Actress and Entrepreneur Zainab Balogun sits with Chude Jideonwo on #WithChude. In this episode, she talks about her career in acting, getting diagnosed and healing from endometriosis and keeping her life private.   

On the longevity of her career and how she has been able to stay top of the mind for over a decade in the entertainment industry, she shared, “Back then, I never felt like I was part of the cool kids because being cool was sort of determined by the economics – do you come from a rich family, are you known? I didn’t come from that background, so I felt sort of like ‘a bull in a China shop’, when I came in. There are times when I don’t appreciate what I have done. I have done a decade in the Nigerian industry, and it’s been 10 years of going against the grain in terms of the choices that I have made. I appreciate being able to have longevity but there are conversations we, as actors, do not have with each other. There were times when I felt like, ‘This isn’t working for me anymore, because the income and visibility were not aesthetic’. There were times we were booking talents based on popularity, which hurts me a bit when I think about my industry because talent should matter. But commercially, I get why people make the choices that they do. I don’t knock people who have fallen through the cracks because it is not easy. Luckily for me, acting has never been my sole earner, and I realized that early enough because for me it is always quality over quality for me. I shoot a couple of times a year. Because it is important for my heart and my soul to be fed with whatever I am doing, I will make sure that I have my business coming together or if it’s my content work, my influencer work, and brand partnerships. Those are the things that are keeping me fed on a daily basis. I don’t blame people who have to make tough decisions of whether they will succumb to the ways the industry or people want to be versus what I need.”   

Zainab also spoke about how she is deliberate about the part of her life that is out there, which would have presented her with an opportunity to build a brand around her lifestyle. “It was a deliberate choice because I am very conscious of the separation of power between the industry and myself, and when you dabble into all this without the consciousness of what the consequences are, it is quite problematic. There are people who do not have issues with talking about how they spent a hundred thousand dollars on an outfit they wore to the AMVCAs. I wouldn’t be that person because there isn’t a lot of truth in that. I have to be conscious of my audience and the people I am setting the pace for. It is a lie that nobody needs.”   

On her choice of keeping her marriage very private and off social media, she shared, “My personal life is very personal. It’s not out for public consumption. That’s not my work, that’s my life. So, I’m okay with giving you that which I’m okay with you criticizing or having an opinion on, but I’m quite traditional, so my personal life is not for public consumption nor the opinions of others.”  

She shared about her struggle with endometriosis and her decision to share it with the public. She mentioned that her decision to talk about it came from her observations on the lack of information about the disease. She highlighted how she believes that people watching her talk about her journey wouldn’t have to go through the same struggle to find help.  Zainab also spoke about the cultural side of people dealing with reproductive health problems and dealing with it in silence, because they are worried about how they will be perceived. On how she found out, she shared, “My periods were irregular for about 2 months. I think I had about 4 periods in 2 months and for me, that was abnormal because they’re relatively on schedule and extremely painful. And when I say painful, I often describe it like somebody taking a barbed wire with little sharp cuts and putting it in my stomach and just turning it. I would pass out, wouldn’t be able to go to work, or school. My hormones were all over the place and I was like ‘this doesn’t feel normal, so let’s go find out what’s going on’. I went for a test. They did an ultrasound and TBS and they discovered that I had two cysts. The thing with Endometriosis is, it’s quite hard to diagnose when you’re outside of the body. You kind of need to be looking in because you need to look up for the adhesions. I was scheduled for surgery to take care of the cysts because one of the cysts was torsion. It was twisted, meaning if it grows bigger or the weight bursts, then we’re in trouble”. After the doctors checked, she was diagnosed with stage 3 endometriosis. She also shared how the cyst disappeared when she was preparing to have her second surgery. “I had gone to do my scan before heading to the church and the doctor says to me, ‘oh yeah, everything is okay.’ He said something about ‘reabsorbed’. So, I was like, ‘okay what’s the size of the cyst now? He said, ‘I can’t see it’. I was like ‘I don’t understand’ And he said, ‘it’s not there anymore’. So, I took that as a sign, and I called off the surgery. I was like well, ‘if he has done it on the right, let him finish the work on the left-hand side.’ So, I just continued to be on my holistic journey and continued the test. Then I went to another clinic where the doctor was like that, he can’t really see the cyst but maybe if I wanted to do an MRI just to confirm because he was seeing something else completely. So, I had an MRI. Took it back to him and he read it and said, ‘yeah there’s nothing there.’ This was September. I was like I don’t understand what you’re saying. You’re saying the MRI is the best picture for looking for any kind of masses in the body and it is telling me that I have no cyst in my body. That was my miracle moment, that was my relief. It was wonderful”.  

