Nollywood veteran, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde has described her father’s death 30 years ago, as the most traumatic experience of her life.
The young Omotola was attending the Command Secondary School in Kaduna, when her father died.
Omotola who recently marked her 25th anniversary in Nollywood, described how the shocking news hit her in an exclusive interview with TheNEWS magazine.
“The biggest motivating factor was the loss of my father. I was very close to my dad. And you know life was very good.
“We were not the richest people in the country but we were doing at least above average.
“We were a small family. I was the only child for a very long time. And then my junior brother came along.
“My dad was doing very well. He was very industrious. He had a good job. He was moving with the high and mighty, presidents and stuff like that.
“I mean life was good, you know what I mean; and at a very young age of 12 to have all of that crashing on your head in a very, very traumatic way.
“My dad had an accident. That was how he died. And I was far away in Kaduna. I was schooling in Command Secondary School, Kaduna.
`’I still remember very vividly how I was picked up from school, the trauma of not being told what had happened, how I was put on a plane, Nigerian Airways then, back to Lagos and all the time wondering .
“I knew at that young age that something was wrong. But nobody was talking to me. So I didn’t know who or what.
I remember thinking very clearly that the person that kept coming into my head was God, let it not be my dad, let it not be my dad.
“And behold I got home it was my dad – the trauma of walking into my house with a lot of people there.
“It affected me in more ways than I can explain.
“Even till today there are many decisions and many things that I have noticed about myself that resulted from that singular trauma that I went through in life.
“So that was the most significant turn of events that has changed my entire life.
” I lost my mother as well, which was another traumatic experience, but not as traumatic as my dad’s”.
