If anybody had told Casey Edema that he was going to be a millionaire before the end of 2010, he probably would not have believed it. But thanks to the Glo Naija Sings contest and the quality of his vocal chords, Edema, fondly called Casey, is now a millionaire. He gained his new status as the winner of the second Glo Naija Sings contest penultimate week in Lagos.
To Casey, being the winner of the competition and becoming a millionaire in the process is still like a dream from which he doesn’t want to wake up from, at least not immediately.
“I know I have got N15m; that I am a Glo Ambassador; that I have a car; and that everybody knows me now, but to be honest with you, it has not yet really dawned on me fully. Everything is still normal, but the only difference is that my phone call and text messages have increased. I know if I take a walk, people will recognise me but it’s still normal,” he says.
The 28-year-old has every reason to feel on top of the world. This is a young man, who has seen the rough side of life, whose education was almost cut short because of lack of funds. Now, the future, which was potentially bleak a few months back, appears bright again.
“I will say I was born into a comfortable family, but it wasn’t like that all through. At a certain point, things changed; things got a bit worse, a bit shaky. When I was much younger, it was okay. My dad was working and my mum too. Things changed from bad to worse when I completed my secondary school,” Casey says.
But no matter how rough things were, Casey says he didn’t lose hope.
He says, “I just had to cope with the way things were. I am the first son though not the first child. I just had to be strong for all of us. Those trying times affected the kind of person I am today in many ways. It helped sharpen me. I learnt certain things; I learnt that success is not a function of what you have or where you are right now. It’s first a mindset. I learnt that I could be anything I want. That period of difficulty taught me that no matter how dark, how long the road is, I should have hope that things will get better.”
Having that at the back of his mind, Casey says he continued to make himself happy by doing what he loved most – singing.
“I’ve always loved singing right from when I was a kid. I was a chorister at Christ Embassy,” Casey recalls.
In 1999, he felt this passion could be turned to a profession. “I started investing in it seriously. I got CDs and I started to get better. I just knew I had it; I’m a natural singer,” he said.
Knowing that being naturally gifted might not propel him to success, Casey decided to take up music during his higher education.
He says, “I was admitted into the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, where I got a diploma in music. I felt this was something I want to do later in life. I thought what I would be taught would directly affect my music in a way, but it was basically about theory. I was a science student initially and the only way to get a sound foundation in music was to get a diploma first.
“When we started lectures, I realised that it was a different thing and that it was all theory and I needed to learn the practical outside. So I decided to stop at diploma level and planned to travel abroad to get more education.”
His desire was almost impossible because of the state of the family’s finances.
Casey then decided to make good use of his God-given talent to put food on the table.
“Music was helping then because I used to go to studios to do backup for other artistes and they will pay me. I used to direct choir albums and it brought money,” he recalls.
Even as music was bringing in money, his family still felt music was meant for riff-raff and worked hard to discourage him from taking music as a profession.
“My family felt I should be thinking about doing more serious things in school. They felt that music was distracting me, but I knew it was not just something I was doing because I was lazy, but it was something I believed would assist me to go to school. My mum couldn’t see how music could help me, but she saw education as what I could use to get a job after graduation. But when she noticed that that was what I wanted to do, she had to give me her support,” he says.
With the support of his family and the desire to use the music platform to reach greater height, Casey started applying for every music talent show he heard of.
“I had actually participated in some competitions before I got into Glo Naija Sings. I was at the audition of the MTN Project Fame, but I only got to the second stage. I was in the BET competition that held during the year. I was looking forward to Nigerian Idols so I heard the audition was taking place somewhere in Ojota (Lagos). My friends and I decided to participate. When we got there, we were told it was the audition for Glo Naija Sings, but that we would need to come back another day,” he says.
He didn’t want to go back for the audition, but his friends encouraged him and told him to just give it a try.
“I did just that. But then, I didn’t hear from the organisers until after two weeks; I had even forgotten about it. One Sunday, I got a text message that I should be at the venue of Glo Naija Sings as I had been selected. That’s how I started and I just kept on until I was among the final 10 and then final three and now the winner,” he enthuses.
Since many fine babes were in the Glo Naija Sings academy, one would have expected Casey to have fallen for one of them.
But he says that idea did not cross his mind at all.
“It was not exactly because I had a girlfriend outside the house, but I felt this was a competition and I had to concentrate on it. I felt certain things would distract me; that certain things would throw me off balance if I do them. When I got into the competition, I told myself that I was not there to make girlfriends, but to make money; that’s what I wanted, not getting involved in frivolities. The girls were cool and some of them I knew before we even got into the house. I knew Boma before she came to the house. Ekeng and I had taken part in the BET competition. I also knew Najite before she came to the house,” he says.
Though now a millionaire, Casey says he will not dump his girlfriend.
“It is just like saying ‘I am married to my wife and because I get promoted, earn a bigger salary, then, I will go and take another wife’. It’s not done. So I am sticking to her whoever she is,” he says.
He believes he will be able to shoulder the responsibilities that come with fame and stardom.
“I just have to be optimistic and have faith. It’s not as if I am perfect or I have a manual that tells one how to handle fame, but I think I can shoulder the responsibility and whatever fame and money bring. I might not be the best of characters, but I try to be conscious of what I do, my actions; conscious of how I treat people everyday, conscious of what I say and that is what matters.
“When you consider the other person first or you consider how the other person feels, then things will be better. If I keep the right kind of friends, stay true to where I started from, remember how I started, then I will be calm,” Casey concludes.
Source:http://www.punchng.com/
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