An orphan’s journey from Little Saints to music studio

 

Emerging gospel singer, Michael George (real name is Michael Omogberha), left the Lagos State University, where he studied business administration, in 2012 with a deep hunger for success.

But, unlike most young graduates of his age, Michael did not dream of fairy-tale conquests of the financial world. Instead, his thoughts focused on how to win more converts to his Christian faith through music.

The singer, who describes his kind of music as Call-to-Service, appears to be on the way to achieving just that. He has just released two singles titled Chioma and My God, ahead of a public presentation of his maiden album, scheduled to hold in November.

The forthcoming album is a 10-track affair titled Amen and aimed at telling a touching grace-to-grass tale of the singer. “It is like a testimony of what God has done in my life,” Michael says, in an interview with our correspondent.

The singer recalls that his brutal journey through life started when he lost his father at the age of six. He says, “Dad’s departure brought untold hardship to us. My mum could hardly cope with the burden of caring for the family. But, as young as we were, my siblings and I had to help out by hawking items by the roadside and doing other menial jobs.

“It got worse when my mother passed on in 2003. It was quite tough for a very young boy like me who had hoped for a very bright future and who, like every other child, would have wanted to grow up under the care of his parents.

“Somehow, before my mum’s death I was fortunate to be offered a scholarship through secondary school by an organisation that cared for widows and their families. I was still in secondary school when she died. The result was that I had to drop out of school.”

After his mother died, Michael says he lived with some of his older relatives. But the experience was far from being a happy one.

“I was very badly treated by these relatives of mine. At one point, my uncle’s wife kicked me out of her home. She was very hard on me. Sometimes I was forced to spend the night on the streets for fear of being beaten or wrongly accused of stealing things. One night, when I was out on the street hawking sweets to survive, I was arrested by some officials of the Lagos State Government who were on a raid and almost found myself in jail. But I took everything that happened to me as the harsh lessons of life,” the singer says.

All that unpleasant experience, he notes, is aptly captured in the forthcoming album.