Watch the excerpt here

Host of #WithChude, Chude Jideonwo, sits with Arinze Ifeakandu, author of God’s Children Are Little Broken Things on a new episode of #ChudesBookClub. 

On why Buchi Emecheta’s, The Joys of Motherhood stands out for him powerfully as a writer, he said, “One of the things that happened to me when I went to get my masters was like I was living in this place with a lot of writers and there’s this sense in which I began to think of storytelling as this clinical thing which was a profession. But that period took away the magic of literature from me, which is why I had always thought of literature as magical.  

Then when I think of “The Joys of Motherhood” and the experience I had while reading that book, I’m like literature is really magical. Although I was privy to the experiences of the women in my life, but what that book was for me as a 13-year-old who was reading it was to sort of synthesize those experiences into a singular action. I could just see cause and effect play out in real time and I was like this is the effect of what our society does to people this is how it affects people. I could actually see it in the reality of the people around me. I was like, if literature can do that to me even long before I knew about the word feminism which of course I knew when I started listening to Chimamanda. So, long before I knew that word, I already had an experience or perhaps some kind of empathy you know for the female situation. So, there are not many books like that for me that sort of strike at the heart of a person and say, ‘Hey you have to actually look at the world.’ 

Arinze shared about the culture of secrecy in Nigeria, “I think we have a culture of secrecy, where you see someone who is sick and they are like, ‘don’t tell anyone’. Generally, we have a warped thinking around sex, I hope that is changing a lot now. When we were growing up, people were like, ‘don’t have sex’, but now, everyone is out with their penises on Twitter. We also have a culture of shame and I think that is what a lot of families deal with. Before I came out to my mum, a part of my anxiety was that, ‘my mum is a very sensitive woman. I am saying this in a very good way, because sensitivity is a wonderful thing, but it can also be a very emotional thing. I am sure that she is going to be feeling sad that people will be judging her child. I was just like, is there a way that I can make her feel like it doesn’t matter? Because I had gone through that journey of coming out of that place of shame and coming out to my friends and choir mates even when I was in UNN. So, I had already dealt with it.” 

Regarding his writing style, Arinze said, “First and foremost, I was writing for mostly my own entertainment so I’m having fun here. I’m creating the world that I wish to see. I’m writing about these characters that have inhabited my mind for quite some time and with whom I have like this sort of intimate relationship and so there was no need to sort of explain things to anybody because I had a perfect understanding between myself and my characters. That was like the sense I had”. 

“I didn’t have the anxiety of not writing a relatable story to other people. I think for the longest time even before I began to actually write stories and when I was still telling them, I felt like people have always related to my stories. So, I remember in University, I would write the early versions of these stories in this new collection and I had friends who did not share my particular experience and then other friends who were at least quite kind of homophobic. The very first of my encounter with them and when they read some of my stories they would say, “Why is this boy talking to this boy and telling him I love you but then I understand, why did this boy break up with him. I want to read the next one, when will he write the next one?”, he added.  

Watch the excerpt here 

Singer and dancer, Yeni Kuti sits with the host of #WithChude, Chude Jideonwo, discuss the circumstances surrounding her father’s death, her life as a dancer and her family.  

On how Fela’s reputation has grown after his death despite the disdain he was treated while he was alive, Yeni said, “it amuses me. I remember that Fela was in jail and my cousin Dotun introduced me to this girl. He said, ‘These are my cousins, ‘Yeni and Sola’ and she said, ‘Don’t introduce me to such people’. It stuck in my mind, I moved away from her, and I just thought to myself, ‘how nasty?’ I’m sure if I met that girl today, she would want to be my friend. That is why it is amusing that decades later, Fela is suddenly the hero while in those days, he was the villain. She also shared why she thinks this change happened, “I think ‘their eye don clear, suffer don hook us for Nigeria’. We have seen that there was at least one person who was singing about the abuse and fighting it. Fela used to take out an advert then on Daily Times that later became Punch, every Saturday. He would tag it, ‘Chief Priest says’, and he will write something about Nigeria. He had a printing press, where he would just print and yab all of them. Of course, it took death for them to realize that they had lost something important.” 

