Tribute to talented drummer-singer Willie Bestman

The sad reality of life is that we will all die. And one person who has faced that sad reality is extremely talented drummer and singer Willie Bestman who passed on in February.

Though it’s always being advocated that people should be celebrated while still alive, Bestman was not someone that could be fully or really celebrated while alive because he wasn’t so successful, and in a nation that celebrates only mainstream success, Bestman was swept by the side.

And that’s the paradox of life. By virtue of his immense music talent, he should have been well celebrated, but he wasn’t, and he should have achieved quite a lot, but he didn’t, maybe because he was blind.

And that’s another of life’s paradoxes. While blindness helped Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Cobhams become major league celebrities, it can be argued that blindness had the opposite effect on Bestman.

He wasn’t born blind, and when he related the story of how he became blind to this reporter many years ago in his Ojuelegba residence, his blindness is a mysterious occurrence.

According to him: “I was lying on my bed one day in 1997 when I felt a bang on my eyes. My wife was with me. I cried out in pain and I couldn’t see clearly again.”

That was in the evening. The following day, he and his wife went to an eye clinic “where it was diagnosed that my retina was detached. They said I would have to go to the United Kingdom to do the necessary operation that would restore my sight.”

Bestman then found himself in the uncomfortable position of many who needed more money than they could afford for medical intervention. “The fees for the operation were way far above what I could afford,” he recalls sadly.

One of the options always open to many such people has been a public appeal for help. “I couldn’t do that,” said Bestman. “It’s not a matter of pride, but I just couldn’t bring myself to go about begging for money. Maybe it’s because of how I brought up by my parents to always be responsible for myself and because I had always been fending for myself for a long time.”

Be that as it may, he let the opportunity pass him by. “Sometimes I do regret not having explored that option,” he admits, “but back then, I probably didn’t give it the extensive contemplation that I should have. I didn’t really want it, and I’m not sure I do even now.”

Insisting that he’s not being proud or stubborn, he said, “I just didn’t fold my arms doing nothing, however. I had always heard of people being miraculously cured of their ailments by pastors, so I went to them instead.”

Though his problem with his sight began in 1997, it was in the year 2000 that he lost it totally. Between ’97 and 2000, he kept calling on popular pastors who were reputed to cure ailments through miracles. And he had a bitter tale to tell about his encounters with them.

“All these pastors professing to do miracles are fakes,” he told this reporter. “I know because I was with them for a long time and nothing happened. I’m talking of two of the most popular ones. I would go to their church, they would attend to me, tell me to expect my miracle, and nothing. When I lost all of my sight, I finally stopped going to them. That was the confirmation that I was wasting my time.”

Bestman is gone now forever, and so also the music that was in him and all the decades that he put into music. He was born into a musical family: his mom was a pianist and his father played for a military band.

Easily admitting that he was rascally in his childhood, he began performing music by beating empty milk tins together on the streets of his neighbourhood. And he became so fascinated with the melody and rhythm of music that he decided on it as a career.

After his high school education and a short stint as an office worker, he turned to full-time music, joining a band and earning his living from music, even though the going was sometimes rough. Eventually, he quit the band because some of its members were always quarrelling amongst themselves and worst of all, one of them destroyed all the band’s equipments when he left it to join another.

The callous action made Bestman lose faith in the system and he embarked on a self-searching tour of several African countries. He spent about three years in Ghana, learning percussions at the Guy Warren School of Percussions, and returned to Nigeria after he felt optimistic again about its prospects.

It wasn’t long before disillusion with the Nigerian system set into him again so he joined up with a band headed out to France to set up base. Shortly into their France engagement, he had to return home once more due to the death of his mom, and he never left the shores of the country again.

Up until his death, he kept trying to break through in music, but his being blind really hindered his ability to hustle. In his words to this reporter: “I find it very difficult to move around. I cannot do so without the aid of people. If I had a car, it would be easier for me, but I cannot afford a car.”

Yet, he had a never-say-die attitude and kept believing there would be a change inevitably in his fortunes. “The thing about being a musician is that things can turn around for you at any point in time, at the point you least expect. That’s why they refer to us as overnight success. Today, you might go to bed a nonentity and tomorrow you wake up and your name is everywhere. I’m a very good musician, and I know I have it in me to take the industry by storm.”

Though blind, he was mostly by himself, and what he told this reporter of his family was: “I used to have my family here with me in Lagos but because I don’t have money to take care of them, my wife had to take my children to Calabar where things are easier for her as an indigene. I try my best to assist them as often as I can. My son, Daniel, is in the university now studying medicine and I have to struggle to cater for his educational needs.”

Now he’s dead, his struggles are over, and his dreams and aspirations as well.

Adieu, Willie Bestman.