Ademola Olonilua and Eric Dumo
For about three decades ace gospel
singer, Funmi Aragbaye, has entertained Nigerians across the world with
her sonorous voice and good music. Unknown to many, it comes with a
price tag and it is at the expense of her family.
In an exclusive chat with Saturday
Beats, the iconic singer said that because the demand for her services
is always at its peak during festive seasons, she has not been able to
spend quality time with her family ever since her ministry started.
Simply put, during festivities like
Christmas and Easter, when most people would be in the warm embrace of
their loved ones, she does not have such luxury and her children often
complain.
She said, “I hardly have time to take my
family out because I have a very tight schedule due to the nature of my
job. I cannot decline my clients’ request whenever they want to book me
for a show because it is a festive season and I want to take my family
out. For me, the festive period is usually the most demanding. In fact,
the last time I took my family out to have fun was in 1979. Ever since I
began my music ministration, I do not have time for such anymore. In
those days when my children were young and they normally complained a
lot but I was lucky that when I went into the music ministry fully, my
children were already grown except for my last child. He was about three
years old back then. They complained a lot when they were young but as
they began to grow, they understood and accepted the nature of my job.
“It is the grace of God that has been
strengthening me these past decades. Also, I grew up to be a workaholic
like my mother. If I do not work, I will fall ill. I am used to working
hard every day and the earliest time I hit the bed is 1am and I wake up
by 5am when the Muslims wake up to pray. It is easy to wake up that
early because a mosque is not too far from my house and they use a very
loud speaker. I work till late at night and I attend to my social media
account late in the night before I finally call it a day. Also, as a
minister of the gospel, I am actively involved in vigils and I have to
wake up by 3am to pray. When I am done with my prayer and decide to
sleep, it would coincide with the time Muslims want to have their
prayers so I would just stand up and start working again.”
Aragbaye, who began her career working
in a media house before she moved into the civil service, gave reasons
why she quit her job as a journalist. While chatting with Saturday Beats,
she said that journalists were treated like the dregs of the society
and although their job was quite risky, they were not well paid for the
hazards they could come across on the job.
“I started my career as a journalist and I started at the government press in Ilorin. From there, I moved to the Nigerian Herald
when it was established and I worked with the likes of Chief Segun
Osoba, the late Ebenezer Williams, the late Yakubu Abdulazeez, among
several others. I made a lot of sacrifices and I could have become an
editor if I stayed on the job but I have no regrets. My husband was a
journalist for about 40 years and I have realised that journalists are
not well taken care of. The remuneration and condition of service is
very bad. Once you have a journalist as the head of the family, it
affects everyone. They were paid peanuts in those days and the condition
of service was very terrible. By the time I left Sketch
Newspaper, most people I left behind look like poverty-stricken people
and eventually the newspaper packed up. My transfer to the civil service
from journalism was a saving grace for me. While I was in the civil
service, God called me into the ministry,” she said.
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