British musician suffers electric shock at Lagos concert

By Osagie Alonge

A lovely night of beautiful music and live performance from the popular UK band The Invisible at the MUSON Centre put together by the British Council on Thursday, May 17, 2012 was cut short by an equipment malfunction causing the electrocution of the band’s lead member.

The exclusive concert, featuring the UK band and Nigerian music icon King Sunny Ade, was a prelude to the BT River of Music, ‘a weekend of free music from across the 204 Olympic and Paralympic nations to be presented at iconic sites along the River Thames on July 21 and 22, 2012.

The UK band had earlier featured in a panel discussion with legendary juju singer King Sunny Ade where they discussed about ‘River of music artiste collaboration’  between KSA and The Invisible, and the ‘heritage, influences and the contemporary’ in Nigerian music. The session was moderated by NET publisher Ayeni Adekunle.

The band then got on stage and jammed for about 20 minutes. Despite the poor sound quality, The Invisible still delivered a fabulous set for over 20 minutes with respected music producer Laolu Akins joining the quartet on stage to support on the congas, while they performed Blo‘s ‘Preacher Man’. Akins was a member of Blo, a Nigerian group that reigned in the 70s.

The band was waiting for highlife singer Wizboyy to step on stage when the lead guitarist and singer Dave Okumu was electrocuted by the strings of a bass guitar. Apparently, the musical equipment was not well setup and power not grounded.

Okumu screamed and collapsed, as his colleague pulled the guitar off him.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this in my life’, a shocked guest told us.

Guests were shocked to see Okumu fall to the floor but were relieved to see him recover minutes later as  crew members assisted him walk off stage just right after he gave out a cheerful laughter.

The show was cancelled and guests, disappointed, left the Agip Recital Hall reluctantly. The high profile audience included Yomi Badejo-Okusanya, Funke Kuti, Yinka Davies, Theo Lawson, Audu Maikori, Toni Kan, Akin Oyebode, Folake Ani-Mumuni, and others.

Sources say the equipment’s power supply was not well grounded and the resistance was quite low hence electric current passing through musical instruments.

The sound engineer, a certain Mr Emeka however insists that wasn’t true but could not determine what the problem was at that time.

Findings however show that the incident had happened twice during sound check but the degree of damage wasn’t severe then, and organisers thought the problem had been fixed.

I didn’t see what happened, I was backstage, preparing to come on later’, veteran rapper Weird MC who was billed to perform, told NET.

Okumu is doing fine, according to sources who spoke with us this evening.

UPDATE

The British Council have released a statement on the incident;

Dave Okumu has survived a life threatening electrocution whilst performing in Lagos, and is presently recovering in hospital in the UK. The band has cancelled all forthcoming engagements, and would like to thank everyone for their support and kind wishes.