Founder of Silverbird Group, Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, has stated that the 1983 military coup that ousted the government of President Shehu Shagari greatly affected his concert promotion business.
Speaking on Wednesday, in the Infrastructure Dialogue 2026 in Abuja, Murray-Bruce stated that the coup led to the collapse of his business.
He recounted how he built a growing concert promotion outfit between 1980 and 1983 after starting the business with a ₦20,000 loan borrowed from his siblings.
According to him, the industry was still at an early stage in Nigeria, with limited infrastructure, few media platforms, and little institutional support for entertainment ventures.
He explained that the turning point came with the military takeover in 1983, which, he said, disrupted business operations nationwide and effectively shut down his entertainment activities.
“By 1983, the military overthrew the government of Shehu Shagari. Once Shagari was overthrown, all hell broke loose. In those days, when a coup d’état occurred, the first thing they did was to cut off your phone. That was how they ruined my concert business,” he said.
Murray-Bruce added that the instability that followed the coup also worsened economic conditions, with foreign exchange challenges and rising costs making concert promotion increasingly unviable.
He said ticket prices rose sharply within the period, while audience turnout dropped significantly, further compounding losses.
“My ticket rates when I started were ₦5 to ₦10. In 1983, my last show was ₦15 to ₦20, and I lost 25 per cent of my audience. That was how my concert promotion died,” he said.
The media entrepreneur noted that at the time, Nigeria had only a handful of communication and entertainment channels, including a single television station, NTA, one radio station, FRCN, and a few newspapers, making promotion difficult.
He also said the absence of modern entertainment venues, aside from the National Theatre in Lagos, limited the sector’s growth.
Murray-Bruce, however, said he organised about 20 concerts during his brief venture into show business and lost money on only one of them, despite the eventual collapse of the business.