All of these must be a very heavy burden for you at your age and when Jaiye died: how did you cope with responsibilities that used to be his to deal with?

 

Hmm! first of all, I wouldn’t say I’ve coped, just that I’m surviving. But the thing is, it’s God that has helped me because, by the time that my husband died, I remember that I clearly had N8,000 in my account. You see, prior to what happened, I’d travelled and Jaiye had also gone to South Africa to put finishing touches to his album. His album cost us a lot. Studios in South Africa are expensive, and because of his size, he could only fly first class, and then hotel and accommodation had to be taken care of. Before he left at that time, he had invested some money into one project he was supposed to be doing in Abuja. So we both had to put all our funds together for that last trip. So by the time I came back from London and he came back from south Africa, he was telling me that the business he had invested into in Abuja, that they would pay him back the following week, so that we’d have enough money to pay the bills we owed. It was whilst we were waiting for that money that he now died.

 

Did that money ever come?

 

Well, you know how Nigeria is, it never came, and I really don’t know what happened to it. At that point, if not for people that really had human sympathy, I don’t know what I would have done, God just sent people that I wasn’t even close to, who gave me money, foodstuff and prayed with me. So I was able to eat, to feed my children, who were now able to go to the same school. The only thing is that I wasn’t able to pay salaries. So I spoke to the staff that used to work for us before, when the band was still called SYNERGY, and the domestic staff, and I said to them, this is the situation, I don’t have anything, so anybody that wants to leave now, I wouldn’t be angry, because I know that I can’t afford to keep you. But surprisingly they all stayed back, that they were not going anywhere, and that they want to see it through with me. They felt that the only thing that we could do to make Jaiye happy wherever he is was to prove that he didn’t teach us all that he did in vain. And then little by little, people began to remember us and give us a chance.

 

 

How did you deal with all of the bad press that followed you after Jaiye’s death, especially as you were mourning him at the time?

 

This is probably the first time that I’m going to say this. Then, I used to describe myself as a walking corpse, because I was so dead. I could not sleep for over 4 months. My room was upstairs, but I could not sleep there, I’d sleep in the living room. I’d take my bath, come to the living room, eat there and change there. I couldn’t sleep or relax. It was so bad because I had to put up this face, so that the children don’t get worried, because they are very sensitive. I had to act a lot, because when I even stopped people from coming to the house with all these magazines, the phone calls wouldn’t stop. People will call and say, “Stella you are on the cover of this paper and they’re saying this and that about you”. So after a while, I just stopped touching my phone because I was afraid, I didn’t want to hear, “Stella, you have done this or that” as was reported. And I would wonder, “When did I do all these things they are saying about me, because I’ve been in this house”. During all of the mourning period, at that time, I didn’t even know how people would see me if I come out. Widowhood is not something you train for or you go to school and they would tell you that after your period of mourning, this is how you should behave or this is what you should say. It is something that h

its you. It’s you, yourself and yourself. I didn’t know when to come out, when to start working again. I didn’t know how people would view me, because I knew that I was inside the house when all those bad stuff were being written about me. I nearly ran mad at that time. That was when I ran to the church, a place called Selab in Lekki. I was there everyday for one month praying, asking God to just deliver me. Because I said, it is not possible that I’ve just lost my husband and it’s like the whole world is against me. I wondered what crime I had committed. Nobody prays to loose anybody, let alone the life partner that you’ve built a life with. The kind of things I was hearing about myself, I was thinking that maybe I’m the one who’s mad. At a point, I began doubting myself, I would now ask those that were living with me at the time whether I went anywhere on the day I wasn’t supposed to have, that they were not aware of. We were all together now, so where is all this coming from? At a point, my mother came and she just looked at me, knelt in front of me and said, if it takes her to die, she would make sure that I don’t give up, that the devil is a liar and that the enemy will fall, that they cannot kill me. She said to me, “Repeat after me, you shall not die, but live to proclaim the goodness of God”. So I began to repeat after her. It was so much for my family to bear, because people actually forget that when you do something like that, it’s just not me, I have a family. People don’t know them because they don’t talk, they don’t want people to know their names, and they don’t have time for publicity. So I began to think that a lot of people just think that I dropped from the sky, because I don’t mention my family, but they don’t like it. My father was very pained. He said to me that the thing that pained him the most was that he loved Jaiye so much. Jaiye was the only one that could tell my father to dress up, that he was taking him out tonight, and my father would agree. My father is in his 70s, and you want to take him out at night. And I wasn’t even aware he did that. My father loved him so much, that’s the only thing that is making him keep quiet, out of respect for him. He’d tell me, “Don’t give up, we are behind you”. It got to a point that he said to me, “pack your things and come to Asaba, we’ll take care of you and the children, until you get yourself back”. A lot of people offered to take me away from here.

 

What was it about staying in the home that you shared with Jaiye that made you still stay there?

 

It was something that we used to talk about, especially when we got married. He used to say that one of the things he loved about me was one, I was very stubborn and that I was very independent minded. Because when he met me I was already working. I was living in a boys quarters with 6 others. We would trek from Yaba to where I was working. But he said to me that he knows that I am a fighter. He used to always say to me that “Look, even if I travel for 6 months, and I don’t leave 10 kobo for you, I know that you can run this house, so what is your problem?” because I would usually ask him that “Jaiye, I want to do my hair”, and he would say, “look at you, big girl like you, I know you have money and you can do it yourself”, and I would say “no, don’t go and be saying things like that, that you are going away for 6 months, to and do what? anywhere you are going, we will follow you”. You know because he had so much confidence in me, and really, sometimes, he’ll just say, “Stella, I know you can do it, I don’t need to talk too much, I need to go to South Africa”. And I would do it and he would come back and say, “that’s my girl, my Shorty!”, that’s what he used to call me.

 

I know that wherever he is, he would not want me to run, because he always said to people, “don’t run away from your problems, because they will follow you, face it and deal with it, if you can come out of it, then you are a strong person”. And I said, “Okay, I am not going anywhere”. When your grandmother tells you that the prayer that works is the one a person does when they go naked, we used to laugh about it, but I did it. I said “God, look at my hand. I don’t deserve this kind of thing, if the way I’m being treated is right, let your will be done, but if it is not, father, I put it into your hand”. But one thing I will never do is to curse anybody, because once you do that, God will not answer your own. And with my Bible in the middle of the night, I would strip naked and cry unto God, that this is how he created me and he has given me children, so he should provide for me and let me not beg. And whatever thing anybody has against me, “if my hands are clean and I’m innocent, father deal with it the way you want to”, and I left it at that. I’m still trying. Now the company is coming back, we’ve registered a new name.