48. Where is #Justice4Mohbad?

On Mohbad's sudden death, Afrobeats' complicit dark history and the public unravelling of a father.

It has been a year since 27-year-old rising star Ilerioluwa Aloba, popularly known as Mohbad, suddenly passed away in unclear circumstances. He was buried the next day on a vacant plot of land in Ikorodu, a hasty funeral on a rainy afternoon. This kind of swift interment of the dead is not unusual among the Yoruba if the deceased is young. Unlike the triumphant transition reserved for the elderly with pomp and pageantry, the death of the Yoruba young is done away with without celebration. Their parents and older relatives are usually exempt from active planning roles, as it is taboo among the Yoruba for bereaved parents to know their offspring's final resting place.

Mohbad's sudden death and brisk burial occasioned a sweeping uproar, particularly on social and mass media, as to the cause of his sudden death. His passing occasioned a spike in his fame, the ultimate and definitive promotion of his music. His modest discography began to trend on local and international charts, gaining more than 700 per cent increase in streaming numbers. A campaign hoisted with the hashtag #Justice4Mohbad yielded quick results.

His corpse was exhumed eight days after the burial for an autopsy, forensic analysis and a coroner's inquest. Expectedly, these processes should have preceded his hasty burial in any country where the rule of law applies. But the uproar following Mohbad's death demanded answers. As with all deaths perceived unnatural, a coroner's inquest was required to establish this.

The events preceding his death became of extraordinary importance and immediate scrutiny. Even though these events were within the remit of the coroner to determine, social media buzzed with hot takes, divisive opinions, rumours, myths, and conspiracy theories. It was a viral moment for the taking. Mohbad’s death and brief life became a rewarding topic for social media influencers, who took apart every event of the musician's troubled biography for talking points.

Mohbad's final days were eventful. In June 2023, he released his second and final project, an 8-track EP album, Blessed, released independently on his label, Imolenization Records. Supported with the hit single, 'Ask About Me,' an incantatory song rendered in battle-ready Yoruba with cryptic references to his difficulties with his former record label, Marlian Records, and label boss, Naira Marley. In the previous year, Mohbad left Marlian Records acrimoniously.  Mohbad was not calling a truce with his inflammatory quip, 'Iwọ lo maa fi ekole', which means you will leave Lagos. The ‘you’ in his remark is more accusatory than rhetorical.

Elsewhere on Blessed, his braggadocio waivered. He sings about an unrelenting dysphoria on 'Sabi', which begins, 'Won ni kin waa Baba to sabi/Ko wa w'ori mi kan to sasi'. The beauty of Mohbad's music is in his lyrical prowess, particularly in Yoruba. The daunting poetry of this opening salvo that boldly translates, "I have been advised to seek the counsel of a sage to fortify my destiny before it is tampered with", carries a specific paranoia entrenched in the Yoruba belief system that one makes one's destiny and that one's destiny—like any programme, machine, device and endeavour—can be altered by the malevolence of others.

Mohbad's future as a musician was bright. Even though he passed away three years shy of age thirty, he had carved a niche for himself in the propulsive street-hop subgenre of Afrobeats, which leaned heavily on older ethnic genres and tapped into vibrant contemporaneous Lagos working-class language, all within a framework similar to Hip-Hop ethos of tweaking templates bestowed by tradition to elevate contemporaneous experiences. Unlike the earlier practitioners of Street Hop, polarised in their use of varying tempos in different tunes to suggest themes of either dysphoria or debauchery, Mohbad insisted that these two tendencies were, in fact, sides of the same coin; that they co-exist. He could sing insouciantly about drugs, women and the fast life, bold acts of escapism that are also fleeting. He sang with a conviction that his dysphoria, though temporarily assuaged, was incurable. This sense, this essence, pervades Blessed, a wholesome experience about an artist's troubles, triumphs, growth and acceptance.

On June 27, 2023, Mohbad petitioned the Nigerian police about explicit threats to his life by Sam Larry and his lieutenants who disrupted the set of his promotional music video, 'Account Balance', a lively tune on Blessed which featured rapper Zlatan Ibile. Sam Larry, a well-known music promoter and associate of his former label boss, Naira Marley, was one of the agents of oppression that Mohbad publicly spoke about intimidating him following his exit from Marlian Records. Although Mohbad evaded that specific threat to his life, he sustained bodily injuries, and expensive filming equipment was damaged.

