They call it the sport of kings, but one young lady begs to differ. At 25 years old, Uneku Atawodi has played professional polo in more than 14 countries. She has represented her country at the Federation of International Polo, which makes her the first black, female, professional polo player to compete at international level.
The Nigerian youth began her journey into professional polo at the age of 16. In Kaduna, in north-central Nigeria, where she grew up, polo was almost a weekly ritual in her family. After having played casually for two years, she was ready to make a career of it. Her parents tried to talk her out of it and stopped paying for the upkeep of her horses. Atawodi enrolled for a qualification in Equestrian Sports Science at the University of Brighton, in England. It was then that she began to work at horse stables to gain more experience and received a stage 4 riding accreditation from the British Horse Society.
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“I was quite fascinated by the sport from the first time I watched it and had always wanted to play polo, but my uncles would discourage me by saying: ‘No, you’re a girl, you should try other sports instead’ or ‘A woman’s place, is not on a horse, you won’t get married’. I had also tried out hunting, in England, but there was something about the horses. I was in love and fascinated with them right from the onset. I was passionate about polo,” says Atawodi.
Her passion kept her undeterred; each game gave her a bigger thrill, but Atawodi soon realized that she needed to finance her expensive passion. The costs of playing polo are high: a thoroughbred or thoroughbred cross Argentinian horse ranges from $15,000 to $20,000 or more, and they need to be well looked after and trained if they are to excel. Players’ kits are also pricey, polo riding boots range from $600 to $800 a pair.
More determined than ever, she was ready to swing the mallet for money.
“I believe that if you truly want something, regardless of how wealthy your family might be, it is your responsibility to work for your dream, not expect others to fund your plans. I think my parents’ stern decision bred a strong will in me. It encouraged a strong work ethic and a vibrant belief that every aim is eventually achievable if you work hard for it.”
With this in mind, Atawodi knew it was time to make a change. She returned to Nigeria and began to work at the Federal Capital Territory Administration, in Abuja, as a special duties officer. At that time, she also pursued a business venture in the hospitality sector.
Her love of polo and bid to change perceptions of it being an elitist sport, led Atawodi to establish an NGO called Ride to Shine. It is here, at this non-profit organization in Abuja, that a few orphans are raised to be future polo stars.
“I wanted to open these doors for the children because through my polo handicap, I’ve been able to see the world. This is what I love to do and what better way to share with the children than to give them this gift?”
She is also building a resort in Abuja, the capital city, that will facilitate polo tournaments for children. All proceeds will go to the Ride to Shine trust fund.
“I want them to be ambassadors for Nigeria through polo,” she says.
With a handicap of zero, Atawodi had bigger plans.
“Owning my own team is what I ultimately wanted,’’ she says.
This became a reality as she owns 17 horses and runs a team called Bamboo.
“[It] is a rather new team, we have played in a few Nigerian tournaments and we are now aiming to have the team play around the world.”
One of the tournaments the team has participated in is Polo For A Cause, Atlanta. This event is hosted in partnership with equestrian brand, La Martina, to raise money for orphans in Africa. The tournament will continue to be hosted in various states across the United States to raise awareness and benefit charities.
The team recently played at the Miami beach tournament, where she was a role model.
“It was amazing to have so many little girls inspired by my participation. As the only girl in the tournament, it was a lot of fun,” she says.
Atawodi represented Nigeria in her role as a ‘global shaper’ at this year’s World Economic Forum. She is also writing a book about polo; it will see her traveling the world and learning about the history of polo in many countries.
With more points to score both on and off the polo field, Atawodi is keeping her eyes squarely on the ball.

