Manny Ita
Veteran musician and cultural advocate Dare Fasasi, popularly known as Baba Dee, has voiced strong concerns regarding Nigeria’s inability to derive significant economic value from the global success of Afrobeats. Speaking in an exclusive interview with The Nation today, January 17, 2026, the artist—who is the elder brother of the late music icon Sound Sultan—attributed the lack of financial return to a fundamental lack of structure and weak regulation within the domestic creative industry. He argued that while the genre enjoys unprecedented international visibility, the core economic benefits are being siphoned away by foreign entities.
”Afrobeats is not paying Nigeria because Nigeria is not structured,” Baba Dee stated during the interview. He highlighted the disparity between cultural popularity and financial ownership, noting that the most lucrative aspects of the music business, particularly publishing rights, are no longer in Nigerian hands. “All these big publishing of big Afrobeats music is owned by international companies. So with everything you are hearing, it is their percentage that is coming to Nigeria instead of the publishing itself,” he explained.
The veteran musician further criticized the absence of robust government oversight, which he believes has left local creators vulnerable to lopsided international deals. “The government cannot even regulate an industry like that for us,” he said, warning that without the immediate implementation of protective policies and enforcement, local stakeholders will continue to receive only a fraction of the genre’s global earnings. He stressed that while individual artists may achieve personal wealth, the broader Nigerian economy misses out on the “windfall” that should accompany being the birthplace of a global phenomenon.
Baba Dee’s critique comes at a time when Afrobeats is being celebrated as one of Nigeria’s most successful exports, yet his remarks highlight a growing anxiety among industry veterans that the country is repeating the historical mistakes of other genres, like Reggae, by failing to institutionalize and own the business behind the sound.
