TIMAYA AND TERRY G EXPLAIN ABSENCE FROM LONDON SHOW

TIMAYA

TERRY G

There was palpable tension in one part of London on the Monday of the Bank Holiday weekend. While one set of Nigerian Londoners were having fun at the Nothinghill Carnival another set were angry and caused quite a commotion in the Troxy area of London. They were angry that a show which was organized for them by one DJ Douglas turned out to be a flop because the main acts, the Egberi Papa 1 of Bayelsa, Timaya and the Ganja Master, Terry G failed to show up at the venue.

Our sources from London reported that fun seekers and fans of both acts were left disappointed when after paying 25, 50 and 100 pounds for Standing, Seating and VIP tickets of the show, respectively, they neither saw Timaya nor Terry G at the venue. The organizer, DJ Douglas, was said to have made a huge profit but had to run for his life because of the situation.

And on the part of the artists, it was different stories. While Timaya was in London but refused to attend the show, Terry G never even made it out of Nigeria. Timaya and his manager, Nnamdi Oluzor, who were very angry at what happened stated that DJ Douglas acted very unprofessionally and reneged on virtually all the agreements they had with him. “He first failed to secure our visas on time. Our visas only came out on the same Monday morning which the show was to hold. We rushed to Abuja, collected them and took off to London. Again, while we had agreed that he would provide three plane tickets (one Business Class and two Economies), he only purchased one Economy Class ticket and we had to buy the others ourselves. When we got to London, there was nobody to pick us up from the airport; there were no lodging provisions for us, we made the arrangements ourselves so when the time for the show came, we demanded that he pay us the 50% balance, but they insisted we come to the venue to collect it and we refused,” they said. Terry G failed to secure a visa entirely.

All attempts to make contact with DJ Douglass proved abortive but these are Timaya and Terry G’s stories. But in a very long broadcast message he sent out on Blackberry Messenger, he claimed that it took him more than seven weeks to secure a visa for Timaya because he was “High Risk.” “Apologies, I know that everyone is mad at me right now but I am sorry about what happened. Mr. Big Ego Timaya was around but refused to come to the venue to perform requesting his balance in the hotel which was 30 minutes away. We pleaded with him to come to the venue and get the money which he refused and time was running out and having dealt with the fact that we had a long battle trying to help him get visas which took over seven weeks because he was “High Risk” and put the whole show on a knife-edge situation and having spent a lot of money buying him several flights from Lagos and Abuja (Business and Economy tickets) to make sure he made it to the UK which he eventually did at 7: 30pm on the show day but unfortunately Terry G couldn’t make it because his visa was delayed … I’m looking forward to making it up to you all….”

Troxy, the venue of the show, is a very popular London event centre and Nigerian shows have always held successfully there. Earlier this year, P. Square was there while on very eve of the botched show, Sunday, August 29, Julius D’ Genius Agwu successfully held the Golden Jubilee edition of Crack Ya Ribs there.