Taking A Swing  At The Boys Club

P-Square, the Nigerian, R&amp;B music duo, knows that singing well is no longer enough to maintain the number one spot in the high stakes game of the music industry; but having Akon by your side makes things a lot easier.
When the twin brothers, Paul and Peter Okoye, left Jos they knew that the music industry was tough but they had the drive to make a name for themselves. After 20 years in the entertainment industry their determination has paid off. A few years ago their career could have taken a nosedive had it not been for this determination. In October 2011 the jet-setting artists told FORBES AFRICA that their worst business decision.
“We did a concert in which we invited an international artist. However, the artist did not show up. We wanted to carry on with the show but we were concerned about the negative impression this could create. At this point people were coming through the gates. We did not know how to explain this problem to our audience. We came on stage and performed three songs and immediately announced that everybody with the tag should go to the bank where they bought it and collect their money back.”
The artists admit that this incident was a good business lesson about how the entertainment industry sometimes works— it is a high stake game in which a good reputation is key to winning.
Five years after the failed concert, P-Square is a household name even beyond Africa. Since their interview with FORBES AFRICA they have released their fifth album, The Invasion, which has mesmerized fans at home and abroad. The successful album, which features the popular hit song “Chop My Money” and “Beautiful Onyinye”, did not go unnoticed in the international arena. It has also earned recognition from Senegalese-born superstar Akon. When the celebrity star met the duo during their tour in Africa, he immediately proposed a partnership agreement.
“Basically, this is what we have been praying for. We met Akon on one of our tours and he proposed that we work together. We went to the US to finalize the partnership and agreed that he will do work for us in the US while we do the same for him in Africa” says Paul Okoye.
The business partnership with Konvict Muzik, Akon’s record label, was announced with the release of the remix version of the up-tempo hit song “Chop My Money”, which featured Akon. Fans were pleasantly surprised with the release of a remix of “Beautiful Onyinye”, which featured hip-hop heavyweight Rick Ross. This was only to be the start of P-Square’s ‘invasion’ of the international music scene.
Despite all the success, the duo admit that they still encounter challenges in the industry. Piracy remains a major risk in their line of business, despite the progress in minimizing piracy risks in the digital platform.
“From last year to now, the only thing that must have changed is the digital aspect of our music since the establishment of IROKO, which, I think, is paying off now,” says Peter.
The London-based head of IROKO, Jason Njoku, is playing a critical part in changing how Nigerian entertainment is paid for and distributed. Recently, Tiger Global, a $9 billion private equity fund, injected $8 million into IROKO to support the distribution of Nigerian entertainment in the digital platform. Industry players such as Obi Asika believe that with such resources the Nigerian entertainment industry will dominate the entertainment scene.
P-Square’s music could also be buttressed by the recent developments in the distribution of Nigerian entertainment. The establishment of COSON—Copyright Society of Nigeria—is perhaps the first step government has taken to protect intellectual property rights. The brothers believe that the body alone will not succeed in moving the industry forward, for COSON to succeed, the government should put in place enforcement policies for infringements.
“Government should have penalties. People pirating our work should go to jail or pay damages and things will change” says Peter.
The twins believe that the success of the body also depends on the collaboration amongst artists. However, collaborative efforts in the past have failed because such efforts are often viewed with suspicion.
“If P-Square decides to call everyone to make things happen, people will think that we have a particular interest. We tried and people got the wrong impression. There was a time when we wanted to organize a body to engage government but the young guys decided not to be part of the body. They thought that there was money that government had put up and we are creating the body to collect it. We had to step out,” says Paul.
In the absence of collaboration within the industry, the duo is taking matters into their own hands; rather than relying on others to solve their intellectual property infringements they continue to up the ante in the high stakes game. Previously, they relied on the ready-made sales system in which distributors paid royalties upfront. This model won’t work as they continue to spread their wings outside Nigeria, where there is infrastructure to monitor royalties.
P-Square have signed a deal with Universal Music South Africa. According Jude Okoye, P-Square’s brother-cum-manager, the distribution deal with Universal Music covers previous, current and future albums both on the digital platform as well as hardcopies. Lindelani Mkhize of Universal Music and the mastermind behind Joyous Celebration, the successful gospel group in South Africa, was enthusiastic about the deal describing it as Universal Music’s first mark of its “…commitment to the African continent ”. Peter’s statement at the signing of the deal sums-up what this deal holds in store for the future: “P-Square have managed to sell millions of albums, especially in Africa, through their individual efforts. By teaming up with Universal Music, we are now ready to take our music and our brand to the next level”.
The deal is certainly the culmination of a musical journey that has taken the twin brothers from the dusty street of Jos to the world.

