How I Hit Gold In Comedy – Teju Babyface

Finding fame in the Liz Benson starred Nollywood classic ‘Diamond Ring’, Gbadewonuola Olateju professionally known as Teju Babyface advanced onto the comedy scene under the tutelage of veteran comedian, Ali Baba.

Indeed, his career enjoyed longevity and this is evident after he became one of the first comedians to land a talk show in Nigeria, The Teju Babyface Show.

Today his career’s trajectory leans towards society betterment. He is currently a United Nations Sustainable Development Goals ambassador for Nigeria, and also breaking new grounds in youth empowerment through his Teju Babyface Mentorship Academy.

In this chat, Babyface reveals his true passion, influence of technology in youth empowerment and future career plans. Enjoy it.

Growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, how would you say youths are differently empowered today?

My father said something like that to me, and that was a few years before he died. He said to me: ‘I wished you were more proactive, the opportunities your generation has; if I could go back in time, if I had a time machine I could be 40 now or even 50, you will see how a masquerade dances in its prime, meaning you will see how a man in his prime, how talent in its prime exhibits itself. You have so much opportunity, you have the energy of a young man that would do so much; you have the Internet, the phone, the connectivity’. At that time, I was 31 years old; I’m 38 now, so that was seven years ago. I will lean or stand on what my father said and go a bit further… I mean seven years ago we didn’t have Instagram and the other entire sort of things, things have progressed at a speedier rate in the days in which we live, so the opportunities that we have are awesome. It is instructive to note and point out that we will look back in another seven years and consider that we have moved much further ahead than we ever thought possible.

Social media is a huge part of our lives, do you think it has played a good or bad role in the lives of youths especially considering the fact that back in the days it was all about the book?

I’ve noticed that all forces of change are amoral; they are neither good nor bad. Take money for instance, money is neither good nor bad. Money molds self after the character of the person that holds or wields the influence or the power of money; social media is much the same thing. The same social media is used to do good by those who will do good and same social media can be used for more nefarious activities by those who will do them. We have to ask you what you are using your social media power and access for, I know what I am using mine for. We are pushing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals; we are pushing the Teju Babyface Mentorship Academy; all the things that make people better citizens.

Having a budding career in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the Internet wasn’t much of a thing…

Internet? There were no cell phones; we were using pagers.

How do you think the availability of platforms like Instagram would have impacted on your career?

Let’s use a few men who are comedians now or guys who are doing wonderful things on Instagram, I think it would be foolhardy for anyone from my generation to try to compete with them on that level as they do because that (Instagram) is their stage. We had to do the stage; we used to go to Motherlan’ where Lagbaja played every last Friday of the month. Ali Baba would take us – those of us who were training under him at the time: Basketmouth, I Go Die, Gandoki. Tee A was ahead of us anyway, he had graduated from the Ali Baba school, so that was our stage but these guys now have social media. This is to say that if we were to go back, perhaps social media would be our stage. You use the tools that are available to your generation at the time. We used the phone, we thought the phone was a big deal, I remember the day Basketmouth bought his GSM that didn’t even have caller ID, and we thought that was a big deal.

Are we expecting anything new from you soon?

You’ll see. I think we are at the cusp of lots of wonderful developments right now, I think this is… I’ve always heard that in the past three years with increasing frequency, but I think this is the best time to be alive, you need to discover your thing; having discovered your thing, you must know how to work your thing and give it to the world as we can see with the Teju Babyface Mentorship Academy; you must discover, develop and deploy now.

Tell me more about the Teju Babyface Mentorship Academy.

It was a coming together of many things I started to discover after a while, few years ago. The best expression of my gift wasn’t actually comedy.

Really! But that brought you into the limelight.

Something has to bring you to the party, in fact it wasn’t comedy that brought me to the party, I just stayed at the party longer with comedy. The person with whom I came to the party with or the entity with whom I came to the party with was acting. I came to the party with a film called ‘Diamond Ring,’ I just left ‘Diamond Ring’ at the party to go hangout with comedy and that I did for the longest time. A higher expression of my gift is impacting knowledge, hence, mentorship. I found that over the years I was good at collecting my thoughts, my experiences weaving wisdom around it and giving it to younger people