Yeni Kuti also talked about her relationship with her late father. “Fela was a good father in his own way, but in the conventional sense, he wasn’t. My identity and pride as an African woman, I learnt from my father. Who I am today was shaped by him, but I don’t think he should have had children. I think he should have just been a father to all the nation. You don’t feel any special bond that you were Fela’s child. You are just another human being as far as he was concerned. You could resent it, but I just had to rise above it. But it caused a lot of rifts between us. I mean, there was a time when Femi and Fela quarreled. Of course, Fela quarreled with Femi, Sola and I. So, if we were going to settle, we would send Femi, ‘You’re the son now, you go and settle with your father. If you settle with him, Sola and I will follow.’ So, it was different, we didn’t call him Daddy. I think our not calling him daddy made him not realize the gravity of having kids”, she added. 

On dancing as a career path, she said, it (dancing) was rewarding as a career path, but it isn’t anymore. I still get offers for people who want me to teach them. The fact of the matter is that I didn’t do it for monetary value, I did it because I loved it. Of course, we went on tour, and I made money”. 

Yeni also shared about joining Your View on TVC, she said, “I have been trying to work on a TV program with my best friend, Carol King. We had gone to meet MITV and showed them what we wanted to do but we couldn’t get it off the ground. Then Lukman Musa called me to say that he wanted me to do a TV show, and because it sounded like what Carol and I were working on, I went, we talked, and I accepted. I think it is a good decision and I do not regret it for one minute. People have now come to know me as Yeni, not just as Fela’s daughter or Femi’s sister but as Yeni Anikulapo Kuti”.    

Watch the excerpt here

Television presenter and actress, Laura Monyeazo Abebe, popularly known as Moet Abebe, sits with the host of #WithChude, Chude Jideonwo to discuss leaving an abusive partner, her struggle with low self-esteem, and dealing with an absent father. 

“I was politely asked to leave my secondary school because I was a bully. Now I am anti-bullying. I think for you to be against something, you have to experience it. I wasn’t necessarily on the receiving end. And I will have to say, I had my reasons as to why I was a bully. I have always been a fighter; I have always been fighter; I have always been misunderstood and I have always had to get my point across. And I wouldn’t say I didn’t grow up with love, because I did but I didn’t necessarily get much paternal love, so I have always had to fight to protect what is mine and what I feel and what my views were. At that moment of my life, I sort of interpreted that as to become a bully as opposed to actually not being a bully”. She also said that she was happy that she went through things like that because she is the kind of person who gets comfortable, and something has to shake her and it is when she is disappointed, and she gets to pick herself.  

“My parents were not together, they never got married. I am what you call ‘a love child’. I believe that I was created out of love, but I have only known maternal love because I grew up with my mum. My mum was my mum and dad did what he needed to do but he wasn’t there physically”. Now that she is grown, Moet shared that she is much closer to her dad but not as close as it should be because it will then be pretentious if they start to make up for lost time. 

“People are quick to put in a box, and not believe that I could have self-esteem issues. So, I always must remind myself to be myself because I am so unique and special”. On what she thinks caused her lack of self-esteem, she said, “I feel it came from being raised from a single parenthood. I usually say that if I had that male presence in my life, you can’t tell me anything. She shared about how she builds her esteem, “I’m one of those people that literally have to keep reminding myself that, ‘you’re beautiful, you’re hardworking, you can do this’. I keep reminding myself to keep loving and appreciating my mistakes, my past, my present, my future.”  

On her past relationships and surviving abuse, she said, “I could have been married by now, but it didn’t work out. I have also been in a few violent relationships and realised that wasn’t what I wanted for myself. So, I will rather just love me and just deal with me and if anyone else wants to handle me that is cool. I believe that women are the price. I was in a violent relationship for about two and half years. If you don’t love yourself, you will find yourself in situations like that constantly. Even in your family, if you don’t love yourself, your family can do you anyhow. If you don’t love yourself, the other person can’t give you back that love. Abusive people can smell that you are vulnerable, and you have low self-esteem from a mile away.  On how she came out of it, she said, I am the type of person that doesn’t like people telling me what to do. I like to experience it and then leave the situation. It wasn’t even something that someone had to tell me, I needed to sort of realise that, ‘No, Mo this cannot be you loving yourself, you are being here means that you don’t want the best for yourself’. After that, we just had a little fight, and I never picked up his phone call again”.  