Whilst the coroner's inquest is yet to publish its findings, there are several incontrovertible facts about Mohbad's last days. Both his parents reported that he had a gig in Ikorodu on September 10, 2023, two days before he died. After the show, he had a violent altercation with his associate, Primeboy. His physical limb injuries were treated at his home by an unlicensed nurse who administered injections. It was described that he developed goose flesh and convulsed after these injections were administered by an unlicensed nurse, identified as Ms Feyisayo Ogedengbe. Mohbad was rushed to a hospital, where he was declared dead.

He was hastily buried thereafter, but the news of his death occasioned a public outcry. His body was exhumed. The police invited Naira Marley, Sam Larry and Primeboy. Alongside Feyisayo Ogedengbe, the previously listed individuals were persons of interest in the ongoing coroner's inquest charged with determining the cause of Mohbad's death.

Following the exhumation, pathologists at Lagos State University Teaching Hospital completed a post-mortem. The autopsy report considered the possibility of a fatal anaphylactic shock (drug reaction) in the absence of any significant post-mortem and toxicology findings. It also highlighted its limitation: markers for clinching a fatal anaphylactic reaction required that tissue and blood samples be taken in the immediate aftermath of the death. A post-exhumation post-mortem occurring ten days after Mohbad's death could not conclusively insist on a cause of death.

Expectedly, the hashtag Justice4Mohbad gave way to other light-hearted concerns, dance challenges, and comical video skits. However, the spectacle following Mohbad's death is a seemingly endless third act with several principal actors, led by Mohbad's dad, Joseph Aloba. Since his son's passing, Mohbad's dad has been on a tireless media run. He has kept the vigil of firing the coals of 'justice' for his late son.

Indeed, he has become both a media personality by proxy and a nuisance. Social media is awash with Mohbad's father wearing his son's clothes (he has denied wearing his son's clothes, noting that Mohbad bought him matching clothes). He released a tribute album for his son, Itunu (Comfort). His music is styled after the late gospel singer Baba Ara, known for his melodious monologues, sonorous call and response and digitally altered polyrhythmic tendencies often reminiscent of 80s Juju music. This music is promoted on Tik-Tok with short video snippets of Mohbad’s dad lip-syncing his songs on a white poster bed. He disputes the paternity of the late singer's surviving son and has petitioned a high court to obtain DNA samples from his son's corpse.

There have been allegations that Mohbad's son has no physical resemblance to him on social media. Mischievous folks have suggested that Sam Larry and a Lagos monarch share an unmistakable resemblance with Mohbad's son. In Nigeria, where paternity fraud is a pertinent concern, Mohbad's widow, simultaneously bereaved and nursing an infant, has been a scapegoat for cyberbullying. She ought to be shielded by her father-in-law, reveling in the tabloid spotlight and taking his talking points from a baying social media mob.

Joseph Aloba cuts the image of an unlikely villain. Recently, he was asked about his interest in his son's estate and his thoughts towards providing for his daughter-in-law on National TV. He quipped that Mohbad and his wife were not legally married. His interlocutors advised that customary marriage is recognised as legal. Mohbad's dad's testing exceptionalism persists as an episodic unravelling. He has rejected LASUTH's autopsy report, suing for an independent autopsy, which ostensibly will be crowd-funded. His GoFundMe fundraising campaign for #Justice4Mohbad, launched in December 2023, has raised more than half of its 50,000 dollars target.

Justice for Mohbad means different things to different people. That Afrobeats' teeming fanbase has systematically boycotted Naira Marley and his associates at Marlian Records is poetic justice. It is the first time in Nigerian music history that a record label is punished for its draconian conduct against their signees. Zinoleesky, Mohbad's former labelmate's career, has suffered inadvertently, an unfortunate case of being guilty by association.

Justice for Mohbad also means that the cause of his death is determined. This is a formal inquiry enshrined in law to the coroner's good office. The inquest would determine the cause of death following its proceeding.

Justice for Mohbad also means committing the remains of his body to Mother Earth, to which his father objects. Usually, a coroner's inquest does not prevent burial, except if there are suspicions as to the cause of death.

Justice for Mohbad should also mean that his loved ones can begin to heal and grieve his brief but impactful life (hopefully) in private.

And justice for Mohbad for his diehard fans is that unrelenting dysphoria accompanying his music, an impossible wish that his life was longer so that his talent would have shone brighter. And gratitude for the immeasurable gift he left us with—music.