Why was there the need to change the name SYNERGY?

 

First of all, there was really bad publicity for Synergy, and then it was shut down. Jaiye shared the company with some people, and when he died, they came, took the document, chequebook, and the equipments. The idea was for them to come back to me and say “okay, you should run the place since you were running it with him”. After the first meeting we had, I didn’t hear a word from them; I didn’t know what was going on. All I know was all the things we were using was locked up, and they put a security guard there. We couldn’t go in and all our investment, even before those people came and became part of the business, even my personal money, entered it, everything was locked up. At a point I said to myself, there were other owners and I don’t have the right to say I’m continuing. So in order to avoid trouble, I just respected myself went and registered another company. We still do basically the same thing. I still have the same staff, so I started buying my own equipment little by little. We are doing well; we are doing shows here and there.

 

Why the name G-Factor?

 

When I got the name, it meant God’s factor. When we went to CAC, we couldn’t register it, and I now decided to make it Gig Factor. That’s just the shortened form of the name of the band.

 

 

How did your in-laws help you to cope with your loss, in terms of rendering help?

 

In being honest, and diplomatic, I will say in the presence of God that everything I’ve done today, in terms of my mental state, my physical state, my financial state, everything I’ve done has been between God and myself. I think a lot of misconceptions had gone on, a lot of deceptions, lies, and I’ve just not been talking. I’m not about to start telling you who has done whatever, but I believe that when I say things, people will understand what I mean. Everything that I’ve been able to achieve, of course, my family did their best, but the reality of it is that, where I am now is between God and myself. Even my children, it’s been between God and myself, and that is the honest to God truth.

 

How did you meet Jaiye and married him. There are those who are of the belief that you became who you are now after marrying Jaiye Aboderin.

 

I met him at a place called Jazzville. I was living along the road the club was with a friend of mine. I’d gone to Jazzville with my colleague, then I used to work at Klinks Studio, and he was on stage with his sibling and her partner, and they were playing a particular song that I liked. Then I jumped on stage, grabbed his microphone and started singing. After the show, he called me and said that he liked my voice. We just got talking and we exchanged numbers. We never got to call each other, until almost a year later. We now met at a place in Surulere called NAG (Nigerian Actors Guild), where we used to have meetings. He told me that he was thinking of setting up his own band, but he wasn’t sure if I would be interested, and I said I wasn’t sure if I’m ready to do this band thing. Coincidentally, after a few weeks, somebody invited me to Jazzville for an audition of a band, and it turned out that he was the male singer of the band. So we started singing together, and then we started our own thing, and became very close friends. Then it started with me going to spend the weekends with him and he would take me out. We just found that we had a very good relationship, and I just noticed that if I don’t see him in a day, I’m just very not all right. (Laughs)We were very close and so we started dating. In terms of fame, I don’t come from a poor family; neither do I come from a very wealthy one. My parents were very comfortable, they were both bankers. My father was a manager with African Continental Bank and my mother was also a manager in another bank. When he left there, and went to Asaba, after he retired, he became a manager in community bank, he opened the bank, and my mother continued with her banking job. There was never an issue of; oh I didn’t have enough when I was growing up. And then, at the time Jaiye and I started dating, I had already done my first major movie, Breaking Point. It wasn’t big money, but then, the fame was there. Because in the course of our conversation, he was telling me that his girlfriend then had told him that I was a movie star, and then he wanted to see one of my movies. So he said, “ can you please bring some for me when we play at Jazzville” and I said no problem. So I brought the film to him, and he said he liked it. So the next audition that I was going to, he actually came with me, and saw how we were doing it, and he kept encouraging me. And at that time, if we are honest with each other, he was never the kind of person that will come and tell you that Oh; I’m this or that. I’ve never been a newspaper person, so sorry, but I didn’t know who the Aboderins were, I didn’t know what they were about, and I was new in Lagos. I was staying in my elder sister’s house, before we now fought because I said I wanted to go into entertainment, while she wanted me to do Law. So I didn’t know anything about them, I just saw them playing at a club like every other regular person. They were paying me N1