Twins Want To Tower Over The World Stage

Like many 21-year-olds, Chibundu Onuzo is nervous about her exam results. The Nigerian-born-and-bred Onuzo has just finished her final year of a history degree at King’s College, London. Her favorite place? The British Library in London.
The sense is, though, that she is not just killing time before fighting her way into the scrum of graduate jobs because Onuzo has already been recognized as one of the brightest literary talents to emerge from Africa in recent years. Her début novel, the Spider King’s Daughter, is a love story that sees the privileged, fenced-off world of Nigeria’s wealthy collide with poverty, as the teenage daughter of a rich family enters into a romance with a street hawker. In many ways it a well-worn love story, albeit one with a unique flavor.
“It’s the setting that gives every love story a context. I don’t think that can be taken away from the story. The background shapes their relationship,” says Onuzo.
That background is the teeming, sweaty, lunatic megalopolis of Lagos. Nigeria’s commercial capital, home to 20 million souls, who seem to live at a pace and density unlike anywhere else in the world. Every inch of the city, which sprawls across damp islands, heaves with life. It rises into skyscrapers and dives into battered, corrugated iron shacks. It is a place that has a unique intensity of detail, clogged with traffic and the fumes of thousands of diesel generators that take the place of a national grid.
“What I like about Lagos is the chaos,” Onuzo says. “[State Governor] Fashola would not be pleased. There’s a creativity. You just feel people are&#8230; I don’t know&#8230; You just feel people are expressing themselves.”
Onuzo has lived in Britain for the last seven years. The distance from the exhausting grind of Lagos has given Onuzo a sharper focus on her hometown.
“My Lagos is a very specific Lagos. I’m writing from memory. I went back while I was writing it but I wasn’t living there. The things I was looking for were very specific. I was writing about hawkers and that was where my eyes were trained on. It’s a specific Lagos, a slice of what I’ve seen,” she says.
The protagonist’s role, as one of the young men and women who dart between cars in the city’s gridlock to sell water, ice-creams, belts, ties and cheap plastic goods straight out of cargo containers from China, was cemented by an early experience.
As a child, Onuzo was encouraged to enter an essay competition by her mother and went to visit a young hawker.
“She was a child, 16 or 17. What struck me was that she didn’t seem to have any more prospects. She could look forward to the next five or 10 years of her life, that was what she could see herself doing. It just felt like a total waste, someone who is so young. It stayed somewhere in my mind,” says Onuzo.
Lagos’ socioeconomic inequalities form the backdrop to the romance, the great divisions between the rich and the poor—and the politics of inequity—are central to the narrative. Onuzo did not set out to write a political novel, but politics in Nigeria is unavoidable for those with education and a voice.
“Oh yeah, because politics is why you don’t have lights. It’s why you don’t have working water. I mean, here [in London] you have your basic commodities or whatever you need. When you wake up [in Nigeria] there is a constant reminder that the political system has failed you in everything you see. So that’s why it’s very close to the skin,” she says.
“I know there are a lot of other African writers who have reacted against the pressure to be the political voices of their time, like the greats—Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, they were involved in their writing. They were engaged every day in writing polemics about Nigeria. There is a new generation of African writers who say ‘look, we want to write about other things&#8230;’ For me, I think it’s hard to avoid writing about Nigeria without talking about politics.”
Achebe and Soyinka, both defining voices of their generation and great political authors, cast long shadows on Nigerian and African literature. The pair are the yardstick by which other writers are measured, even though the context that they worked in is no longer the Africa that the current generation recognizes. The tyrannies of colonial rule, then the civil strife and military coups of the post-colonial era have given way to new disappointments and new hopes. However, the overriding pessimism and despair, that is a feature of the Nobel laureates’ canon, is hard to escape.
