The 9ICE Exclusive Part 2: How I sold Pepper for King Sunny Ade’s Mum as a kid – 9ice + “Reasons why my first marriage didn’t work”

“It was like this, you
see your mother, you see your father, they are there they are not dead but you
know they cannot help you and you are still not angry with them. You will go
out and fend for yourself. In fact it is from some of the things you bring home
that they will even take from you and you are not even angry with them because
you know that is what life has chosen for you guys. That was how bad it was
when I was growing; they cant even afford to pay for your school fees”

9ice to GDA…’I had to close before official school clossing hour to sell pepper for my mother’

9ICE’s worst time

“There was this shoe
called Cortina from Bata in those days, most of my friends had that shoe but I
was unable to buy one; that is still one of my greatest regrets till date
because I was never able to buy one; I never own a pair of that shoe; I longed
for it all through the day when I was in school that ‘Kemi naa t era bata yii’
because the shoe is so bad”

9ICE meets the GDA

Why I took my family away from Bariga

9ICE….’I had a deal with mum to work at a site first before resuming home to hawk pepper for her’

In fact she cared
for me like her last born. In fact she is the one I call “mother”, I call my
real mother ‘aunty’ because I never knew my mother was my real mother; I taught
she was my aunty thinking my step mum was my mother. Because that is the way my
father structured our family. There was peace, O o too be, who born monkey?
Everybody eat in the same room, nobody dare say this is my mother or that is
your mother. We are all regarded as brothers and sisters with no preference for
one mother above the other. In fact in the house, we generally call my mother
“Aunty” because my mother was the last wife then, and she was so young. Even
me, I call my mother ‘Aunty’. It is not quite long ago that I started calling
my mother “Mother”. I call my mother “Aunty” because I wasn’t told, I didn’t
know who is who?.  I call my step mother
“Maami” because anytime ti mo bade, eni ti mo ma lo kii niyen, eni to ma gbonje
fun mi niyen. Eni to ma so fun mi pe o ya lose bayi niyen (She is the one I
first go greet when I return from an outing; she is the one that gives me food
and order me to carry out any activity in the house. My step mother’s name is
Aishat, she is just enjoying now. I am not the only son in the family but
between my mum and my dad, I am the only child. Every other person is my half
but if you see us you will think we are of the same mother, the same father”

9ICE and GDA shares a joke

“But dad’s own level of
poverty was even worse. When his mother gave birth to him the woman died
immediately and he was the only child. So, his father just threw him to one of
his own brothers ‘O ya tele Egbon yi lo seko’. His family is Christian but until
he got to Lagos when his father’s brother changed him to a Muslim. So, he ended
up being the only big man in the family because my father was the only one that
had a house”.

9ICE…..’The level of my father’s own poverty was severe than mine but we survived’

My worst fear in life