Showbiz icon and now rights activist, Charles Chukwuemeka Oputa well known as Charly Boy, is by any means one of the most enduring personalities to come from this side of the continent.
 
He has been around for a handful of decades. Hence, he can be referred to as a living legend. In his prime, he was a performer par excellence; his stage craft was phenomenal and the youths back then just couldn’t get enough of him.
 
Now in his 70s, the Area Fada as he is affectionately called is still highly respected and regarded as one the strongest voices of the Nigerian youth. He has evolved over the years from a musician to a social commentator and an actor. He’s become a big brand, and one who commands a tremendous amount of respect too.
  
Oftentimes, when he is not livid about the state of the nation or venting his frustrations on some government policies, he addresses societal and lifestyle issues. He loves to speak candidly with the male folks. And in his trademark style, he likes to address these issues throwing jabs at himself at other times, the public, while not failing to get his message across.
 
This is why, sometime ago, when he went on social media and cried out that his male organ had stopped functioning, only a few probably took him seriously. They didn’t believe him. They figured the Area Fada was just fooling around and trying to engage his fans and the general public. But it soon came out that Charly Boy was not catching cruise at all, he was dead serious!
 
He indeed could no longer get it up; he was down with Prostate Cancer! A lot of people were shocked when he came out with this story that he had Prostate; more shocked were they when he also said: “as una see me so, my “thing” no dey rise again”. A lot of people actually thought he was just catching cruise and all that, until the Prostate story thing came and he talked a bit about it.
 
“Like I always say, there are times and seasons in everybody’s life! A time when you like Egusi over Ogbonno; a time when you like power bikes over scooters. I’m grateful to God that through His grace, I have been able to have very active, fulfilling youthful years. So, I don’t think I’m missing out on anything, but the reason I went to town with my challenges was simply because I had to get that message out,” Charly Boy said.
 
“l had to tell my fellow men that it’s alright not to be alright. I had to tell my fellow men to desist from not being able to be as open as I was going about my challenges, that there’s something sinister, something technically wrong with not being open, and I know most of this comes from how we men have been brainwashed over the years,”
   
“They say a man is not supposed to cry, whatever you have that is paining you, just chest it, don’t even tell anybody. And the worst of all, if you’re married, don’t let your wife know, because she might use the information against you and all of that,” he added.
  
According to him, he felt obligated to go and speak on behalf of men, to say this is the most wrong thing that one can do to oneself. “And of course, there were a lot of things that inspired that move in the first place, because Prostate doesn’t run in my family, not to talk about cancer.
  
“So, when I discovered that was what was going on, and being a health freak as I am, always checking and looking into my body, always having my regular checkups, I felt that something was amiss. And what was that?”
  
He continued, “It started with the doctors, especially in Nigeria, even in Sweden, and abroad, who kept on telling me ‘oh, your PSA (prostate-specific antigen) is okay’, it never passed 3.0. I know some people; their PSA is like 17, 30, but my own never passed 3.0.”
 
“So, here I was feeling cool with myself, but I was going through changes, and what are those changes? There was a period that I was wearing diapers all the time, because I was constantly leaking.
 
“I was constantly going to the bathroom. No sooner had I taken a pee, in the next three minutes, I wanted to go back to the bathroom, and most of the time, by the time I got to the bathroom it had already happened!”