Eighty-three-year-old legendary songwriter and composer, Bongos Ikwue, speaks about his songs, family, and other sundry issues in this exclusive interview with Channels Television.
You’re going to be 83 next month, on June 6. How are you doing, sir?
I guess I’m doing very well. I’m doing okay. I’m happy to be here. I’m happy to be with you, too.
One of the songs we know you for is Still Searching, and after a beautiful journey, your wife passed on, and then you did the song. I know this is one of the most painful experiences of your life, but it has also shaped you in some way or the other. Speak to us about that.
I don’t think any human is a robot. So, the consciousness of feeling and missing somebody is so profound, and it’s difficult to explain to anybody. My dear wife always told me something. She always looked forward to the day when I stop running around the whole country and settle down at an old age so we could have a lot of time together. It’s very painful, it never did happen. When she passed on, I dedicated a song.
I’ll just draw an inference from your song, Still Searching, for the average Nigerian. So, some will say Nigerians are still searching for good governance or the very best of it. What message do you have for the government yet again from the benefit of your wisdom?
It’s a very difficult question for me to answer because I know how little we know as humans. Our knowledge is so infinitesimal. I don’t feel qualified to talk about anything because there’s so much that we don’t know about. Maybe the only reason I think I know is because I don’t know at all. But governance, to me, put very simply, means service. Talking about service, service is the only commodity today for sale.
Service must also transcend into whoever is leading; any country must learn to render service first. It takes a little to understand. Maybe I don’t quite understand what I’m talking about, but I can feel it. Once you’re unable to render service and you are just taking, that’s a problem.
Your life has been one of service. Hasn’t it?
To give is much more beautiful than to take. If you have ever given something to somebody who actually needed it at a particular time, the feeling is unbelievable to express.
Let’s talk about all the things you have given us – timeless hits. What are some of your fondest memories about your journey, your art, and all of that?
There are quite a lot of them, but when I first met my wife, I didn’t think she would say yes, and she did say yes. That’s unbelievable, isn’t it? At that point, she looked so pretty, yeah. And I said to myself, “Is this really going to happen?” and it did happen.
There are still young people, by the way, who love your music. They were not born when you were performing or when you did those songs, but they listened to your song and they fell in love. How do you feel about that?
I really don’t know. There are lots of things I don’t know, but I think it is the hand of the Almighty. What I don’t understand sometimes, I think God is the most complex of all beings. He’s the ultimate mystery, we take him for granted.
I would say everything that happened to me carried the hand of providence along with it. I’m not a religious person, but I’m a total believer in God Almighty. There are two different things, maybe we’ll talk about that later.
I don’t know if you still write music.
I’m working on what I call the Power of Zero, I don’t see how I can condense that into a song. They told us in school that zero is nothing. That’s not true; zero is not nothing. Zero is only zero. The power of zero is the ultimate power. Zero is not greedy, if you divide anything by zero, you get infinity. Zero is ruthless. If you multiply anything by zero, it takes it to a level, leaves it right there. And zero is very humble, you can laugh at zero, but it remains zero, and it does all it has to do.
I believe that God Almighty assumed the humility of zero to be the Almighty God, and if you want to be like God, you have to become as humble as zero and completely do away with arrogance.
Are you going to write an album on this?
Some songs are impossible to write. What I feel is so big, I don’t think I have the energy or the power to subdue it, particularly with the power of zero. I started writing some songs from long time ago. I did a song called Man and Man. I said a man will steal from someone, and the same man will give to another. How a man discovers arms and weapons and things for destruction, the same man struggles to develop medicine to cure. So a man gives, a man takes, a man builds up, a man cuts down, and this has expressed the power of zero from the very beginning.
Negative and positive must coexist for there to be existence; otherwise, there will be no existence. I didn’t do that, the Almighty did it. If there’s no tall, there’s no short, there’s no fat, there’s no limb, there’s no white, there’s no black, there’s no hell, there’s no heaven. There’s no God, there’s no devil. Everything in this world is processed through the coexistence of positivity and negativity.
You also have a legacy, and I wonder what you want your legacy to be. What is that one thing that you want to be remembered for?
If only we knew how much we don’t know, humility will be the only legacy that I will call a legacy because there’s nothing we own, nothing we understand. Even the Almighty has been warning us. He gave you two ears and one mouth – that means, listen more than talk, always. When you go to a place and all you’re doing is talking, you are failing yourself, you are failing everything.
