By Seyi Babalola
Toke Makinwa, a popular Nollywood actress and media personality, has stated that if she and her former husband, Maje Ayida, had a kid together, she would have stayed in the marriage.
Makinwa and Ayida split up in 2015 after it was discovered that he had pregnant his ex-girlfriend.
However, on the most recent episode of her podcast, TokeMoments, the actress admitted that if she had a child, she would have had to compromise.
She said, “A lot of women stay in unhealthy marriages for the children. For the longest you hear so many women say things like, ‘the marriage is done but I only stay for my kids.’
“And I’m going to be honest here, if I have had a kid while I was married, I may have been one of those women. Because I also had the trauma of losing both parents at the age of 8. I mean, I was adopted. I have a great life which I’m thankful for but there were times that I wondered what life could have possibly been like if that didn’t happened.
“So, for the sake of my children, I may have had to compromise just because I wanted them to have mum and dad. I may have been one of these women. So, I’m not even judging anyone right here.”
Her guest on the podcast, Iyabo Ojo said she left her marriage with her children instead of staying back with them because “I was young at the time. If I was at this age, a lot of decisions I took, I probably would not had taken. Because now I’m more wiser and have a better understanding of life.
“But then I was coming from a place where I was already damaged as a child. You know when you come from a very wealthy home but you’ve to still raise yourself? Things like that.
“I didn’t grow up to know my mum and dad. I was living with dad, my grandmother and his brothers. My granny was my mum to me. And my dad, I used to call him his name. My dad was not like a dad. He was like a brother and friend. He was like an uncle because he enjoyed life too much and he really didn’t had time to pay attention to me.
“Me growing up in that kind of situation where I didn’t even know what they called ‘mummy’. I didn’t know I had a mother. I knew my mum when I was about seven. My parents were never married. They just had my brother and I together.”
