On July 6, Nollywood legend Bukky Ajayi passed on after a brief illness.
According to reports, Ajayi may have died of a heart related illness, but no express information was released by her family.
Th 82-year-old actress was buried same day according to Islamic rites. Now, her children, in an interview with Vanguard, have revealed the health issues she battled with, and how she raised them as a single mother.
According to Claudius Akinwade Peter-Thomas, her second son:-
“There aren’t enough words to quantify Mama. She was an independent woman who shouldered the responsibility of raising three lions (sons) without raising her brows. I see her as a lioness. She was also able to combine and manage her situation (single motherhood) and her career. She was a good planner.
To that effect, my elder brother is nine years older than me, and I am 11 years older than my younger brother. A good planner she was. Despite being in the public glare, she ensured her private life remained private. Many of my friends didn’t know I was the (child) of the popular actress. This is not because she wasn’t proud of her children, but because she was able to draw the line between her career and her family. People relate with me as Raz CPT and not the daughter of a celebrity, so to say.
Mummy has been struggling with her health, she had cancer of the breast, diabetic and was also hypertensive.”
Her last child, Kunle Fawole, described her last moments:
“I and mama were in the living room with some of my friends when I noticed that her heart wasn’t moving, I mean like she stopped breathing. Immediately, I checked her pulse and called my elder brothers. We felt her pulse and heartbeat, did everything possible. But alas, she has passed on. And that was at about 11:23 am on Wednesday. She was a bit ill before this happened. She had been ill for a number of years now. She had stroke some couple of years back. There was a time she also had cerebral malaria. She became diabetic, hypertensive and also suffered breast cancer before now.”
While her first son, 60-year-old Mr Alfred Oluwole Shoga, said:-
“At 60, my mother still gives me money each time I visit her and I will say, `Mum I’m suppose to give you money’ and she will say I should use it for transportation.”