Gospel singer and producer, Evangelist Tope Alabi is right now in the news for the wrong reasons after she berated a fellow singers song, thereby created a craving for the follows song everywhere with people coming after with evidence of how she had treated them in the past either as a guest, or as performing artist even as one has come out to say this was how she undermined him as she was one of the guest artists he invited to perform at his yearly “Power In Praise Concert” seven years ago at Cele Praying Ground, Ikosi-Ketu, Lagos.
Prior to the event, I had paid her the requirements fees and her management assured me of her presence at the program. She eventually arrived around 2am while other celebrity gospel artists like Evangelist Lanre Teriba Atorise, Evangelist Dare Melody and a host of others were already on ground and as my usual behavior and as I was trained by my parents, it has become a norm for me to give respect to those who are older than myself, even those I’m older than. That was exactly what I did that day, I gave her a well deserved respect and honour.
But to my highest shock, when Tope Alabi mounted the stage to perform, the very first thing she said to me and I quote ‘If you see this guy prostrating to me before all of you, I don’t know him from Adam, today is the first time I’m seeing him, I don’t know him before’ and I almost collapsed as it seemed like the ground should open and swallow me.
I had never been so humiliated in my life such as what I experienced on that faithful day. I managed to put myself together and pretended as if nothing happened, but inside me I was not really happy. Little did I know that my humiliation had just started.
She did the worst when she was about to start her ministration, as she set her eyes on the camera that we intended using to cover her performance, she said another one and I quote….
‘‘Please, don’t capture my performance with camera”, that was not included in our agreement, we don’t become friends after meeting in the court’. I quickly told my crew to put off the camera and she performed without allowing us to have her on tape, and since then, she always snubbed me whenever I greet her at events, but I always did that to justify my calling as minister of God.
Those two behaviours of Aunty Tope made me lose my love for her and since then I began to have different perception about her. I see her now as ‘Akuko gagara ti ko fe ki kekere ko’ and with this utterance and comment on Oniduuro mi it has proved again that Aunty Tope is great onilara and akuko gagara.
