‘I woke up and I couldn’t see again after surgery, is a mystery to me I didn’t plan to have one wife but end up with three wives’ - OJB.

Popular music producer, Babatunde Okungbowa, popularly known as OJB, talks about life and career after successful kidney transplant.

For him, life now means a lot to him even as he admitted that getting back to his normal self has been difficult. He spoke with SEGUN ADEBAYO about his surgery and how he plans to return to music fully.

You have been back in the country for sometime, but you have been silent. What have you been doing? 

I have been back in the country since 2013 December. The reason I have kept a low profile is because I don’t want my return into the country to be feasted on by the media like it was when I wanted to go for the surgery. I have been trying as much as possible not to turn the whole thing into another media fiasco. So, I just wanted it to be as silent as possible, because the whole essence of the thing is that one is alive again. It was not like I was totally silent, at least, in that year we did the thanksgiving service for a successful surgery. I had my birthday too, so that I could thank God for sparing my life for another one year after what I had gone through. I celebrated my 48th year birthday last year. So, it was not totally silence like some people have been saying. I have been involved in some activities outside of entertainment. If you say I have been silent in the entertainment industry then you are right. You know one is just getting back and you can’t just rush back into the industry like that, you have to take it one step at a time. Secondly, the ideal time to bounce back fully after that kind of surgery is six months, and I have been back for two years now, so I will say I have been back trying to recover fully.

While you were away, did you ever think of getting back to music?

Yes, I did. Every step of the way, I thought about music even before and after the surgery, I never stopped thinking about music. Music, for me, is not something that I just found myself doing; it is something that I really wanted to do. So, for that reason it will always be on my mind. And, funny enough, even in the sickness and after the whole surgery, I have been working. I did a couple of productions for some artistes like 2face, Yemi Alade, Jo el and at the same time, I have been working for myself too.

In 2013, when the sickness first struck you, did you think you would overcome it? 

Hmmm… your question got me thinking. We hear of people dying everyday but when you become so close to death like I did and it dawns on you that it is real, I think you will start realising that a lot of things that you could have done and some that you took for granted. You start wishing that God should give you another chance to set things right. I think what was running on my mind was not about whether I would survive it or not, I think it was more of doing the right thing. Trying to look at your life to see what you could have done better or avoided.

That means you gave up on yourself?

Not really. You know at a point, I felt like they should just let me die and go rest, but when you see the number of people in this country and outside, especially from Germany, USA, South Africa, China and other places, asking you to be strong and telling you they were willing to help you have your life back, then you will throw away the idea of wishing yourself dead. So, I will say, I became strong when I discovered that many people really wanted me to still be around them.

It is one thing to be strong in the face of challenges and it is another thing to have people telling you all will be well. What do you think worked for you and in the midst of it, did you try to draw closer to God? Did you fear your end had come? 

In that direction, I think I have always been a believer in God. I have always been a worshipper of God. I don’t think I need to fall sick to realise that God actually exists. The only thing that went through my mind was that I had so much to do. So much to do does not mean music; it means so much in the sense that you still have a lot of lives to touch and many wrongs to right. I don’t think I was far away from God or He was far away from me at any time. A lot of things worked for me, but the only thing that has kept alive till date is God. I think God still wants me alive to fulfill some obligations. And, that is what I am trying to discover about myself now. I am in that discovery stage now. Kidney transplant goes beyond what anybody can start to describe. Until it happens to you, you can’t really explain what it is all about.

A Nollywood actor, Muna Obiekwe, died recently and he was said to have died of a similar kidney failure which you survived. What do you think was largely responsible for your survival that he did not have? 

The only thing I can say about what happened to me and to him is that we both had the same problem. It was not that what happened to me was serious and his was less serious. I think everything was just about God factor; that’s the way I see it. Take, for example, we went to do health camp and we saw 10-year-old boy suffering from severe kidney failure. Even 12 year old was there trying to have kidney transplant. We saw a boy whose mother came to donate her kidney for him to survive. So, it is bigger than what you can understand here. Everything was just God, because to be candid, a lot of people have had this experience before and after me that didn’t survive it despite the fact that they had the support. So, let’s just thank God for the gift of a new life.

