Buzz by Olumide Iyanda
Email: olumide@qed.ng Twitter: @mightyng
The first time I saw Tiwa Savage and her husband, Tunji Balogun, together was at Funke Akindele’s wedding at The Haven in Ikeja on May 26, 2012. I didn’t notice them at first because they both sat just like the rest of us. There was no air of arrogance about them and they did not make to sit with the other celebrities who had crowded the high table.
My attention was eventually drawn to the two when a female journalist with an overestimated sense of her importance tried to create a scene. The said journo approached Tiwa and accused her and her management of ignoring her various interview requests. If the rude manner she went about harassing the poor couple was anything to go by, I would not blame anybody for turning down her request for anything.
I have seen managers handle harassment of their artistes many times and the reaction is not always pretty. That day, Tunji spoke in a manner that won my respect. He apologised for any break in transmission but told the petulant journalist that no such request for interview got to them. Tiwa and TJ handled the matter well in my opinion. They were respectful but not scraping.
The songstress later sang for Funke and groom of the day, Kehinde Almaroof Oloyede, and left soon thereafter. I thought Tiwa and the man with the well chiselled face looked good together as business partners.
It later turned out I was one of the very few who didn’t know there was more than a business relationship between Tiwa and the man popularly known as Tee Billz. I was to know soon thereafter that the two were an item. That they shared everything from commission to body fluids. And my first reaction was ‘so, the young man had been dipping his pen in the office ink’.
Funke’s marriage lasted just a year. The fairytale wedding Tiwa and Tunji had in Dubai on July 26, 2014 is also all but over. But those close to the couple are not asking why the two brought down a structure they toiled so hard to build. For them, the question is why did it take this long for the whole thing to hit rock bottom.
Like so many people conversant with showbiz or any business for that matter will agree, Tiwa and Tunji began a journey on thin ice the moment they took their relationship from the boardroom to the bedroom.
Perhaps, they should not have dismissed the seventh of Notorious BIG’s 10 Crack Commandments. In the album, Life after Death, released posthumously following his death on March 9, 1997, the man also known as Frank White said: “This rule is so underrated. Keep your family and business completely separated. Money and blood don’t mix.”
That track is not just a manual for drug dealers; it is the holy writ for businesses from start-ups to multinationals.
Business is cutthroat. You take decisions without recourse to emotions and sentiments if you want to survive. Brands create their own path and cut down others along the way. You operate best when you aren’t forced to watch whose feet you’re stepping on.
Romantics may argue otherwise, but when business relationship between families turns sour, you put your filial bond at risk.
Sacking your inept or thieving dad, brother, cousin, uncle or nephew may be tough but you are somewhat insulated if you do not have to see them every day after they are fired. You simply create a distance especially if you do not live under the same roof.
It is a different song all together if the other party is your wife or husband. The cost of things going sour is heaviest when a spouse is involved. How do you live peaceably under the same roof with the man or woman who just took your source of livelihood away even if you brought the sack upon yourself?
Whatever role Tee Billz must have played in building the Tiwa brand, allegations that he stole and had pastimes that put others at risk are justifiable reasons to sack him. And that is what Tiwa did.
In doing that, Tiwa unleashed the dragon. The sack served to trigger the other demons the man was dealing with. Demons waiting to wreak havoc on his family.
All Tee Billz wrote on Instagram and attempted to do on the Lekki Bridge last week fit the profile of a deeply conflicted man in denial. One who will blame everybody but himself for the chaos and devastation he has brought upon himself. The one whose mind has been altered that he is now incapable of facing life on life’s terms.
How did the amiable young man I saw at Funke Akindele’s wedding turn into the vain, lazy, irresponsible, adulterous, thieving and suicidal wreck Tiwa painted in the interview with Azuka Ogujiuba? He is evidently in the grip of what Narcotics Anonymous (NA) calls “continuing and progressive illness”.
Such a man deserves and gets my sympathy, not condemnation.
There is nothing Tiwa said in her interview about her husband that someone with a history of dealing with substance abuse, depression and bipolar cannot relate to. Going by her own account and that of those close to the couple, the singer has been dealing with a sick man for a long time.
The wife too – consciously or unconsciously – might have become co-dependent or an enabler. Hurt pride, frustration, self-pity, misunderstanding and fear can do that to the best of women.
Unfortunately for Tiwa, it has not been easy sacking Tee Billz as her husband as it was sacking him as her manager.
