Hey good readers! How are you finding the stories on Supermom show? Unbelievable and touching right? Now you're fully convinced that behind most successful stars out there are/were mums who suffered to see them rise to the top.Sit back, relax and enjoy this week's episode!Singer, song writer and producer, Cobhams Asuquo isn't just one of the most talented young men in the Nigerian music industry, with a remarkable record of success in his chosen career, he is also a conqueror; having won several battles including that against blindness which he was born with. On this week's celebrity edition of supermom, Mrs Gladys Asuquo and her son, Cobhams who is now a husband and father, tell the intriguing story of how a blind kid turned his disability to a success story. Born like other normal children, Cobhams seemed perfectly normal until about three months after when his very observant mother began noticing his awkwardness. She quickly took him to the University Teaching Hospital in Ibadan from where they were referred to a hospital in Kano. There, her worst fears were confirmed; her son had been blind from the womb and nothing could be done to restore his sight.
Rather than cry and blame God for her seeming 'ill' fate, Mrs Asuquo who was a clerical officer in the army resigned to take care of her son and prepare him adequately for a future she knew had to be great. It wasn't easy at all. Her first responsibility was showing him that his blindness wasn't a disability. "It wasn't easy watching Cobhams do chores around the house and run errands like my other children but I resolved to make him as independent and capable of achieving anything he sets his mind to do. I showed him where his box of clothes was and would ask him to go get his clothes after bathing him," Mrs Asuquo says. These trainings came in handy when he had to move into the boarding school for his secondary education.
Cobhams' father was an officer in the army and was hardly ever around so it was up to the mother to train and sometimes solely cater for her children. At some point, when he was seconded to Chad Republic, things became so unbearable that she had to boil and sell groundnuts to sustain the family. It was in the course of this that she noticed her son's love for the drums. "He would beat on anything he could lay his hands on so I encouraged him by buying him musical toys. Cobhams never went to school to learn to play any music instrument; I think it was just an escape route for him," she says. She was therefore not surprised when he decided to drop out of the University of Lagos as a 300 level student of Law to face his passion full time.
The Asuquos' edition, airing this weekend on terrestrial television stations across the country, is a tearjerker that would keep viewers on the edge of their seats while the programme lasts. Alongside the Asuquos, the mother of celebrated filmmaker cum actor, Kunle Afolayan, Mrs Omoladun Afolayan, shares her emotive trajectory with viewers especially having to cope and cater for her kids while the patriarch, travelling theatre artist and filmmaker, Ade Love traversed the globe. Born in 1943, Moladun got married at an early age to the handsome and famous Ade Love when she was quite young. Since her husband was always on the road and had other wives and children to cater for, preferring also to invest a lot in his art, each of his wives had the responsibility of caring for their children. A street 'puff puff' seller, who later 'graduated' into selling pepper soup, Kunle, her most famous child was barely five years old when they were rendered homeless during the 'Ghana-Must-Go' era. "We had to move in with my friend's mother," the awards winning director of films like Irapada, Figurine and Phone Swap recalls. His mother takes up the story; "All we did was spend the night there. I was pregnant with my last child then and would sit outside in the cold till the Mama would come back, freshen up, and then ask us to come in and sleep. It wasn't convenient because there were bedbugs in the room and I had to stay up to keep them from biting my boys." They finally got a place of their own but in a swampy area and whenever it rained, the house would get flooded. She lost the little property they had to the flood. The days of want are clearly over but, according to Kunle, it has been hard forgetting those days when his mother sold all her clothes down to the last wrapper so they would survive.