Veteran Nollywood actress, Jumoke George, has revealed to City People that she was once disowned by her military father and her mum when she was a teenager. The beautiful woman of substance, who is now one of the most featured veteran actresses in the make belief industry, explained that her step mum was exposing her to what she wasn’t meant to know as a young girl and by the time she stood to state her opinion about it, the incident was used against her in the presence of his father, who didn’t only send her out of his abode, but also disowned her. Jumoke revealed this to Gbolahan Adetayo during the shooting of the much expected movie, Boundary of Love {Aala Ife} in Ogun State.
When asked how she became a single mother, she said, “I became a single mother as every other person. My beau is still alive and it has been very long that we parted ways. It has been over 2 decades that I have been a single mother. My marital journey had nothing called wedding because while I was still in school, I became a product of a broken home. I was from a polygamous family. So, my parents didn’t help my matter.
Along the line, when my parents divorced, I was still a baby between 5 to 7 years old and when my father was being transferred to the North, that was when I was living at my mother’s house before I moved in with my dad and my step mum. The years I spent with my mum would not be more than 4 to 5 years”.
Speaking on why she chose her dad above her mum, the thespian further narrated: “This is because I love my dad more than my mum. Mum was aware that I love him more than her. My dad died on 2nd of May, 1995. My mum is still alive, but my step mum is also late now. She actually died before my father. When I was still in secondary school, my stubbornness and my belief in myself made my father and his wife to drive me out of the house and I was disowned.
Despite the fact that I was very young then, I was exposed to so many things I shouldn’t know as a teenager. When I got to secondary school, there was a day I summoned courage which I didn’t know where it came from, I called on my step mum and said mummy “I am very sorry ma, for the first time in my life, please I want to stop running this kind of errand”. She said “which errand and I said “sending me to a herbalist’s house to collect substance for you. I am very sorry, I am growing up now and I know what you do with all these substances you asked me to collect for you”. She said: Eh! Jummy is that coming from you?” and I affirmed. She put all the substances in my father’s food and I guess that was the time to put an end to it.
That was the genesis of my problem. She said, now you’ve grown wings and you have the courage to stand before me and said “you are tired of running errand for me, okay no problem. “When my father returned from work, you know when men are deeply in love, they don’t reason even with their mothers. So, she told my father another version of the story, that she only asked me to cook, I didn’t only refused, but also abused her. “Can you imagine that? Where did I get the liver to say such?” I said “mum that was not what happened, “then my father said “even for you to say that was not what happened, she is right”. He said, so you can even attempt to defend yourself. She gave him options that if Jumoke didn’t leave the house that she would leave.
My father chose between his wife and his daughter, my dad said it to my face to leave the house immediately. The next thing he did was to get up and went inside his room and brought out his gun. He had a gun and he had licence to shoot as well. My father ran after me. He was ready to kill me. I will never forget that day; he pursued me with his gun till I got to the bus stop.
I cried and I went to meet his mother, I explained everything to her and she asked me to stay. My father came there and he saw me, he drove us out, he said he was going to kill his mum and I . She urged him to give me a chance to explain and he retorted: “when did that start? What kind of explanation did she has to tell? “Afterwards when I knew it was beyond an ordinary, thing, I left the house to meet my mum. Before I got there, my immediate elder sister ran to my mum and informed her that there was trouble in the house that Jumoke had been driven out of house.
On getting to my mum’s residence, my mum stood at the entrance and stopped me from entering. She sent me back to go and face my father. She recalled that did I remember that I was hell-bent to follow my father when I was a baby. She said she had disowned me among her children and I was surprised.
Thank God she is still alive. We still discuss about it even till date, but she is now pleading, saying that she didn’t know the gravity of what she did. I had pardoned her. I was a teenager when they both disowned me. That was how I ventured into acting, going from school. I spent some time with my friends and when I found out that their parents were not ready to cater for me, I had to move on with my life. I started living with my boss”, Jumoke said.
