Broda Shaggi is a Nigerian comedian, actor, singer and songwriter, and one of the few entertainers in the country whose face alone can make a room laugh before he says a word.
His real name is Samuel Animashaun Perry. He is 33.
He was born in 1993 in Ikenne, Ogun State, and he is a native of Sagamu, also in Ogun State.
He grew up in a house of four boys, and he was the first. His father taught drama, dance and music at Mayflower Junior School in Ikenne, and that is where the boy first saw a stage.
The stage did not stay friendly for long. His father died while Samuel was still in primary school, and the family could no longer afford Mayflower. He moved to Heritage Primary School, and later to Lagos, where he finished secondary school at Birrel Avenue Senior High School.
His father's work stayed with him. By the time he entered the University of Lagos to study Creative Arts, he was already performing, and he graduated in 2016.
Campus is where the comedy started properly. He did stage plays, and he did them under different names. Inspector Perry came first. Then Akani Ibadan. Then Lecturer Dele.
None of them stuck. The one that stuck came later, and it was the one he almost did not try.
The story he tells is that the polished, gentleman style was not working for him, so he went the other way, into the agbero style, the street boy with the loud mouth, the cracked voice and the fast feet.
The name for that character was Broda Shaggi.
Instagram is where he built it. Short skits, shot cheaply, posted often, and watched by people who saw somebody they knew from their own street.
His breakthrough came through a parody drama called Jesu in Mushin, and after that the audience stopped being a Lagos audience and became a Nigerian one.
From the phone he moved to the cinema. His film work includes Ghetto Bred, The Bling Lagosians as Shaggy, Aiyetoro Town as Bayonle, The Millions, Fate of Alakada as Kas, Namaste Wahala, The New Normal, Day of Destiny as Babayaro, Chief Daddy 2 as Omar, and Adam Bol as Snow.
Music came alongside the acting. He released the album Oya Hit Me Skits, Vol. 1 in 2019, and the EPs Fine Boy Agbero, Vol. 1 in 2019 and Weekend Vibe in 2020.
His singles include Ori, Bushman, Serere, Nor Nor, Bolanle, Toi Toi, Okoto with Zlatan, Amarachi with Johnny Drille, Cross My Lane with Falz, and Star with Asake. Oya Hit Me, a fusion of Afrobeat and Fuji, is the one that travelled furthest.
The awards followed the work. He won Best Actor in a Comedy at the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards in 2022, and he won again in 2023 for Inside Life, with a nomination the same year for Survivors.
He has also taken The Future Awards Africa prize for comedy, the City People Music Award for Comedy Act of the Year, and Best Online Comedian at the Maya Awards Africa.
There is a reason the industry keeps handing him trophies. Comedy in Nigeria is crowded, and most of it is a joke told well. His is a body doing the joke, a face that commits, and a voice you can pick out of a crowd with your eyes closed.
He is 33, he has been on the screen for less than a decade, and he already has a character, a catalogue and a shelf of awards.
The name Broda Shaggi was the fourth one he tried. It is the one that stayed, and it is the one Nigeria will remember.
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Editorial note: The writer of this article does not claim to know Broda Shaggi personally. The information regarding his background and career, as published on Global News Arena, is based entirely on independent internet research.
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