•P-Square
Many were taken by surprise when Paul Okoye of P-Square recently made some claims, stating that his twin brother, Peter, had submitted a petition against him to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Responding, Peter stated that the petition was actually written against their elder brother and former manager, Jude, reports Saturday PUNCH.
This has brought to the fore that there is another rift between the brothers. Recall that the group had broken up and made up several times, with the latest being in November 2021.
In this piece, our correspondent uncovers the real reasons behind the latest fallout between the singers and brothers
The Jude Okoye angle
In the recent open letter addressed to his twin brother and posted on his Instagram page, Peter stated that Jude set up a company without their knowledge, and allegedly diverted funds there.
The epistle read in part, “Peter, Paul and Jude own a management company together called, Northside Entertainment, which we use to manage all of P-Square’s affairs. One day, I discovered another company with a similar name, but this one was called Northside Music instead of Northside Entertainment.
“This surprised me so I decided to investigate further and guess what? To my shock, the founders and directors of this secret company were none other than Jude Okoye and his wife Ifeoma Okoye and the registered address was the family home of Jude’s wife.”
He added that Jude had been diverting funds from their company to the secret company, which he owned with his wife, Ifeoma; while also stating that several payments were made to Paul from the account.
In his defence, Jude stated that the funds were a loan he owed Paul from the sale of his home in the United States of America.
However, this is not the first time Peter would call out Jude. In February 2016, he had taken to Twitter to disown Jude as their manager. He tweeted, “Please, whoever makes any transaction with Northside Entertainment or Jude Okoye on P-Square’s behalf does so at their own risk. #Warning.”
In another tweet, he said, “Peter and Paul have the right to sack the entire management team. Business is Business. #Period” “How can you run a business with no structure? Peter and Paul have the right to sack the entire management team. Business is Business. #Period.”
Wife/family drama
It has also been alleged that the rift between the two brothers had to do with their wives and family.
Back in 2013, when Peter got married to his wife, Lola, it was reported that some members of his family were not happy with his choice, particularly because she is nine years older than him, and is a Yoruba woman.
However, Peter has never been shy about his profession of love for his wife. On their fifth wedding anniversary in 2018, Peter wrote, “I remembered you gave me your official car a few weeks after we moved into Lagos and started dating. That was the first time in my life experienced a car with air-conditioning, and every night I would sleep inside the car. Thank you for my first air-conditioned car experience
“Maybe divorcing you to make you a baby mama will make some people happy and me unhappy; sorry, that is not our portion. ‘Tufiakwa’! Remember love sees no colour, love has no age limit nor race (sic). But one thing is sure, I am here to protect and defend you from all those insults.”
Showing signs that there were cracks in the extended family’s relationship, Paul had, shortly after the birth of his twins with his estranged wife, Anita, issued a warning to an unnamed lady, accusing her of making efforts to disrupt the peace between brothers. He wrote on social media, “Back to Naija. Don’t take my silence for granted…only a woman can come where brothers are working in peace and destroy it.”
In what is believed to be a response to Paul, Peter also wrote, “People who can’t stand to see the success of others will never experience their own.”
Reconciliation: Can Peter Obi do the trick?
Over the years, the brothers had quite a number of break-ups and make-ups, which have left some fans exhausted.
Shortly after Peter’s letter earlier in the week, the brothers got separate visits from the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, and fans are hoping his visit would yield positive results as regards reconciling the brothers.
Many billionaires, governors, celebrities and other personalities have tried to make peace between the brothers with little success.
Before and after P-Square
Both brothers have acknowledged that they made more money as P-Square than they did working as solo artistes.
However, even with their latest reunion, they did not record the kind of success they had in their earlier days. Their latest songs— ‘Jaiye (Ihe Geme)’ and ‘Find Somebody’— it did not have as many views as their past singles, especially on YouTube.
As P-Square, their songs usually had between 40 million views and over a hundred million views, but ‘Jaiye’ had only 11 million views. But as solo artistes, Mr P’s highest views on YouTube is the ‘Paloma’ music video featuring Singah, which had 36 million views; while ‘Follow My Lead’ featuring Wande Coal, had the lowest views of 601,000.
For Rudeboy, his ‘Ifia’ music video had the lowest views of 3.6 million while the highest viewership is for the song, ‘Reason With Me’, with 221 million views.
