Alade Aromire Is Dead

The curtain fell suddenly, finally, on one of the leading lights and pioneer of Yoruba home video industry, Muyideen Alade Aromire. Aromire was the first Nigerian to own a vernacular pay television channel, Yotomi TV. He died on Friday night at the Soleye Hospital, Ikeja, after he was reportedly hit by a trailer along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. Aromire was said to be returning from the site of his new house along the expressway, which he had planned to move into on July 15. Prior to 1984, film lovers in Nigeria made do with cinema houses for their movie entertainment until Alade Aromire produced the first made-in-Nigeria home video titled ‘Ekun.’ The production of ‘Ekun’ on VHS format opened a new chapter in the evolution of home video film industry in the country. According to him, he borrowed N27,000 from his parents to produce that first movie. It was premiered at Super Cinema, Lagos in December 1984. The name, Alade Aromire, rings a bell in the Yoruba movie industry and television broadcasting. One of the second generation home video producers of the Yoruba extraction, Alade, as he was popularly called by his fans, was prolific. Before he disappeared from the scene a few years ago for reasons he described as "personal," the artiste told Sunday Sun that he had to his credit more than 200 films, including appearances. He bounced back on the entertainment scene with Yotomi Television, the nation’s first vernacular pay channel. His quest to improve on what obtains in the film industry took him outside to West Germany, as it was known then. In Cologne he enrolled at a Goethe College there originally to study their language, but while there, he discovered they ran a crash programe in film and television production specifically for foreign students and lectures were delivered in English. The course lasted three months. Afterwards, he was posted to Dutch Willlick Television Village on the outskirts of Dortmund. While at the place, he made up his mind that, if his hosts could run a television station based on their own dialect of Dutch language, he could do something similar when he got back to Nigeria. He returned and started Yotomi TV. By the time he died on Friday, a restless man, Aromire had made forays into real estate with his Yotomi Estate. He was a songwriter, scriptwriter and an entertainer. When nfc contacted Adebayo Salami (Oga Bello) he said he received the news with great shock. "I am really perplexed, infact I am really really disturbed, I don’t know what to say. As I am talking to you I am in shock. Alade was somebody everybody loved in the movies industry, he was very very innovative. For him to just die how is too painful. We are going to miss him". When probed further concerning the recent deaths in the entertainment industry, Salami said that it is because entertainers are popular. "People die in other sectors, but because we are in the eye of the public that is why people give it a spiritual connotation." Also Prince Jide Kosoko (President of the Association of Theatre Practitions, ANTP) said: "It is a shocking thing to have lost him to the cold hands of death at this stage. The man was too young to die at this moment, but what can one do?” “Alade pioneered home video in Nigeria. He was a focused man, who knows his onions. He was industrious and very friendly. He meant different things to different people. You know he was my brother I will really miss him greatly." When asked about the spiritual interpretation about the deaths in the entertainment industry he says "lawyers, drivers and other people to are dying. "There is no spiritual thing to it, man will die at his own time. I am only praying to God to give us long life."