The public implosion of P-Square has been treated by many observers as a sudden, dramatic collapse — a family torn apart by fame, money and bruised egos. Gabriel Afolayan, Nollywood actor and musician, is having none of that narrative. His central point, made plainly on X in August 2026, is that the fractures now playing out in public view were already present two decades ago, in a Lagos recording studio, long before the wider world was paying attention.
Afolayan claims to have been present at EKO Reelmix Studio in Lagos during the recording of P-Square’s 2005 “Get Squared” album — the project that launched the twin brothers, Peter and Paul Okoye, into continental stardom. What he witnessed, he says, was not harmony behind the scenes. The brothers clashed repeatedly over song selection, each pushing for his own compositions to receive priority on the album. These were not trivial disagreements. In a creative partnership built on two equally driven individuals, the question of whose music defines the group is, in effect, the question of who the group actually is.
The Man in the Middle
Afolayan’s sharpest observation concerns Jude Okoye, the elder brother who managed P-Square throughout their prime years. According to Afolayan, it was Jude who consistently made the final call on which songs made the cut — and it was this arrangement, repeated album after album, that quietly accumulated into something far more corrosive than any single argument. “This fight don tey no be today,” he wrote, in the kind of blunt street language that cuts through spin more effectively than a formal statement ever could. The implication is clear: Jude’s role as the ultimate arbiter did not resolve creative tensions, it merely suppressed them, allowing resentment to compound over years.
Afolayan also gestured, somewhat cryptically, at the personal dimension. “The marriage thing, chai talk bokku…” he added, stopping short of elaborating. He did not need to. The brothers’ respective marriages have long been cited, in various accounts of the feud, as a fault line that deepened the professional divide. His restraint here is notable — he is not sensationalising, he is contextualising.
His comments arrive as the feud enters a fresh escalation, with Peter Okoye revisiting allegations around property disputes and threats involving Jude. The timing of Afolayan’s intervention matters. He is not speculating about what might have gone wrong; he is offering testimony about what he observed at the very beginning. That shifts the conversation from gossip to something more substantive.
Online reaction was predictably divided. One commenter asked whether P-Square would have lasted longer without Jude’s involvement at all — a question that is easier to pose than to answer, but one that the evidence Afolayan presents makes entirely reasonable. Another pushed back, noting that the songs Jude selected largely performed well commercially, suggesting his editorial judgement may have been sound even if his authority bred resentment. Both points can be simultaneously true, and that tension sits at the heart of the entire saga.
What Afolayan has done, perhaps unintentionally, is reframe the P-Square story. This is not a tale of success corrupted by sudden greed or fame. It is a story of structural tension baked into the group’s foundation from the very start — creative equals operating under a management arrangement that gave a third party decisive power over their artistic output. That the arrangement held together long enough to produce some of the most celebrated Afrobeats of the 2000s is, on reflection, the more surprising fact.