Omotola Jalade Ekeinde

  By Nehru Odeh

Hers is a relentless fighting spirit.  Despite having experienced many personal tragedies early in life, screen goddess, Omotola Jalade Ekeinde,  who is currently celebrating 25 years in the entertainment industry, is today one of the most celebrated actors in the globe. In 2013, Time magazine named the multiple award- winning actress one of the 100 most influential people in the globe, sharing that space with global icons such as Michele Obama, Beyonce and  Kate Middleton.

Great feat. Certainly. But wait for this.  The sexy actress was inspired not just to take acting as a career but also to achieve greatness because of a personal tragedy she had suffered. She lost her dad to whom she was very close in a road accident while still a student of Command Secondary School Kaduna. She said in an exclusive interview with TheNEWS  that she has yet to recover from that loss.

“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.

“Because I was very, very close to him. Like I said, I was an only child for like seven years or so. And I was the only daughter. So he and I were very exceptionally close. 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.

However Omotola’s loss also became her gain. Rather than condescend to that tragedy, she braced up and took acting as a career at the young age of 15 because she was the bread winner of her family, being the eldest child.  Two years later, when she was barely 17, she starred in Mortal Inheitance , the movie via which she shot  into limelight in 1995.

“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,” she said.

 -Read Omotola’s full interview here