Veteran Afro-Juju legend, Sir Shina Peters, has revealed the bizarre publicity stunt his record label orchestrated to rebuild his image after his controversial exit from Prince Adekunle’s band.

Speaking on The Honest Bunch Podcast, the “Ace” crooner recounted how he faced intense criticism from fans who accused him of betraying his mentor for money.

“When I left Prince Adekunle’s band, people protested against me, saying I left my father because of money,” Shina Peters explained. “Then my record label owner, Tunde Savage, who was the marketing director of Daily Times, teamed up with the weekend editor of Concord Newspapers and the Evening Times editor to come up with an idea.”

That “idea,” according to Shina Peters, was an elaborate publicity stunt designed to win public sympathy and reshape how people viewed him.

“One day, my label boss told me to plate my hair and not loosen it for three days. He also asked me to tear some of my old clothes. On the third day, they loosened the hair but didn’t comb it. I wore the torn clothes, and they took me to Oyingbo Market to buy ewedu. As I was buying it, they recorded everything — though I didn’t know what they were planning,” he said.

The stunt didn’t end there. Shina Peters revealed that they later took him to Badagry, where construction company Julius Berger was working on a bridge, and asked him to act like a mentally unstable man in public.

“They told me to behave and eat like a madman,” he recounted. “All that was because people were furious when I left Prince Adekunle. The whole drama was a way to change the story and make people feel pity for me.”

Despite the strange approach, the plan worked — the public soon softened toward him, and the move became one of the early turning points in his career.

Sir Shina Peters went on to become one of Nigeria’s most celebrated music icons, credited with popularizing Afro-Juju and influencing a new era of Nigerian sound.