Sup readers,Hope you're enjoying every bit of the Supermom reality TV show (celebrity edition)? Featured in the fifth episode of the show which will be beamed across some TV stations this week are the mums of popular On Air personality; Steve Onu (Yaw) and fast-rising singer Oluwajuwonlo (Jaywon).
Sit back, relax and listen to these emotional stories!A mother can take the place of anyone else in a child's life but no one can take the place of a mother in that child's life. This is true. And two of Nigeria's famous entertainers, Steve 'Yaw' Onu, and Olajuwon 'Jaywon' Iledare, affirm as 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 on the TV comedy drama, 'FLATMATES' with his character's humourous refrain, 'uwah bu paw paw mehn yaw' which kept people glued to their television sets every Saturday. The seventh of ten children who hails from Awka in Anambra state has now metamorphosed into a sought-after entertainer and was recently 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 show which airs on major terrestrial television stations in Nigeria, it was indeed very hard taking care of ten mouths 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 trader of 'okrika' (hand me down, second hand clothes) in Yaba market, the 62 year old woman recalls that she had to take to petty trading to compliment her husband's salary. She also ensured Yaw and his siblings hawked cold drinks and 'pure water'. "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 jokingly adds. One day, while on an itinerant hawking in Aswani Market, Lagos, she was arrested by town council officials and she was locked up. "I go prison oh because I deh train children. That day, my children no see me," she says in vernacular. Because she could not bail herself, a good Samaritan did. 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 which had 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 see if he could identify the casualties to see 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." For Mrs. Comfort Iledare, the mother of Kennis Music artiste, Jaywon, reality dawned on her that life was not a bed of roses when she lost her husband in 1998. And was left to cater for four kids. There was nothing she didn't sell among her paraphernalia just for her kids to go to school. One of her most painful experiences was when she had to sell her jewelry and pot to her friend who bought them instead of just lending her the money to pay her children's school fees. When she borrowed N10, 000 from another friend, she had to hawk shoes for a year to pay back the money. Jaywon says, "We suffered a lot. I was always hawking used and worn out shoes. When I return from school with my brother, we would go to dumpsites to pick worn out shoes and pots and then sell them." As much as she wanted her son to be an accountant, the latent singing talent started manifesting since he was a kid. According to her, "He was gentle, not as troublesome as the other children but there was something wrong, his love for music. Juwon would always come home from school with children singing and dancing. Whenever they came, I would chase them all away. I didn't know it is that same music that would now make him a star and me a proud mother."Yaw and Jaywon's mother's stories are the focal point in the episode five of the celebrity edition of Supermom sponsored by Procter and Gamble.