Mrs Zainab Olagunju, wife of the late high-life legend, Pa Fatai Olagunju, aka Pa Fatai Rolling Dollar, has revealed that life has not been the same for them, since the death of her husband, nearly two years ago. The 49 year-old first wife of the late maestro talked extensively on how they have been feeding from hand to mouth and how her kids have almost dropped out of school. Excerpts…
“I was selling from here because my husband didn’t allow me to open a bar outside the estate because of the kind of things that characterize this kind of trade. I was supplying ‘pure water’ to people too. But our kids, Jamiu, 14 who is in secondary school, and Mojeed, six, is still in primary school, were attending a private school, Maxwell Primary and Secondary School in Abule-Egba, Lagos, before their dad’s death. We started owing school fees since the breadwinner of the family was gone.”
“I had to bring them back to Vetland School, a public school in our neighbourhood.” But we learnt Pa Rolling Dollar had more than one wife with kids. She explained how she got to know the deceased also had an affair with a woman who later surfaced after the news of his death broke. The other wife is in my husband’s uncompleted building in Ikorodu.
“I didn’t even know that he had a younger wife after me when he was alive. She claimed to have kids with Baba and she came the day he passed on. There’s another boy who’s between 12 or 13 years of age, Baba had that boy with a wife he had before he married me. In total, all the kids from Baba who are still very young are five.”
“Since then, we’ve been enduring the austere time.” Zainab and her children plus Baba’s three other kids now live at the mercy of neighbours. She showed this reporter a N500 note a good Samaritan had just helped the family with to make breakfast that fateful morning. Fighting back tears that were already close to streaming down her face, she continued: It got so excruciating last year that I tried to go on air on a popular Yoruba programme, Labe Orun, to share my grief with well-meaning Nigerians and solicit help, but I was cautioned by some people who reminded me that Baba was a star and that it would bring his name to disrepute.”
“Things have really gone even worse, so much that, as I speak to you, I’m looking for a job to be a street sweeper (a.k.a. highway managers). There’s no family member of Baba anywhere that has the ability to help because his siblings are old and weak. I approached one of his nephews last year when Jamiu was to enrol in Vetland Secondary School, but I could tell that he also had enough up his sleeves. He promised us N10,000 which he has not been able to fulfil since then. But people around us bring us food, some stipends and that’s what I live on with my boys.”
Source: New Telegraph
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