeyinka1stgcon who was the MC for star trek. As soon as he announced the lanky guy’s name, the crowd lost it, as they apparently knew the guy and his songs. He went on to give arguably the best performance of the night and that, ladies and gentlemen, was the birth of @phynofino. A few months later he released Ghost Mode featuring Olamide and the rest as they say, is history.
MI na man you be. Thank you for all that you did for young artistes and all that you still do.
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