“They had such dreams, such high hopes after independence. You had the civil war and everybody said ‘what is this?’ Coup after coup. And then, you can understand why they just kind of give up,” Onuzo says.
“I’m 21, I’ve only been politically conscious for what— four years? And some of my peers have already given up hope in Nigeria. I can understand Achebe. After 40 years you can kind of cut him some slack for going: ‘This country!’ But yes, they were all optimistic at [the dawn of] independence in 1960. Every generation starts off with hope.”
2010 saw Nigeria celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence with a fanfare and promises of its future greatness. The significance is muted for this young generation.
“I’ve not been alive for 50 years. “The Nigeria I know has been worse than it is now&#8230; People from my generation might be more hopeful. They are not seeing Nigeria from a 50-year period. They are seeing a 12-year period [since the transition to democratic rule in 1999]. There was a time in Lagos where there were strikes. I tell people I didn’t grow up in a war zone but I saw dead bodies on the side of the road when I was a child. Things have gotten better, slowly, and certainly not fast enough, but they have,” Onuzo says.
“There’s a different bad guy now,” she adds. “The military guys are gone, or at least they’re all wearing civilian clothes now. So you know, it’s a different fight.”
Politics, though, is her personal interest. Onuzo insists that she feels no pressure to write polemic, or to be worthy. She understands, she says, that being African, a woman and a writer means that she will become known as an ‘African female writer’—that typecasting is a necessary evil of getting published and shifting copies.
African contemporary literature does not, as a genre, have the same level of global recognition as, for example, writing from the Indian subcontinent, but that is changing as more stories from the continent become told, according to the Zimbabwean-born publisher and deputy editor of Granta Magazine, Ellah Allfrey. Much like Indian and Pakistani writing, which burst into bookshops in the West, becoming “less foreign” for consumers. The worthier, more literary authors blazed a trail for others, which allowed others to find markets for more commercial work or genre fiction.
“If you have more writers from Africa or the diaspora being published, you are going to get more stories,” Allfrey says. “You can’t solve the problem with any kind of prescriptive way. You can’t say you can’t write about child soldiers, because actually Africa has child soldiers. We have poverty. We also have these other stories. What I always say is that I’m waiting for the African sex and shopping novel because then I know that we’ve arrived. Because then we’ve moved away from that quite, highbrow literary style.”
“Publishers and editors have a large role to play,” she adds. “It means publishers being braver, and trusting the fact that the readers are smart and want more, and the readers wanting more of these stories, having access to more of these stories. But also the writers themselves saying ‘this is what I want to write, so here you are’.”
International agents are, she says, starting to recognize the potential market for African literature and are “hovering up” writers.
For the time being, the success of writers like Onuzo is an important marker.
“She was just spotted as this amazing talent and that was because nobody had read this love story set in Lagos before,” Allfrey says. “That’s the great advantage that African writers have, that there are a whole bunch of stories that readers in the English language haven’t read and so agents and publishers want to pick those up.”
Onuzo’s next book begins in the troubled Niger Delta, with its protagonists moving, of course, to Lagos—“just because Lagos is Lagos. There’s definitely enough to keep me in stories for at least five books,” she says.
For the time being, she is trying to avoid the sense of having made it as a writer.
“It sounds so terrible. I’ve made it at 21. What am I supposed to do next? I’ve written a book, and by no means a perfect book. A very first novel book. There are a lot of flaws in it. I’m just starting out.”
In the meantime, there are exam results to collect.

Tag: Nigerian

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Taking A Swing At The Boys Club

Twins Want To Tower Over The World Stage

Young, Gifted And Angry