The Ofege Afro-Rock Band emerged from an unlikely setting for one of Nigeria’s memorable rock groups of the 1970s: St Gregory’s College in Lagos. Its musicians were still secondary-school students when they began developing the songs and performances that would eventually take them into professional recording studios and produce Try and Love, their celebrated debut album released in 1973.
Their youth remains one of the most striking parts of the story, but it should not overshadow the music. Ofege appeared during an extraordinarily creative period in Nigerian popular culture, when musicians were combining rock, funk, soul and African rhythmic traditions in ways that challenged any simple definition of what Nigerian popular music should sound like.
The band ultimately produced four albums between 1973 and 1978. Decades later, those recordings gained another international audience through collectors, reissues and renewed critical attention.
Ofege Afro-Rock Band Beginnings at St Gregory’s College
Ofege’s story began at St Gregory’s College in Obalende, Lagos, in the early 1970s.
Melvin “Noks” Ukachi and Paul Alade were at the centre of the group’s formation. The two boys spent free periods experimenting with guitars, rehearsing and developing songs while other students pursued more conventional school activities.
Their earliest musical partnership operated under the name Hitch Hykers. As their ambitions developed, the group expanded. M-Ike Meme became the drummer, while Dapo Olumide joined on keyboards. Ofege subsequently developed into a school band whose members combined their education with an increasingly serious interest in music.
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The musicians were exceptionally young. The beginnings of the group went back to their early teenage years, and by the time Try and Love appeared, the musicians were still in their mid-teens.
Their development coincided with a period when Lagos was alive with different musical influences. Nigerian musicians were hearing international rock, soul and funk while responding to local groups and to the enormous cultural force of Fela Kuti and the emerging Afrobeat movement.
Ofege belonged to that wider musical environment, but its sound followed its own path.
From School Rehearsals to EMI
The transition from school musicians to recording artists was anything but conventional.
The teenagers first approached Decca West Africa in search of a recording opportunity but were unsuccessful. Their fortunes changed when they came into contact with EMI and producer and A&R figure Odion Iruoje.
Iruoje was an important figure in Nigerian popular music during the period. He recognised the potential of the young musicians and worked with Ofege as they moved from enthusiastic school performers towards the discipline required in a professional recording studio.
The experience linked the teenagers directly to Nigeria’s established recording industry. Ofege may have begun as a schoolboy band, but the records that followed were created within the professional music infrastructure of 1970s Lagos.
In 1973, EMI released Try and Love.
For the young musicians, the transformation was dramatic. They returned to school not simply as boys who rehearsed together, but as recording artists whose music was circulating among Nigerian listeners.
Try and Love: Eight Songs from Teenage Lagos
Try and Love contained eight tracks:
“Nobody Fails”, “Whizzy Ilabo”, “Gbe Mi Lo”, “Try and Love”, “It’s Not Easy”, “Ofege”, “You Say No” and “Lead Me On”.
The record moved between energetic rock and funk passages and more reflective songs about love and youthful emotion. Those contrasts helped give the album its distinctive character.
One of its best-known tracks, “It’s Not Easy”, featured lyrics by bassist Paul Alade. The song’s gentle emotional quality stands apart from some of the harder-edged guitar passages elsewhere on the album and has helped it reach new listeners decades after its original release.
Another important part of the recording was the involvement of Berkley Jones, the accomplished guitarist associated with BLO, one of Nigeria’s important rock groups of the period. Jones contributed lead-guitar work to the album.
His involvement placed Try and Love within a larger Nigerian musical network. Ofege’s members were extraordinarily young, but they were recording in an environment populated by experienced producers, musicians and bands already developing distinctive Nigerian approaches to rock and funk.
The Sound of Nigeria Beyond Afrobeat
The history of Nigerian music in the 1970s is often told internationally through Afrobeat, particularly the enormous influence of Fela Kuti. Afrobeat was crucial, but it was not the only important musical development taking place.
Nigeria also had a thriving rock and funk scene.
Bands including BLO, The Funkees, Monomono and Ofo the Black Company were part of a generation experimenting with electric guitars, psychedelic textures, funk rhythms and African musical ideas.
Ofege emerged within this environment.
Carlos Santana was among the prominent international influences associated with the group, while Led Zeppelin, The Funkees and Ofo the Black Company formed part of the musical world surrounding the young musicians.
The result was not simply Western rock reproduced in Lagos. Ofege’s recordings combined international rock vocabulary with the rhythms, musicianship and cultural energy of Nigerian popular music.
The Ofege Afro-Rock Band consequently occupies an important place within Nigeria’s Afro-rock, psychedelic-rock and funk traditions.
The group’s music illustrates just how varied Nigerian popular culture had become during the decade. Afrobeat existed alongside highlife, rock, funk, soul, reggae and several other musical forms, creating one of the most diverse periods in the country’s modern musical history.
Four Albums Between 1973 and 1978
Ofege’s story did not end with its famous debut.
The group produced four principal albums during the 1970s.
Try and Love, 1973
The debut established Ofege while its members were still students and remains the group’s best-known recording internationally. Its mixture of psychedelic guitar, funk, soul and youthful songwriting established the foundation of the band’s musical reputation.
The Last of the Origins, 1976
Ofege returned with its second album in 1976. By then, the musicians were older and their musical approach had developed considerably.
The album contained “Ofege in Concert”, a track that became associated with the group’s later discography. It was part of The Last of the Origins, rather than a separate studio album.