000 after singing and they were paying him the same thing. And he had one blue Passat that we had to push and that was smoking a lot. Then he was going to French Village in Badagry. And he would say “Omo, how much did they pay us?” and we would count it and divide it for what we want to use the money for. And when he comes back he’d ask me” did you cook?”, and I’d say “Yes, I cook small.” That’s how we were coping. And then when I went to his family house for the first time, I looked at him and I’m like, “what’s wrong with you? How can you come from a house like this and be following me to collect N1000?, what are you doing this for?”. He said to me, because I need to pay my rent, I’m a man, I want to be on my own, I don’t want anybody to say that its because of my fathers money that I’m made. That’s why I’m working so hard”. He works so hard and I don’t even see him. I often tell him, “don’t kill yourself, you know that you’re entitled to some things, calm down”. He’d say to me “No, that’s not what I want to be known for, so that tomorrow, nobody would say to me that it’s my fathers money that made me. I want to make myself.” That was one thing I really loved about him. So for me and him, it wasn’t an issue of… You see, a lot of people used to come to me and tell me that hey, there are some big guys, some handsome guys dying for you o, he knew all these, and I would just tell them, “I beg, monkey no fine, but na so im mama like am.” That’s the way I like him, I chose him. And they would go and meet him and tell him that “who is this girl, because she’s a nobody”, and he’d tell them, “that’s the one I want!”. So for us, it was never an issue of who was bigger than who, or who married who because of what, we just liked each other, and we found that we had the same interests, we do everything together. And because people don’t live with you, they don’t really know what’s going on, they just hear things and they just build on it. If you know the amount of work that we were both doing, you would not even believe that he had anything to do with any estate, because we were both working round the clock. He was a workaholic. He was running 3 companies at the same time. He would say that by the time he turns 40, he doesn’t want me to work, that he wants the children to be happy. So he really didn’t bother what people said even then. He used to tell me, “Omo, na you get time to dey listen to things, like that person said this or that.”

 

So, when all those stories were reported about you, he wasn’t bothered or threatened to leave you?

 

The most interesting one was when it was written that I was seen with Richard Mofe Damijo in a car in front of the Lagos Bar Beach, on the 5^th of December. I can never forget that date. It was so amusing because I was shooting a movie for Charles Novia, and I was there with Bena. Coincidentally, that same day, Jaiye was on his way to Abuja, he missed his flight, called me and asked me where I was. I told him that I was in front of the beach shooting a movie, so he said he’d come over to look at us before he goes home. So he came to the beach with his personal assistant, Michael. That day we really had fun because when he came, he said “ah, no more big boy today, lets eat agege bread”, and we all did, chatting and all. When I finished shooting that film with Richard, he, (Richard) had to run to Ghana, because Ovation was having a party there, so he left us. Jaiye now asked the director to bring me home on his way. That’s how Richard and my husband left, and the film director now dropped Bena and I at home. So when this magazine now came out with the story, I was driving when Richard called me and said “Stella, look o, they’re writing about me and one particular actress, please read it and tell me who it was, because I don’t know what’s going on”. I don’t normally do it, but as I was driving, I now called a vendor to buy this magazine, and they were telling me that it sold out. I finally got one at the end of Ozumba Mbadiwe road, bought it, opened it to read as I was driving, which was very bad, and I normally don’t do it. But something kept pushing me. I read how they just kept describing this lady and it turned out to be me. I’m like it’s just not possible. I couldn’t even call Richard back, I just called my husband. I said “Jaiye, where are you?” I old him that I was coming back home now, but pray for me that I don’t have an accident. He asked that “Stella, what is it?” I told him what I had just read. That day I was crying and shaking as I was driving like a mad woman. I got home, carried the magazine to him upstairs and asked him to read it. He read it and his first reaction as a human being was, he got up, went into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. I just knelt down on the floor and started crying. I said “ah!, these people have killed me o! My marriage is gone!” he came out after about 10 minutes and saw me, then he said, “what are you doing?” I cried out that these people have killed me! He said” look at the date properly, I looked at it, it was 11^th December. He said “which date was published, wasn’t it the day I missed my flight and came to meet you at the beach? Was I not there with you? When did you do what they said you have done? Doesn’t that show that you shouldn’t be listening to this kind of thing? I was with you and they are still writing this kind of thing. It only goes to show that all the other things they are writing about you are false, so why are you worried? Is your conscience not clear? So why are you crying? The thing that they are looking for is for us to have a fight, but when we show them that we really don’t care what anybody says, we know ourselves, that’s when it would hurt them the most.”

 

So from that day, he just said to me that “let people talk about you, that’s how you’ll know how important you are.” But the only thing that’s paining me now is that he’s no longer here to hold my hand and tell me it is okay, because right now, for me, its not okay, its not. You know, because of all the things we’d talked about, and all that I’ve learnt from him, I just decided that for me, the most important thing right now is to work hard, and take care of my children, that’s the driving force for me. I just look at it and say to God, “see me through this week, after this week, it will be stories about somebody else”

 

Published on Nigerians in America courtesy City People