Ben Okafor: singing for justice

Ben Okafor is an internationally renowned singer songwriter whose fight against injustice has led to his invitation to play at Gleneagles, outside this summer's important G8 summit in Scotland. A few weeks later, he will be performing in the diocese at a special service in Reading to mark Racial Justice Sunday. Rebecca Paveley spoke to him.

Ben has lived in the UK for 25 years but he can still remember very clearly his shock at arriving in a country where he felt that to have a strong faith made him the ‘odd one out’. He grew up in Nigeria, where faith – whether Christianity or Islam – was taken extremely seriously.

 ‘If you didn’t believe in God, you were seen as of dubious character. Everything depended on it, like people’s ability to trust you, for example.

‘So when I came to the UK in 1979, and I found it was the other way round here, that it was people of faith who were seen as slightly odd, then that was a real eye opener,’ he says.

He arrived in the UK determined to do more with his music. He was already well known in Nigeria but he wanted more than that. ‘I had dreams of writing songs that would compare with those of some of the best singer song writers in the world, so I came to the UK to do it.’

He had a place to study at a Bible College in Birmingham, and stayed there for a year, but he found it difficult to accept some of what he was being taught. He says he challenged the ‘social and political aspects’ of what he was being taught, but his own faith never faltered.

‘For me, it was only 10 years since the civil war in Nigeria which changed our whole way of life, and really affected my home and the area where my family lived, and I felt the church didn’t try to deal with the injustice and brutality that was out there. I didn’t lose my faith, I felt that God was right and the Church was wrong.’

He left college and was influenced by a friend into working for Youth for Christ, after spending a summer surviving on boxes of Cornflakes because he had so little money. A military coup in Nigeria had led to the stoppage of all international currency remittances, so Nigerian students all over the world found themselves in dire financial straits.

But it wasn’t long before Ben went back to his music, joining a band in Birmingham called (and he laughs at this point) The Blazing Apostles.

‘I played gigs with them for about a year, but then I decided to go out on my own.’

He ended up moving to Malvern after his first marriage broke up. He later married again and now has four daughters, whom he describes as ‘absolutely wonderful’.

His passion for music is motivated by his fight for justice, and his style moves between African reggae and classic folk protest songs. He does work  for the Coalition to stop the use of Child Soldiers, and is planning a tour this autumn around the UK and overseas to raise money for their work.

Many people think his music is ‘too worthy’, he says, and it would be a relief in some ways to write some ‘happy stuff’.

‘It is one of those things where I wish I could work myself out of job, write other music, but I haven't had cause to yet. My motivation for my music comes from God.
‘When I first went to South Africa, when apartheid was still very much in place, when Nelson Mandela was still in jail, I understood how Jonah must have felt when he refused to go to Nineveh.

‘I didn’t want anything good to happen to white South Africa, I wanted the whole country taken apart. I felt that part of me was resisting doing gigs in places away from the black townships where I was playing. I felt proud of myself for my positive discrimination but then I began to feel I was being ridiculous, that God wanted me to play to a white audience too.

‘The first gig I did in a white establishment, it was a Hard Rock café, people queued for three hours to get in. In the end I did three gigs that day to accommodate everyone who wanted to come. It was then that the scales dropped from my eyes and I realised people in South Africa were hopeful of change. They were scared, but they wanted it anyway.

‘There is a feeling of both discomfort and of exhilaration that comes from knowing there is something bigger than you willing you to go on.’

He is passionate about his fight for justice. It has led him to write to Bob Geldof, to Gordon Brown and to Lambeth Palace to urge them to fight not only for debt relief but for education and the inspiration of the young of Africa.

‘I feel very strongly that we need to inspire the young and say this is your place, come on. That if  we don’t say your language, your ideas are just as good as those of the West, we won’t be able to change anything permanently. Aid and debt relief won’t do it on their own.’

Ben has four albums available, all of which can be ordered through his website www.roadsweeperrecords.co.uk or catch him performing on Racial Justice Sunday, 11 September at Reading Minister. A gig will follow, details to be arranged. A play of Ben’s teenage years during the Nigeria-Biafra war, called Chukwudebelu - preserve of God, will be broadcast on Radio 4 at 9pm on 24 June.