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Higher Plane Breeze, 1977
Released in 1977, Higher Plane Breeze pushed the group further towards funk and other contemporary sounds while retaining the guitar-centred character associated with Ofege.
The record demonstrated how much the musicians had developed since the youthful sessions surrounding Try and Love.
How Do You Feel, 1978
How Do You Feel followed in 1978 and completed Ofege’s principal four-album recording catalogue of the decade.
By this stage, changing musical fashions were increasingly visible in the group’s work. Funk, disco and other sounds that were becoming prominent during the late 1970s helped shape the album’s musical direction.
Taken together, the four records show that Ofege was far more than a one-album teenage curiosity.
School, Touring and the End of the Band
Ofege’s achievement becomes even more remarkable when placed beside the ordinary demands of teenage life.
The musicians were recording and performing while completing their education. They experienced the unusual combination of preparing for examinations while also becoming recognised recording artists.
Their performances took them beyond their Lagos school environment, including appearances in other parts of Nigeria.
But the circumstances that created Ofege also contributed to the end of its principal recording period.
As the musicians completed their education, their lives moved in different directions. Some travelled abroad, while others pursued professional careers away from music. By the end of the 1970s, the group’s main recording period had effectively concluded.
Melvin Ukachi later returned to music as a solo artist, but Ofege’s most important collective recordings remained associated with the extraordinary period between 1973 and 1978.
Paul Alade, the bassist who had helped start the group with Ukachi, later lived in the United States. He died in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. His death brought renewed attention in Nigeria to Ofege and to the remarkable group of schoolboys who had entered the country’s music industry almost half a century earlier.
Rediscovering Ofege Decades Later
For many years, Ofege’s original records became increasingly difficult to find outside specialist collections.
That scarcity eventually contributed to a new chapter in the band’s history. Growing international interest in West African rock, funk and psychedelic recordings brought renewed attention to Nigerian groups whose work had received comparatively limited exposure outside Africa during the 1970s.
Ofege became part of that rediscovery.
Collectors searching for rare African records helped introduce albums such as Try and Love to new audiences. Reissues and digital distribution subsequently made the music easier to hear without having to locate scarce original Nigerian pressings.
In July 2022, Strut Records reissued Try and Love. The remastered edition brought the debut to another generation of listeners and accompanied a broader revival of interest in Nigeria’s 1970s rock movement.
In May 2023, Pitchfork reviewed Try and Love, further introducing Ofege to international listeners interested in psychedelic rock and African popular music.
This international revival represented a second life for recordings that had originated in Nigeria decades earlier. Ofege had already attracted attention among Nigerian listeners during the 1970s. Reissues allowed that history to travel much further.
Why Ofege Matters in Nigerian Music History
Ofege’s importance cannot be reduced to the novelty of teenagers making records.
Their career demonstrates how musically diverse post-Civil War Nigeria had become. Lagos musicians were absorbing sounds arriving from Europe and the United States while interacting with powerful musical movements developing at home.
Electric rock, funk, highlife, soul, Afrobeat and psychedelic music could exist alongside one another.
Ofege stood at one of those intersections.
The group also shows that Nigeria’s recording industry possessed enough professional depth for secondary-school students with talent and determination to enter a studio system that included established producers and accomplished musicians.
Odion Iruoje’s involvement and Berkley Jones’s contribution are therefore important parts of the story. They demonstrate how the teenagers became connected to a wider professional musical community.
At the same time, Ofege retained the energy and emotional directness of young musicians discovering what they could achieve. Love, uncertainty, ambition and experimentation gave Try and Love an identity that survived changing musical fashions.
Conclusion
The Ofege Afro-Rock Band emerged from St Gregory’s College in Lagos and became one of the most unusual success stories of Nigeria’s 1970s popular-music scene.
Beginning with Melvin Ukachi and Paul Alade, the school group developed into a professional recording act while its members were still teenagers. With EMI producer Odion Iruoje playing an important role in their development and Berkley Jones contributing guitar to their debut, they released Try and Love in 1973.
Three more albums followed before the decade ended: The Last of the Origins in 1976, Higher Plane Breeze in 1977 and How Do You Feel in 1978.
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Their story reveals a Nigeria whose musical culture was far broader than any single genre. Afrobeat was transforming popular music, but rock, funk, soul and psychedelic experimentation were flourishing alongside it.
More than half a century later, Try and Love still carries the sound of that period: ambitious Lagos teenagers absorbing the music around them and creating something that became part of Nigeria’s cultural history.
Author’s Note
Ofege’s story is ultimately about more than talented schoolboys making records. It captures a period when Nigerian popular music was remarkably open to experimentation and when young musicians could draw from both local and international influences while creating music rooted in their own environment. The four albums Ofege produced between 1973 and 1978 remain valuable reminders of the richness of Nigeria’s rock and funk culture and of a generation whose creativity expanded the boundaries of Nigerian popular music.
References
Strut Records, “Ofege: Try And Love”, reissue documentation and interview material with Melvin Ukachi, 2022.
Christian Okpara, The Guardian Nigeria, “Ofege… Alade’s demise brings back memories of boy band that shook Nigeria’s music scene”, 25 April 2020.
Dave Segal, Pitchfork, “Ofege: Try and Love”, 15 May 2023.
Strut Records / Ofege, The Last of the Origins, catalogue and track listing.
Strut Records / Ofege, Higher Plane Breeze and How Do You Feel, catalogue documentation.