Some people have argued that too much consumption of alcohol contributed majorly to your problem. Some said the rate with which you consumed alcohol could have taken a toll on you. What did the doctors tell you was responsible for the sickness? 

It is bigger than alcohol. Take for example, I had stopped drinking eight years before the problem started. When they check you, your toxic result will come out and they will tell you what your problem is. Mine was zero in alcohol. What it had to do with was basically your diet pattern and your stress and rest pattern. It is either you get it from high blood pressure or you get it from diabetes. Yes, you can say sometimes, alcohol could play a role because the end product of all the alcohol we were drinking was sugar. For me, mine was blood pressure-driven, because most of the time, I was working double more than I used to work. Of course, one is growing older and there is a limit to what the body can take. When you are sleeping four hours in a day, it will definitely take its toll on you. It may not happen immediately, it could happen five or six years later. That was my own case.

Now that you are gradually recuperating, do you miss drinking or would you go back to drinking? 

As I said, I stopped drinking eight years ago. Secondly, before the sickness struck me, I was already planning of rebranding the OJB concept. I started growing my locks then, I started watching my weight because I was getting close to 90kg. So much has not really changed now. Except that I try to reduce my carbohydrate intake. We should not take anything more than our fist. Most of us when we eat, what we eat is the size of our heads. People who are a lot slimmer, when they have this problem, their chances of surviving it very huge compared to a fat person. So, I always advise people to eat normally and watch their diet.

Is it true that you have started recording again? We heard you may even drop an album soon.

Yes, I have been recording. And, I am working on my album. I don’t want to talk much on that now.  I like to keep the collaborations I am doing on under wraps. For me, I don’t really like talking about collaborations because when I hear people say they have 15 people on an album, then I will want to ask what exactly has the person done in the making of the album, if you already have 15 people on the tracks. We threw out a couple of songs last year just for people to know we are still here.

In the midst of your sickness, so many unconfirmed reports about the identity of the kidney donor surfaced. Some people said it was your wife while others submitted that you bought a new kidney from an undisclosed person. Could you tell us who the donor was?

My first wife was the donor; she gave me the kidney. It got to a time when there was no where else to turn to. I even heard that many people came out to be tested to know if they could donate their kidneys. That actually touched me.

Your first wife was the donor. That means you have more than one wife. How did you feel when your first wife said she would donate her kidney? 

Yes, I have more than one wife. I have three wives. The fact is that the three of them actually came out and they were all tested. It was not that I told them that they must come for the test; they did it voluntarily. I had made up my mind how I was going to go about the surgery. There are places where you have donor banks. I had said I was going to go for that but they shocked me when I heard they all wanted to donate their kidneys. In the last minute, they didn’t tell me what they were up to, I just noticed that they were always going to the hospital for one test or the other. I later got to know that the three of them were tested, so what happened was more of who would the donor be? The thing they were looking at was that, the third one just had an operation, so it was difficult to open her up again. The second one could have done it too but the first one felt since she is the first wife, she felt she should do it.

How do you feel about her in your heart now?

That is for my heart. Not for the newspaper. You just mentioned my heart, so why do you want to know? Unless you would open my heart to see it yourself.

Don’t you think having three wives could have been one of the reasons why you have not been resting well, which ultimately led to the kidney failure?

No, there was never a problem with that. Having three wives does not affect my life in any way. It was not like these women were staying together under one roof. When the stock exchange crashed in 2006 and 2007, it really affected my finances. You can imagine when you lost about forty million naira to the crash and you could only retrieve four million naira. That situation would definitely leave a devastating mark on your life. If you have what I had in stock now, that’s about three times what I lost to the stock. So, having three wives was not the problem I had. MKO Abiola had more than three wives, but he lived comfortably with them before he died.

When you were growing up, did you actually see yourself having more than one wife? What exactly was the attraction? 

