No woman can take the place of a mother in a child’s life. This is
true as the mother of one of Nigeria’s famous entertainer Steve ‘Yaw’
Onu affirms this much on this week’s edition of the popular reality
television show, Supermom, the celebrity edition.
Yaw, a renown on-air-personality, actor and comedian rose to fame
while featuring on the TV comedy drama, ‘Flatmates’ with his
character’s humourous refrain, ‘Uwa bu paw paw men yaw’ which kept
people glued to their television sets every Saturday.
The seventh of 10 children who hails from Awka, in Anambra state,
Yaw has since become one of the most sought-after entertainers in the
country. Recently he was selected as one of Nigeria’s Olympic torch
bearers. But his road to success was not smooth.
According to Yaw’s mum, whose turn it is to share her story on the
popular celebrity show which airs on major terrestrial television
stations in Nigeria this weekend, it was indeed very tough feeding ten
hungry children and having to pay rent in their squalid apartment in
Lawanson, Surulere, Lagos.
“Whenever the rains came,it fell directly on us because the roof was
leaking.” A second hand clothes dealer in Yaba market, the 62 year old
woman narrated how she took to petty trading to compliment her
husband’s income. She also ensured that Yaw and his siblings hawked cold
drinks and ‘pure water’ to support the family. “She would tell me she
was teaching me business instead of her to just say she wanted me to
help her out in the market,” Yaw added jokingly.
Narrating further, Yaw’s mother recalled the day she was arrested
and detained while on an itinerant hawking in Aswani Market, Lagos, by
town council officials. I go prison because I deh train my children.
That day, my children no see me. she narrated in pidgin English.
According to her, on that fateful day, she did not return home
because she couldn’t bail herself. A good Samaritan came to her
rescue.
The family would also suffer another adversity when the matriarch was
involved in a tragic accident in a ‘molue’ heading to Iyana-Ipaja from
Maryland. The vehicle had a brake failure and somersaulted several
times. Mrs.Onu who was standing in the bus sustained minor injuries but
was unconscious which made many mistake her for dead.
“I was taken with the other ‘corpses’ to the mortuary. It took a man
who came to identify the casualties to discover that I was still
alive.”
Ironically,when her children came visiting, the youngest of them
said, mama we never chop o even before asking how she was faring.
Despite her initial objection to his choice of career, she now
prefers to be called Mama Steve because he had brought her suffering to
an end. “My children made it; thank God I did not suffer in vain.”
culled from Vanguard
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