In the past few years, Afrobeats has been on a global takeover. But as the Nigerian musicians who have become stars of the genre have gone bigger, brighter, and louder on international stages, fans back home have been asking an important question: “Why do we feel left behind?” After all, they have watched them perform all through the year abroad, only showing up to perform at home in December.
But that Birkin bag that Rema gave a fan during his 02 Arena show recently was the last straw.
The sentiment that Nigerian musicians give preferential treatment to fans in the West has been a hot topic on social media for months. This has manifested in many ways, but especially in how these musicians treat their home-based fans. Fans have raised everything from throwing jabs at Nigerians to not showing up at all to perform or coming very late when they do show up as evidence of this.
Kizz Daniel left fans at the 2022 Summer Amplified Show in disappointment. He was no-show despite being paid $60,000, according to that event’s show promoter. Sometimes it has been worse. In December 2024, Burna Boy kicked a fan who climbed the stage during the Greater Lagos Countdown Concert.
It is obvious that the global expansion of Afrobeats means that Nigerian musicians would have to spend months performing in Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Still, there are times when it has gone beyond that to something lacklustre at best.
In 2023, after the release of Work Of Art, Asake’s label, YBNL and distributor, EMPIRE, hosted a party for fans and industry insiders in Lagos. But the man of the hour, Asake, was nowhere to be found. It was the same case at his Lungu Boy Experience in 2024. Yhemo Lee, Poco Lee and several others who climbed the stage urged the crowd to make more noise to bring Asake out. But he didn’t show up.
“Imagine arriving at a show venue, and yet, three hours after the start time, the event hadn’t started. When the headlining artist finally got on stage, he didn’t spend more than ten minutes. He left, and the show ended abruptly and immediately,” James, a concert goer in Lagos, said about his experience attending a Seyi Vibez show last December.
With the influx of the dollar into Afrobeats, it is easy to begin to “follow the money,” and neglect the naira, but that local fans are the bedrock of Afrobeats cannot be overstated. They packed the early shows in Nigeria, pushed the music when no one was watching, and created the first viral moments.
“In January 2023, after the Detty December of 2022 and festivities, I stayed back in Lagos with my cousins because of a Burna Boy show. But we waited for hours, almost three, before he took the stage. Worse still, he publicly scolded the crowd, telling us we were lucky he showed up,” Timilehin described his experience at Lagos Love Damini in 2023. “I felt bad and felt he [Burna Boy] didn’t deserve our money. Before then, I used to admire his cockiness as part of his aura. Now, it’s nothing more than stupid arrogance to me,” he added.
This is less the case when Burna Boy performed abroad.
Smeezy Ose, a talent manager, who has been to his shows in Nigeria and abroad, said, “ I was at his Wembley Stadium and Coop Arena shows. The difference between the shows in both locations is that he kept to time here [in the UK]. The venues here don’t even operate till dawn. He had no choice. There’s also more respect for the audience here. My biggest takeaway is the event organisation. It’s always completely different from what I have seen in Nigeria.”
For fans in Nigeria, the sparsity of the shows has also been a problem. While stars like Wizkid and Davido perform in multiple cities in the US and UK in a year, back home many A-list concerts rarely go past Lagos and Abuja, leaving fans outside major cities dry.
But rising acts like Llona and Dwin, the Stoic are filling this vacuum. These artists have performed in places like Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Ife, Kogi. But in these early days, it’s not very clear how profitable those shows have been.
Music journalist and A&R Joey Akan argues that they “are doing it at a loss, and not all people can stomach losses.”
He continued: “The background for all of these is that artists are businessmen. They always focus their energy on places where they are paid and get the most money from. If their product, which is music, is in demand in certain markets, they’ll focus on those places, and that’s what we have been seeing.”
But he added that engaging fans across the country is very important for musicians if they want to remain on top. “You need hype, PR and all the things that’ll build value into the art and disseminate it. But the big artists haven’t treated the Nigerian fans properly; they aren’t even trying,” he said.
He also believes that things will likely not change if the unique infrastructure problems of being a musician in Nigeria are not fixed. “The challenges they have to deal with locally when they come to work and perform, they don’t have to deal with them out there. Insecurity is a big problem here. We don’t have venues to perform too. It is what it is,” he said.
But as the industry miraculously waits for an infrastructure that’ll let it thrive, its artists and executives need to work on better serving fans across the country.