That’s what I can’t explain now, because when I was growing up, my plan was that I was not going to get married. I had figured it out that I was just going to have children one way and move on with my life. There are some women that are never going to get married in life. That does mean they would not have the best of their lives.

Are you saying you might not have had these problems should you have remained single?

You know sometimes, in life, we try to go out of God’s plans for our lives. I don’t believe my problem is connected to having three wives. Only God knows why I had to go through what I went through and He’s the one who saved my life when all hope was lost.

It is not because you like women? 

No. Do you know why it shocked many people? You have been hearing a lot of things about me but not about the women in my life. That tells you that I have managed my home very well until the situation of things took a sorry turn. I have stopped asking myself why how I arrived at having three wives because I can’t even explain it. It is just a mystery to me because I didn’t plan to have a wife in the first place.

While you were sick, were you hurt by some people’s actions? 

I can’t say I was hurt. I think the best word to use is surprise.

But you were said to have been hurt by some of your friends who did not come to support you when you needed them most. Is that not true? 

I was not hurt by anybody. It is people that wanted me to be hurt by some people. They said how could this man have done this to his friend and all sorts. What did this person do when he was sick? What did that person do? What did this person do? I will only say I was surprised. Surprised in the sense that a certain of group of Nigerians were praying and holding small concerts here and there to support me.  It also taught me how cheap twitter is. You will find out that a bulk of people you find on twitter don’t even know what they are thinking. A lot of them spent more time calculating how much did you get than how well are you feeling. That was surprising to me. Then, the ones that went out to say they have given me money, if you look at how they painted it, you would think they have given me 200 million naira. If you look at me very well, you will know I know how to spend money. So, if I had realised that kind of money, I would have been very happy.  I would have relocated to America.

But you got some money from some of your friends in the entertainment industry? 

Yes, we did, but it was not as big as we read on twitter; it was not a large figure like some of them were quoted to have said.

Which of your friends did you expect but didn’t turn up? 

That is natural. You expect your friends to come and support you. Ruggedman tried. Jazzman Olofin also did his best.

2face is your friend; we learnt he didn’t give you any money. Did you collect any money from him? 

Everybody expected 2face to drop money, but he explained to me that he was also going through some difficult moments then. His dad had cancer. He said he had his own issues then, which, to me is normal. And as a matter of fact, I don’t care about money, because everybody was fixated on money than how better I was faring. The drugs I take after the initial set is 6,000 dollars every month. I spent five months there. Normally, it should have been two months but by the time we were travelling for the surgery, there were complications. I started using oxygen before we travelled. It was more complex, so, because of that, what you would pay 10 naira for, we ended up paying 30 naira. By the time I was coming back, it was as if, we had spent all the money.

In the midst of the whole thing, what shocked you most? 

What shocked me most was that a stranger came to and said she wants to donate her kidney. This is somebody I have never met in my life. Some came to drop money. That to me was strange.  The real strange thing to me was the response from the people.  I was shocked when I saw CNN, Aljazeera coming to me for interviews. I was like even when I was dropping hit singles; NTA did not come to interview me. That was the shock of it all. 

Everything happened so fast that in eight days, we already had money for travelling, surgery and other expenses. Somebody had come and said when you come back from the India, you would need a better place to stay and dropped six million naira for me to have a befitting place to stay when I come back. That same eight days, a governor said take 16 million naira for the surgery and I was able to raise another six million naira from donations. We were able to raise about 27 million naira but when I came back, I returned with 300 dollars. But many people were saying I got more than I needed for the surgery.  In fact, some people felt I used the surgery to make money for myself. The fact is that I returned a broke man.

Since you came back, have you ever felt any pain again?

Yes, there was a morning I woke up and I couldn’t see again. Everything became dark. I thought I had gone blind and I started shouting again. When I woke up, I thought I was still sleeping. I didn’t know another problem had started. But we got to know that I needed to take some rest and watch the things I consume, so since I did that, everything returned to normal.