This is obviously not a good time for my favourite actress, Tonto Dikeh and frankly speaking,I pity her. I should pity her for many reasons. One: When she made our cover two months ago with the cover headline, ‘I WANT TB JOSHUA TO TOUCH ME-Tonto Dikeh’the sales figure she pulled following the interview in which she revealed her encounter with the Synagogue Church of Nations’ cleric, Pastor T.B Joshua was stratospheric. In the cover interview, she confessed she watched TB Joshua on TV and during that hour, her well-known vice from teenage- cigarette smoking- tasted poisonous and since then, she has called it quit. Truth is, E24-7 Magazine had unprecedented sales from the edition. I found her faith overwhelming and the legions of TB Joshua’s members considered it an endorsement, especially from someone who has never been to the church. To put it simply, it was a sold out edition. Thank you, Tonto.

Pardon my digression. Two: My pity also goes to her because of her fame. With her fast rising fame and acceptance by fans, that lady must have been lied to by one inconsequential soothsayer and perhaps her handlers or publicists that her fame would hit the roof if she went into the studio and sing. They would have seen her star quality in the international music fame land, dining and wining with Jay Z and Beyonce with Kanye West and Akon as her butlers while D’banj would have been green with envy that despite his Oliver Twist’s tricks, Tonto gets a front row and hobnobs with his lords. They would have told her that with those two singles- Ova and Hi, she would become another Madonna, the goddess of pop and sex. She would have thought yes, this is it, she would have felt supremely self- confident and then put pen to paper to write those songs.

Like her predecessors who can act but cannot sing, the songs from the beginning have an aura of doom.

I think now, Tonto will appreciate the value of silence. She has always been in the news sometimes for bad reasons, rarely for good causes. For someone who has been on an artistic treadmill since her career broke out shortly after she participated in the Next Movie Star, the attendant fame could not make her to keep the negative at bay, it became a nervous addiction. If she’s not in the news for a raunchy role, she’s in it for her ‘millions’ of tattoos. Now time is her enemy.

Yes, she got over five million downloads and that I learnt is unprecedented for any artiste in this clime. She would have wished it was paid for but I know curiosity led many, including me, to download her songs. Few minutes before I did, I had thought one of them would be my caller ringtone and the other my caller’s tune. But by the time I did, I was already Hi and Ova with the songs. Twice, I downloaded, thrice I listened to each of the songs and by the fourth time, I grew out of patience. Tonto flunked it, I concluded.

Three: I pity her if she returned to sin. I will weep if she went back to smoking, her vomit. I will not be happy if she took her failure, pain to make a hit song to her movie location and turns enfant terrible. Truth is, this should not stop you, Tonto. My encounter with you revealed a lady with a lot of inner power, will, and strength that you can do all things. You are creative enough and I’m confident if you shopped for a good producer the best of songs will come out of you. I know Don Jazzy who has not made any statement since D’banj walked away will be glad to have you in his studio. Samklef may get more plaudits at the next Headies Awards if he created another beat for you. I trust with Kas Beat you can still beckon at your ‘boy,’ Wizkid to do a rare collabo. Guess, J Sleek, Fliptyce, May D will be concerned too. I know Clarence Peters and Akin Alabi will be willing to shoot a video MTV BASE will put on rotation for long. I can bet Tonto will sing again. In our lifetime she will make a hit song that will heave the dance floor and top the charts. In our lifetime, Tonto will shine again not just with movies but with music too