Watch the excerpt here.

Nigerian Actress and Singer, Jennifer Eliogu, sits Chude Jideonwo to discuss her acting and music career, the viral Onulu Ube song, taking a break and her comeback into the industry. 

On how she started acting, she shared, “I didn’t go out to look for movies, I just stumbled into it. My friend was going for rehearsal, so I went with her. They were extras and they were doing karate. She was like, do you want to join, but I said that it was too violent for me. Jennifer shared how she spoke to the lead on the project, and she got an opportunity to audition. The audition ended with applause, and she got the lead role in the movie, and it had the likes of Charly boy, Jerry Amilo and others.”  

She also shared her choice to drop out of school and when she finally decided to go back, “I dropped out and then I faced acting. And I was doing very well. After a while for every newspaper, you opened and they talked about actors, you see people saying, the graduate of university of… and then people say, ‘you speak so well, where did you graduate from?’ at that point I knew I had to go back.” 

On when she wasn’t in the industry, and if she regretted taking the break, she shared, ‘At that time I got married and relocated to Switzerland and I had two beautiful children. And now I’m back like I never left. I left in 2005, It wasn’t hard for me to leave my career for my marriage; as at that time, love was just enough for me. So, there weren’t a lot of roles that we could really fit in, so it felt like there was a recess for people in those age brackets. It was difficult getting back into the industry because the vacuum has already been created. And there was this bridge between the young girls and the middle age, and the mummies. We didn’t have a lot of roles that my set of girls could play, so it was tough for actors in my age group. The story then was between the young girl leaving the boyfriend, the young girls playing the girlfriends and the older women playing the mummy roles. So, there weren’t a lot of roles that we could really fit in, so it felt like there was a recess for people in that age brackets.”  

She shared that she was typecasted for mother roles and how she had to use it as her comeback into the industry.  

On the success of her hit song Onulu Ube, she shared, “It’s just grace because it is not my kind of song, My sound is soul, RnB, jazz and the likes. I have been doing music for at least a decade, the time just came, and God chose the song he used to announce me. I wrote that song one night, after I read a few things on the internet. I was so pained that I wrote the song in 24 hours. I called my producer and said ‘let’s do this song’. The first time I recorded it was my usual genre, the slow tempo but I didn’t have peace after doing it. I did the reggae version, and I liked it so much, but I didn’t have peace still. One day I said to myself, ‘what could I do differently’, I need people to relate to the song, and I thought to myself, ’Ogene’.” 

“I didn’t see Onulu Ube coming. I did the song, but I didn’t see it becoming this big, where people who weren’t even Nigerian drop messages saying, ‘Now that I know the meaning of the song , I am blown away’” she added.  

Watch the excerpt here

Nigerian Entrepreneur, Funke Bucknor sits #WithChude to discussed how she dealt with competition in the events management industry, grieving her late sister, Tosyn and learning to be vulnerable.  

She shared how she coped with competition, especially from the people she had trained. On how she was able to move on she said, “My business is 21 years now. At that early stage, 5 years into the business, I was just a young girl, aged 24 to 25. I didn’t really understand many things, all I just understood was that I just wanted to deliver good work for my clients, and it required staff. And at that time, there were not many people that were in the industry. So, I needed to get people and everybody that I got, I trained and invested in them. Then they wake up and say, ‘I’m leaving’. At that time, it used to hurt, it was painful, but thank God for people around me. That’s why it’s always also good to surround yourself with good people. People that are like your mentors, that will guide you. People that have also gone through what you went through. So, I had friends like that. For example, Tara had just experienced this. So, she will just say ‘Funke, look, it’s part of life.’ I will go and read, I will sit down and cry but life has to go on. So, what I’d do is, I’d come back and say that ‘you know what, this has happened, but I am not going to be bitter’. You know when you’re bitter, you tend to overreact and do things that even you yourself will begin to wonder about. And bitterness is a seed that grows. You will just start hating everybody. So, I said I’m not going to be bitter, I’m going to love. Maybe for some, I may detach myself, for some I’m not going to love you more than I should love you. Even if I’m loving them from afar, but I will love you sha.” 

