Innocent Idibia & His Many Sides.

'If you are young and talented,its like you have wings'-H.Murakami.

Innocent Idibia certainly had wings and fly he did. Starting a music career from a city like Enugu in Eastern Nigeria can be really tough. One of the many reasons i have a lot of respect for Innocent 'Tuface' Idibia. Love him or hate him, he is definitely a household name and a force to be reckoned with in the Nigerian music circuit. Emerging as the most viable and virile member of the group Plantashun Boiz has simply been as a result of the exceptional talent of the Idoma born crooner. No flukes, just raw ambition, drive, hard-work and above all, talent.

Nigeria as a nation is riddled with fantastic musical talents, Tuface however has carved his niche as an artiste as he appears to be the most complete of his contemporaries. He's blessed vocally, he holds an audience while performing live on stage, he has a great personality and the ladies adore him. He is certainly one of Nigeria's finest. Accolades have poured in locally and globally by way of countless awards and i dare say he's deserving of every piece of carving and plaque he ever got.

As a naive young man in 1996, he was tapped up by Kennis Music and there's been no looking back since then. He remains the only real talent the owners of Kennis Music ever discovered and remains the best decision that music outfit made. Frankly, Eedris, Jaywon, Essence, KSB, Tony Tetuila and their fellow untalented cohorts really just wasted time and energy as till this day i believe they can't and will not sing well enough to save their own lives. Just my opinion though, you may choose to think otherwise. Discovering Tuface set a standard for the management of Kennis Music, a standard that eventually overwhelmed even them.

Little wonder, he probably has the most number of international collaborations, having worked with R-Kelly, Wyclef, Beenie Man and Akon. For the 'Hands Across The World' Project, he was one of the elite African acts and he certainly lived up to the expectations as Nigeria's finest export in his generation. At 36, Tuface has earned his place among the A-list artistes and continues to blaze the trail.

A side of this enigmatic fellow however  that i am yet to understand is his seeming weakness for the female folk. Tuface literally and figuratively loves women and makes no secret of this. I can understand why women love him just as much as he does them. His level of cool and his dress sense for me remain top notch and maybe qualities that endear him to the women. He never gets it wrong when he dresses up and has a way with cloths, they just fit! However, the women seem to totally throw Mr Idibia into an acute confusional state anytime they smile or come on to him. He recently proposed, on Valentine's Day, to one of his regular baby factories, in the person of the delectable Annie Macauley. I was shocked as a matter of fact, i'm sure even Tuface got home that night and looked at the mirror long and hard and eventually went to bed reassuring himself repeatedly that 'nothing dey happen'. I was shocked because earlier in the year, we got wind of reports that Tuface was expecting his 6th child from another custodian of his loins in the person of Pero Adeniyi. I was thus surprised that a short period after he was proposing. Call me old fashioned, but i thought he would be committed to Annie and ONLY Annie for at least a year before popping the golden question.

Annie Macauley must really be an understanding woman. I don't know a lot of women who would accept a marriage proposal from a regular Nigerian guyman a few months after the whole estate, talk less of country, heard he just procreated with another woman, but then again, its Tuface. He has such powers and prowess. I found it rather disturbing though because judging from Tubaba's antecedents, he seems like he's not done with trips to the labour ward. The man's just 36, he's just hitting his sexual prime and then he seems to age like wine, getting finer as the years seat lightly on him. The sexual offers will definitely flood in and a lot of my friends proffered excuses for Tuface, saying he may have changed and has become 'responsible'. Time will tell but if he consciously slept and impregnated Pero only a few months before realizing Annie was the one then i think that talk is gibberish. For Annie's sake though, i hope he really has 'changed'. I must however pen my slight disappointment in Annie. No, not for looking desperate to tie the knot with Tuface but for her below par performance as a South-South damsel. Akwa Ibom women are generally renowned for their man-keeping expertise. They say they are groomed to be the ideal partner thus ensuring their men are holistically satisfied and thus remain at home. How she let Tuface wander off the leash into the bosom of Pero Adeniyi and Sumbo Ajaba  beats me! I hope she has however gone back to her roots for 're-dedication' as she embarks on this journey with the insatiable sex god.

A lot of comedians have teased Tuface about his strong aversion for condoms and have gone ahead to attribute this 'allergy' to his population boom. What bothers me about this isn't the number of babies he has produced, it is the chances of infection with STD's and ultimately HIV from high risk behavior, in this case multiple sexual partners. MSP's with whom, apparently, he habitually has unprotected intercourse with, as evidenced of course by the ever growing family tree of Tuface. Ironically, however, Tuface runs an NGO called Tuface Idibia Reach-Out Foundation. The NGO i hear has been active in AIDS activism. Interesting, considering his lifestyle doesn't particularly fit into his project. The ABC of prevention a lot of us know is A-Abstinence B-Be Faithful C-Condoms. Tuface neither abstains from sex nor is he faithful,well until lately, to one partner and he apparently doesn't believe in using condoms either. So i'm confused, where exactly does he stand on the issue.

When its all said and done, Tuface remains one of my favorite male vocalists in the country. I'm always on the look out to see what fashion statement he makes each time he's on the red carpet. His music videos and collaborations remain mind-blowing and spell-bounding. Every upcoming artiste wishes to work with him, he's that much of a legend. He is however a man of many sides. My hypothesis is that he probably has a testosterone producing tumor somewhere in his anatomy. We will however never know until he submits himself to radiological investigation.

He has certainly changed the orientation of a lot of seemingly marriage-seeking desperados. Gone are the days of 'i don get belle-we must marry', with Tubaba, he'll gladly take his baby and ask you to take another turn on the queue. He pioneered a revolution. Truly, 'nothing dey happen'.

As a parting shot, i strongly believe and advice, that the people of Benue should nominate Mr Innocent Idibia as the state's representative on the board of the National Population Commission. Such selfless and unrelenting service should not go unnoticed and unrewarded. Mr Idibia can also like to avoid emigrating to China, i doubt they'll ever give him a visa if he ever needs to produce his paternity records to secure one.

Long Live Tuface!