Let's hear from them.
PRESS RELEASE
Courage isn't necessarily the absence of fear. For most mothers, it is the ability to take up huge responsibilities and still smile through it all. This week's Celebrity Edition of 'Supermom' honors such bravery as it features the mothers of two of Nigeria's finest; a contemporary gospel artiste, Kenny Saint Best, formally known as Kenny Saint Brown and Femi Adebayo, an actor, film producer and lawyer.
Both celebrities let viewers of the very popular show in on some very hidden facts about their lives and childhood through the best means possible; their mothers; Otunba N.O. Ogungbe and Alhaja Risikat Ajide Adebayo who tell it all and tell it well. Marriage, according to the matriarch of the Ogungbe family, wasn't so bad. She had a loving husband who passed on in 1987 when five of her seven children were in the university - two abroad and three in Nigeria.
Even with a working husband, she had to work four jobs to support the family. According to her emotional story, "I would wake up by 4am to get to Ago-Iwoye (Ogun State) to drop or deliver fish there and then, return home to prepare food for the children.
After that, I would head for the Sawmill between 6 and 6:30am. On market days, I would go sell provisions."
Among her children, KSB, as the gospel singer is also known, gave her more concern. When she was about four years old, she had measles and was taken to the clinic for check-up and was given an injection on the left side of her bottom but the needle was placed on her muscle.
Then, her health started deteriorating leading to why she still limps on her left leg till this day. The last and second girl with five older brothers to look up to, KSB admitted to sometimes being treated like a boy. "I'm glad she raised me this way because it made me a fighter and a survivor," she says. KSB recalls further that when one of her brothers was getting really spoilt and kept failing after many tries to get into the university, their mum went as far as reporting him to the Police saying that she suspects he has something under his sleeves.
She made sure he slept in the cell for a night before she even told the police what wrong he had done. Before he left the cell, she made him sign an undertaken that he would be responsible and go to the university to study.
Today, she is the proud mother of a renowned banker Moji Dokpesi, who is married to the chairman and founder of Africa Independent Television, AIT, Raymond Dokpesi; Kenny Ogungbe of Kennis Music and Primetime Africa fame among other equally successful children and then Kenny Saint Best.
Also in this episode is the story of Alhaja Risikat Ajide Adebayo, a film marketer and mother of 5 children, all successful graduates. Married to an actor, the popular Oga Bello, who was always on the road meant being responsible for raising all five children which might have even been a lot easier if Femi wasn't so stubborn and unruly.
Usually, she would discipline each child first and explain later to avoid repetition of such acts but it never seemed to work on Femi. She recalled times when she almost beat him to death for several misdeeds; like when he wrote GCE for a candidate, the day she tore his hands with blade and put pepper in the wound for stealing meat from the pot and the day he almost got herself and husband killed by armed robbers for refusing to escape through the window like his other siblings.
But giving up on her son was no option. She wouldn't let him come to ruin. He also fell ill with typhoid and almost died at some point while growing up. That was the first time in her entire life Mrs Risikat had a high blood pressure and was ready to die with Femi. She only started getting better when doctors told her he was recovering well.
Kenny Ogungbe and Femi Adebayo's mother's stories are the focal point in the episode three of the celebrity edition of Supermom sponsored by Procter and Gamble.
Heavily-bearded veteran, Pete Edochie has certainly paid his dues as long as Nollywood is concerned. Whether he is playing the role of a stern-faced man who would poison his sibling the nextminute over plots of land or a caring father (which is rare), the Igbo actor has been a blessing.
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