In October 2006, ThisDay newspaper publisher Nduka Obaigbena staged the 'ThisDay Music Festival — Africa Rising' weekend in Lagos and Abuja with a guest list that included Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Ciara and Quincy Jones. As part of the programme, Kwara State Governor Bukola Saraki — son of the political godfather Olusola Saraki and himself a long-time hip-hop fan — flew Jay-Z and Beyoncé from Lagos to Ilorin on a chartered flight for a one-day state visit.
At the Government House in Ilorin, Jay-Z was conferred with the honorary chieftaincy title Sarkin Waka (King of Music) by the Emir of Ilorin's representatives and turbaned in white agbada. Saraki commissioned a short stretch of newly tarred road in the GRA as 'Jay-Z Road' (the name was later quietly dropped from official signage). Beyoncé toured a girls' secondary school as part of a hastily arranged education photo-op. The visit lasted approximately six hours; the couple returned to Lagos that evening for the Eko Hotel concert.
The Ilorin trip became, in the years that followed, a fixture of Nigerian social-media nostalgia — partly because of the surreal images of Jay-Z in agbada beside Saraki, and partly because it marked the high-water mark of the Obasanjo-era 'Africa Rising' narrative in which Lagos and Abuja briefly believed they were on the global cultural map.