Ambassador Felix Duke is the President of Creative Industry Group, an organisation that carters for the welfare of forgotten heroes in the creative industry. Duke spoke recently on his music career, his hospitality business and other issues. Have a smooth read.
The idea behind establishing Real Duke and Duchess Hotel.
As an entertainer and someone who is into hospitality business , I am into giving and putting lives together and supporting souls. Hotel business is something I have always looked forward to. That’s having a hotel and petrol stations. Though I don’t have a fuel station for now, but I am looking forward to that. I am doing other businesses.
Having a hotel and an event place where you can bring creative people together has always been a dream. This is a dream come true. We have done a couple of events here, different artistes have performed here and this is where we do our industry night every last Friday of every month. We are about to kick start this year’s industry night. That’s the reason behind having a hotel.
A lot of your colleagues cannot sustain themselves after their active years in music, but you have been doing well since you stopped music. Is this as a result of proper planning?
I have always had that business thing inside me and I have always known that I cannot play music forever . I have always looked forward to investing and I will tell you the bottom line is God. When you put God first in everything you do, he will lead you and fulfill what his words says, that the steps of the righteous are ordered by God. So, whatever I am today, is by his glory not by my power.
However, I have always been hard working and self reliant. It will surprise you that the music I have been doing has always been me alone and God. I was never signed by any recording company. I signed myself . My first album, ‘Walare’ was signed into FD Records since 1996. You can see that I have always been in business, thinking of business. I was the promoter, marketer and singer, everything out in one. I brought revolution into the music industry as well.
You were one of the best drummers during your days. Has the advent of digitalization in music affected the quality of music and made instrumentalist lazy?
Computer have made a lot of musicians redundant, reduce work force and have brought suffering to a lot of of instrumentalist. Most of them have resulted to playing at night clubs. Not all of them have the opportunity to play at night clubs because a lot of them are really suffering. Some of them play with other musicians and do live shows.
Has playing with the computer reduce the quality of music? No. It has rather improved the quality of music and the clarity of music. For the players, it has made a lot if musicians redundant
Back in the days, they were recording acoustic. Live recording and music is known for combination of music. Everyone will come together to produce a quality sound. The guitarist, drummer and others add their beats to make quality sound. The quality of music sound wise, is clearer and cleaner now.
A lot of people don’t know you are a man of God. People will imagine, why would a man of God play contemporary music and run a hotel.
First, hotel is a hospitality business. It depends on what you do in your hotel and how you handle your hotel. When I took over this hotel, I found out that a lot of under age were brought here and I stopped it. Every where in the premises, you will see where it’s written, ‘do not smoke or bring under aged’. It’s written in the rooms, at the reception and the bar.
Some of these guys came to me and said ‘we are paying and we have every right to bring in who we want. I told them no, that I don’t need that kind of money.
I stopped it. I don’t entertain that, neither do I collect such money. It’s dirty money, a lot of people allow things like that in their hotels but I have set the standard for doing good in hospitality business.
Back to the main question that as a man of God, I am not supposed to operate a hotel. Who is supposed to have a hotel?
A lot of churches have hotels, why should mine be different . It’s just that you have to set a standard in what you want in your your hotel.
You don’t bring under age, you don’t smoke here. If you’re caught smoking here, you pay a fine of ₦100,000. If you don’t pay, we arrest you. It’s even in the receipt. Those are the rules I gave set
But you allow alcohol?
The Bible never condemned alcohol. But you cannot drink and misbehave here, I will arrest you. You should drink responsibly, go into your room and sleep, that’s okay; but if you misbehave, I will arrest you. People get it wrong. A lot of Pastors drink alcohol but they don’t do it publicly. The bible also told us that you should take a little wine for your belly
The bible did not condemn you drinking alcohol but it depends on the kind of alcohol you drink. I don’t drink, neither do I smoke because I have taken myself as a king; lest you misjudge people. The bible says, give strong drink to those ready to perish, if you assimilate it; are you ready to perish. In every thing you do, you are answerable to God. I will not condemn people; but if I see you doing it too much, I will talk you.
Let’s look at the success stories of CIG and the lives you have touched
CIG was created as a welfare organisations to help those within the creative space. Over the years, we have touched lives and have done trainings in Lagos, Abuja, and Enugu, supporting people and training them in different fields. About three years ago, I was on Bisi Olatinlo’s station, BISCON TV. I was on air and somebody called from Abuja and thanked me for what CIG is doing. The person said the younger sister came for training and now she is baking from the house and able to take care of herself. We train people for free.
We have celebrated celebrities, those that people have forgotten. We went to dig out Ovuleria of the now rested New Masquerade TV series in Port Harcourt. We sent our Director of Events to link up with our chapter in Port Harcourt and they went to look for Ovuleria about four years ago before she died. We gave her an award, a cheque to take care of herself. We put her on our life and health insurance.
So we are looking for companies and individuals that can support us, so that we can pay for those that cannot afford the health insurance and give them free health and life insurance. We want to approach good individuals that will support this course. We can asked them to pay for 500 people and we will publish it and give credit to the company.
Let’s talk about the facilities CIG has to support the up and coming artiste
Over the years, we have been able to project a lot of our up and coming artistes. Any where we have events, we take them there to perform and do publicity. Last year, there was a Guinness festival in Trade Fair and some of our young acts went there and they performed . We are projecting them the best way we can.
Now we want to own our record label and begin to pick among them those we know are chat buster’s and we start releasing them . We are working on that. We are working on our distribution channels and a lot of other projects that can support up and coming acts and project them .
We also want to start our skits, give those into acting that have not had the opportunity. We want to start showcasing them on our platform. We give opportunities to people to write scripts and also performed skits which we will put up on CIG platform.