On Tosyn’s demise, she shares, “I cried. I think after Tosyn passed and I wasn’t dealing with that properly and I had to go into counseling for a few months last year. Then I did cry in one of those sessions because of the bottled-up grief, the burnouts, anger, and everything. My dad passed, then my sister passed a year after my dad. So, when my dad passed, my dad was older. I just thought he was seventy-something, and he’s lived a good life. I didn’t really think much of it. But I was a bit angry because I kind of felt the hospital should have told me he was dying but they didn’t tell us. So, I was a bit angry with that and my sister too was upset at that time. If they had told us he was dying, we would have been with him every morning, afternoon and night, sleeping with him, and holding his hand. So, it was just a case of ‘Daddy we’ll see you in the morning’ and then we left and learnt he has passed in the middle of the night. Then Tosyn passed. Ah! When Tosyn died, I was angry, I thought, ‘why will God take my sister, we’re just 2 children! And I’m the firstborn. My mummy lost two children before Tosyn when they were young. Now, she has lost 3 children, now it’s only me.’ First of all, I felt the burden of loving my mother was a bit much for me. I was angry with God.”  

“Tosyn had been a sickler, and I had even been detached from her, because I thought she was going to die anyway. So, it was a lot of things. I think I have now started understanding some things myself, why I was the way I was with people. I now started cultivating friendships and making myself vulnerable. Because I never wanted to be vulnerable”.

Watch the excerpt, here.   

Nigerian Entrepreneur, Sandra Iheuwa sits with Chude Jideonwo on #WithChude. On this episode, she shared about her relationship with her estranged husband, baby mama drama, callout culture and a husband who didn’t love her. 

She talked about reconciliation with her ex, Ubi Franklin, “Life is too short, also we share a child together. We have done a lot of things for each other. We decided to take a lot of things off social media and resolve the issues we had for the sake of our child, and that was what happened which is a very good step. He is doing everything he is supposed to do for his child.”  

On why she chose to address her issues with ex-husband on social media, and the call-out culture, she said, “sometimes, some people don’t take things seriously until you speak about it. I believe in speaking about something that really hurt me or something that doesn’t seem right. I realized that in this country, if you speak up about something, people see you as troublesome and I believe in conflict resolution. I see here, if you talk about something that you are not ‘okay’ with, people will say things like, ‘Oh she talks too much’. A lot of people had this view about me until they met me in person, and I used to tell people that social media is not real life. A lot of people judge people based on what they see on social media.” She also reacted to some of the allegations by her ex-husband that she was in the marriage for social media and that he had spent 45 million naira on her wedding, and I confronted him about it. He cheated and he thought I was going to come online and talk about it. So, he went on social media and talked about it. This is a man that met me on social media, I am always on social media, promoting my business and showing myself. He slid into my DM and for me to say that I am always on social media, especially when he was the one asking me to post him on my page. He likes the attention; even when I revealed I was pregnant, he was the one who wrote the caption. In all of that, you still asked me to marry you. Now, I feel like he was just doing that to safe face. Even with all of that I still wanted to make my marriage work, I went back to the house. He didn’t throw me out, I left. Because I was in love with him and I was heavily pregnant and vulnerable, I wasn’t thinking straight at that time. I was like I don’t want to have my baby out of wedlock, I don’t want to bring this child in to this world when I’m having issues with the father, I wanted to make this work.” 

Sandra also shared about the pain she suffered, after returning to him, and how her choice to marry him was driven by love and not any ulterior motive. “There was a time I lost it. I really did lose it. I locked myself up in the room,  and I was going to kill myself because I was thinking ‘Why is this man behaving like this to me?’ I don’t understand it. I have tried everything possible to try to remedy this whole thing that we’re having but he wasn’t having it because I said he cheated on me. It used to be so painful for me to talk about it, before but I’m healed enough to talk about it because when I found out that he cheated on me was when I went to the hospital. I was heavily pregnant, and I found out he infected me with gonorrhea. It didn’t sit well with me because I have never had an STD before in my life. So, I didn’t know how to handle it. I tried talking to him about it, he came up with different excuses and still didn’t admit it. But he did say he was going to take me to the hospital so we can go clear things up. I think that really got him so pissed off because he didn’t want it to be out there. I had no intention of putting it out there, but he got scared and ran to social media and started saying all that. Sometimes I used to be so mad, ‘why is this man doing this to me’ but now I see that it is a pattern, he did the same to his ex-wife.   

