Nigerian highlife star Flavour Nabania has disclosed a formative career setback involving the defunct duo P-Square, revealing how a public snub during his early years fuelled his determination to succeed.
The singer, born Chinedu Okoli, shared the account during a recent podcast interview. He described performing at a club when Peter and Paul Okoye, then performing as P-Square, arrived at the venue. According to Flavour, the venue manager interrupted his set and ordered him off the stage immediately to accommodate the arriving act.
Flavour complied, switching off his microphone and stepping aside. He recalled the crowd’s reaction shifting dramatically the moment Paul Okoye took the microphone and launched into “Temptation,” one of P-Square’s early hits. Women in the audience screamed and cheered wildly, a reception Flavour said he had never experienced during his own performances at the same venue.
The disparity prompted a moment of professional doubt. Flavour said he questioned whether the musical craft was fundamentally different, given the identical genre space both acts occupied. Rather than allowing the humiliation to derail his trajectory, he channelled the experience into a resolve to outwork his peers and maintain consistency.
“I didn’t let the experience discourage me. Instead, I took it as a motivation to work harder and now we are here,” he stated.
The anecdote underscores the often invisible struggles behind Flavour’s subsequent rise. Since the early 2000s, he has evolved from a church drummer and backup singer into one of Africa’s most enduring live performers, known for fusing highlife, Afrobeat, and contemporary pop. Hits such as “Nwa Baby (Ashawo Remix),” “Ada Ada,” and “Golibe” have cemented his status across the continent and its diaspora.
P-Square, meanwhile, dominated the Afro-pop landscape for over a decade before their initial split in 2017 and a highly publicised reunion in 2021. The duo’s influence on the generation of artists that followed, including Flavour, remains a reference point in Nigerian music history.
Flavour’s reflection arrives as the industry increasingly documents its oral history through long-form interviews, offering younger artists perspective on the resilience required to navigate structural gatekeeping. His account illustrates how moments of public rejection, while painful, can serve as inflection points when met with sustained creative output.
The singer continues to tour internationally and release new material, maintaining a reputation for rigorous stagecraft that traces back, in part, to the night he was asked to yield the spotlight.
