‘You were an absentee father’ — Mother of Ooni’s first child speaks out for the first time ever

FIJ

Omolara Olatubosun, the mother of Ooni Adeyeye Ogunwusi’s first child, has described the paramount Yoruba king as an absentee father who failed to take care of his daughter for a number of years.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Olatubosun said there was no iota of truth in Ooni’s concocted “self-serving tale about his role in our daughter’s life”.

She described the relationship between the two of them as “short and uneventful”.

“A couple of weeks ago, on his Instagram and Facebook pages, he once again wrote that he was a ‘single father’ to my daughter — a mendacious claim that has no basis in fact, but has gone on for too long,” the statement, exclusively obtained by FIJ, read in part.

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“I, Omolara, took care of my daughter physically, financially and emotionally, with the moral support of my mother and my siblings.”

She also said Ooni was never present in their daughter’s life for the first 10 years of her growing up, describing the single father narrative as “annoying and disrespectful”.

“I was a pregnant teen, but he was nowhere to be found, and I bore the responsibilities for our child and paid the physical and social cost of raising her alone in my mom’s house,” she said.

She said Ooni saw their daughter for only five minutes at the hospital when she was born, noting that the next periods he saw her were when she was already four and 10 years old respectively.

“I was the single parent. He was, until our daughter was old enough, an absentee father. Unfortunately, a lie goes a long way around the world before the truth gets a chance to tie its shoes. So, this is my attempt at correcting the record,” she said, challenging the king to provide photos of him and their daughter as a kid.

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While celebrating his daughter’s birthday on October 19, Ooni had recounted how he became a father when he was just a 19-year-old. He said the journey with his daughter, Princess Adeola Ogunwusi, was incredibly filled with uncertainty as a young Father.

“Reminiscent of the past: those steps of moulding and shaping the future of another life were huge tasks and calculated risks,” he said. “Based on my recollection, I lived through pockets of circumstances that called my integrity and competence to question. I equally realised that being a single parent to a daughter in an unfamiliar footprint can be a major shift in human experience and a daunting journey.”