“Somebody warned me about marrying him, but when a woman is in love, there’s nothing you can tell her. Love can cloud one’s judgement”, she added. 

Watch the excerpt here

Content Creator and Event Host, Bukunmi Adeaga-Ilori popularly known as KieKie sits with Chude Jideonwo, host of #WithChude to discuss, the rise of her career in the creative industry, and why she hid her pregnancy from the public.  

“My first time in Lagos, was when I came for my NYSC in 2010. After coming to Lagos, I realized that even though Lagos was smaller than the city I grew up in (Ibadan), it was very difficult to get almost anything done. Speaking of getting my content on TV, having the right people to collaborate with, the right group to work with, it was really difficult. I started producing my own content which I called Style Connect, where we had makeup artists and hair stylists come and give fashion tips. But I struggled with it. So, I thought ‘Let’s rewind and give this another try’. At one time, I was hosting red carpet and I met Gbenga Adeyinka who introduced me to the boss of GoldMyne TV. That was my first entrance into the media space and the hustle continued. It was definitely not as I had envisaged”. 

KieKie also shared how her stint in creating events almost failed, “I threw two concerts in Ibadan in 2015/2016, it cost us millions, my parents supported that. The concerts were successful, and they were not. They weren’t successful because it wasn’t a filled-out show. However, because my parents had friends who bought tables, we kind of got the money back. For the second season, we didn’t lose money, but it wasn’t a great show to put on the show reel, but the first one was a failure”.  

She also shared how her content unexpectedly broke the internet during the 2020 lockdown. “My breakthrough will be in 2020. Covid happened. The way my followership was going up, it felt like it was from Facebook’s headquarters. On TikTok, everyone was finding the things I did funny. Another thing about me is that if I film anything and watch it and I don’t laugh, that means it’s not funny because I crack myself up.  As I am thinking about it, I am already laughing.”  

KieKie also shared how she started making skits online, “I was dragged into skit making, it was Mr., Macaroni that dragged me. He is my friend, we spend time together, and he always says, ‘you are so funny, I need to feature you in one of my skits, and I am like, ‘I am not doing’. So, we shot his skit in 2020. That was my first skit, and then other skit makers started calling me and I ran, for almost a year. Then I shot one mummy’s boy content with Victor Edem featuring Taymesan and that one also went boom. When the skit makers started calling me, I was reluctant because I am a fashion person, I am not a comedian but I am a fun person with a lot of humor and I can express myself that’s it.” After her stint in skit making she finally accepted a role with Oluwadolarz which had beautiful feedback and also led her to start producing her own skit  in August 2021. 

On why she hid her pregnancy from the public, she said, “while I was pregnant, I had a lot of energy. For the first three months, I did not know I was pregnant, I just visited the hospital, and I was told I was pregnant. Pregnancy was more of a 2023 vision for me. A lot of things are the way they are because of how people will perceive me. In as much as I like to do things my own way, I also have to be conscious of the environment you live in. I was going to film a sitcom, and I don’t want a situation where people will be like, ‘oh, don’t stand up’. I was on a tour with my fellow actors, and they didn’t know that I was pregnant. People will not allow me do the things that I want to do. Even after the announcement, people were still like, why are you posting pictures, you are supposed to post after giving birth”. 

Watch the excerpt here.

Maria Chike Benjamin, BBN Reality Star, sits with Chude Jideonwo host of #WithChude to discuss life after Big Brother Naija, her relationship with her father, the viral tweet in January, and her new TV show.   

On going for the reality TV show, Big Brother Naija, she shared, “2020 was a very challenging year for me. I was like, ‘What am I going to do next’, and I didn’t know much about Big Brother. I had few friends prior to 2019, who were encouraging me to go, and I was like, ‘No’. Later, I made up my mind because I knew I had future goals I wanted to achieve, and I thought, ‘maybe this is the platform that I needed’. I didn’t even tell my family I was going for Big Brother because they wouldn’t have known my right intention for me being on such a platform. The negative persona that comes with ladies being on such platform, to them it will be ‘why do you want to showcase yourself on a reality show in Nigeria, the reality show in the UK Is always trashy with people fighting, swearing at each other and all of that,’ and that is the image they would have had in their head”. 

“When I went to Big Brother, I didn’t know what was going to happen afterwards. I didn’t even know I was going to move back to Nigeria. Everything was just like forced unto me. When I did come out, I was at a stage of my life where things were difficult mentally. Dealing with the new ‘so-called’ fame, everything was just too much. I literally started to learn all over again at the end of 2021, when I left the house”, she added.  

