"As long as there is life, you can hope for tomorrow" - actress recounts house fire incident

Here's an excerpt from the interview:

How many years have you been in the industry?

1993, that is going to be 22 years now.

Wow that’s a long time…

(Laughs) It is actually a long journey even when I think about it, am always like wow.

Can you take us down the memory lane?

It’s a long journey, how do I even start, the story has been told over and over again. The Late J.T Tom West took me to my first audition, May His Soul Rest in Peace. Bob Manuel was a great help and inspiration to me, the Late Funmi Martins too, and my first film When The Sun Sets, everybody knows this story.

From then on I worked with Opa Williams Virgin Organization and got to meet a whole lot more people, helped him with his programming and all that and then films just started coming one after the other. But it took me a while to understand that when you get to a certain level, you have to be able to want to put your foot down. When I started it was always the crying roles and playing the victim.

Your Lekki house recently got razed, can you share the story of what actually happened on that fateful day?

It is true, the house got burnt and I lost everything. I really don’t know what happened because I was here on the Do Good set, I was filming, and was about to have lunch when my nanny called me and was like “madam fire” I told her to get people to throw water on it and didn’t even know it was like a big fire.

I immediately got up and by the time I turned into the street before mine, I could see the sky was black, I got there and there were people everywhere and nobody could get in.

Because the first thing about fire is the smoke, it’s going to make it totally impossible to get in and it could kill you. And my next door neighbor was having his daughter’s birthday and there were children there, that was Ik Osakioduwa, he happens to be my next door neighbor and he had sent a message to all radio stations about the fire.

I called the fire service for over 2hrs and there was no response, by the time they came, everything had gone, the house was razed completely. But am talking to you now and am glad to be alive ,winning this award further goes to show that as long as there is life, you can hope for tomorrow, There are two choices, either you stand up or you stay down.

There are many people who have gone through such fire experience and lost their lives but there is no scratch on me, the will power is what matters. I was at that point where I said what’s the use, where am I going to start from but I thank God. And the people on this set, they are the best crew and cast I have ever worked with, everybody came they scooped water from the gutter, some cut their hands trying to get in, they came the next day and helped me move.

It was totally unexpected, I don’t want to cry but they were awesome.

After your marriage ended, you pulled strong and continued, how did you get over that phase of your life?

After the breakup of the marriage, I have learnt to love me, myself and who I am as a woman. First if you don’t love yourself you are always going to have somebody else fulfill or complete you, make you somebody.

I won’t let any man define who I am. Firstly you have to stand as an individual before any man will want to see you as somebody they want to get attached to because if you are needy or the helpless female, you won’t last long. You just have to shake off and stand tall and move on when the tough times come.

There are so many women who are in marriages but they are not happy, some are going through violence psychologically, emotionally, financially etc. I have no ill feelings towards my ex husband, he is a great father to our daughter, fantastic father he is taking very good care of her.

And he was there to support me during the fire incident, so there is no bad blood. My own is if it’s not working, agree to part amicably let there not be any acrimony. Don’t hold any grudges no matter how long it lasted. You just have to move on. As long as you are alive there will be trials and travails, only the dead rest.

And your daughter, do you get to spend time with her?

Yes definitely, I will be going to see her in few weeks time.

Watch Pulse TV News video to see how fire incident occured.