Maria also shared about her relationship with her father, after her parents’ divorce and dealing with grief. “My dad was like my best friend; I was very close to him. He literally dragged me and said, ‘you aren’t going anywhere’. My dad was Cancer, I am a Taurus, so we were like a match made in heaven. He died in 2013, it was like a changing point in my life because my dad did everything for me, he had my life planned out. So, when he passed away, I was like, ‘what am I going to do with life?’. I didn’t accept it until months after he was buried, I was in denial. I fell into depression. When I finally got out of it, I told myself, ‘this isn’t what your dad would have wanted you to be, he would have wanted you to be a great woman, so go do something’”.  

On the viral moment when she mistook Apostle Joshua Selman for Apostle Johnson Suleman, she said, “the thing is, there was a rumour (that I was dating Apostle Johnson Suleman). Some blogs put out stuff there with no evidence and it tarnishes people’s images or what you’re working on. It derails you from the image you’re trying to portray, whether it’s the real you or not. The whole rumour about this was months back and I paid it no attention. I don’t need to explain to people every time there is a rumour about me. I don’t owe anyone. If you want to believe it, then that’s fine. I don’t actually do that, and I don’t care. My mum had left for the airport that evening. I took her to the airport and was stuck in traffic on my way back and I was just bored on Twitter, and it was so funny to me. But looking back now, it’s nothing funny. I didn’t know there were two Apostles. And this is my ignorance and silliness which I am aware of now and I’m really deeply sorry. I thought it was the ‘claimed’ person that they said I had something to do with. In my head I was like, ‘well if he’s the one it’d be really funny.’ Like we don’t know each other so, ‘Hi, nice to meet you’. That was how I thought it was going to go in my head and I really thought people would find it funny, but no, I was actually embarrassing and disrespecting a real man of God”.  

Maria also shared about her TV show. “It is something totally different, it is something personal to me and a lot of people can relate to it” 

Watch the excerpt, here 

Nigerian Singer, Songwriter and Artist, Nissi Ogulu sits with Chude Jideonwo, host of #WithChude to discuss her relationship with her parents, her career as a designer and her music.  

“I have lived in London for 12 years. Immediately after university, I did a project, and my supervisor was ‘gassed’ about the project. He reached out to a colleague at Jaguar Land Rover for me, because of how well I had done on the project. He wanted them to give me an internship which they did. After that they wanted me to come work on projects for them. That was how the Jaguar thing started”.  

“During the internship, I worked on a new design for the centre console. Apparently, they reached back out and gave me an offer letter and wanted me to come back in. They put me on another project where I was working with a team called Customer Focus Innovation – the team come up with different designs that may or may not make it to a model. I did that for a year, and someone on the team saw the way I work (my leadership qualities). He was supposed to travel to Austria to work on an electric car. But then he just had a baby, so he was looking for a colleague to take his place. We started building a work-relationship and so from seeing how I work he probably thought why not me. I was there for 8 months, working on the components.  Because I am working with management as well, they started to pay attention that ‘this young girl is here’.” She further shared that her manager gave her further projects to work on, and she had thought she was going to get into a managerial role. However, she was assigned a project which she later found out to be the Range Rover Design.      

On if the decision to be a part of Spaceship Records, her brother’s label, was a good one, she said, “I think for me at [that] time, yes. You must weigh the pros and cons, there’s no label that is perfect, but having people who believe in and are ready to support you, understand your vision, and draw a plan that you can align with is priceless. And at the same time, you are building a legacy.” She shared how at some point, she didn’t want to be a part of the label, but after carefully thinking about it she decided to try something different. ‘It’s never been a competition and it never will be”, she added.  

Nissi also shared about the kind of music she created. She said, ‘because you are African doesn’t mean the only type of music you can create is Afrobeat. You are creative just like anybody else in any part of the world. You can do R’n’B, pop or whatever it is, your creativity wants to tap into. I think that is what living outside the country has shown me. It opened my mind to many types of music, and that’s how I choose to create.  And I have, kind of, created my sort of sound which I like. We always have a debate about what the sound is called in our team meeting, because I never want it to be called anything, I will only give it a description, it is Afro-rooted, contemporarily driven, and globally positioned.”     

Watch the excerpt, here