Q: Doing a biography must have come with its own challenge. What were these challenges?
A: Funny enough, the kind of research I did writing this biography was not the kind of research I did when I was writing Three Women. She just turned 80 on 17 May and so I needed to research into the Lagos of her childhood. But Three Women had prepared me for that period of Lagos. Other than literature, one of my greatest areas of interest is history. I love history, especially African and Modern history. So it wasn’t so much of a challenge because I thoroughly enjoyed doing the work. And Dr. Silva is still very much active and I enjoyed the few weeks I spent with her, interviewing her and going through family albums. It was a lot of fun.

Q: Now that you have completed work on the biography, what next?
A: Who knows? I am leaving that to God. But it is nothing I can really talk about now. However, Soji and I are working on a documentary and that is one of the reasons we came. That is something that is still occupying a lot of my time right now. We have shot in Osogbo, Akure and Lagos. When we get back to Canada, we are going to continue shooting there and go and spend a few weeks in the United States to complete the documentary, then editing and post-production. That is my immediate preoccupation right now.

Q: How does it feel when one is married to a man who shares the same profession, or rather artistic vision, like you and Soji?
A: First of all, I have never been married to anyone else, so I have not tried anything else. But going by this experience, I think I will do it all over again. There is nothing like having somebody with similar interest. He sometimes wakes me up at 2.00a.m. to discuss an idea he has and woe betide me if I am not paying attention. He is somebody I can call up at 5a.m. and ask him what he thinks about an idea as a sounding board. There is nothing like having this kind of similar interest with your spouse. And in terms of dealing with the ups and downs of your profession, you have someone who knows what it feels like. When you are being turned down by a publisher, you have somebody who can actually empathise with you. So it’s been fun and I know I couldn’t have thrived in another marriage outside the man I married.

Q: You seem to be having a lot of excitement, writing and producing films. Could you recall the greatest challenge you have faced in this creative endeavour?
A: Everytime you sit down and pour your energy, your imagination and money into a venture and you come against the kind of mediocrity that we tend to find in the arts, it is a huge challenge. I will give you an example. When Soji retired from NTA and we decided to set up our own independent production company, we invested every penny we had into making pilots and then one major production, Owuro Lojo. Now, it took 18 months for us to find somebody to put down money for that production to go on air. It was 18 grueling months. Eighteen months of drinking garri and dry fish. It was 18 months of turning the children down when they needed money for books. I remember my son who at the time was about seven .We had gone to pick him in school one afternoon and he asked me if I had sold my film because he needed new shoes. He knew that the family’s livelihood depended on that film. Thank God, eventually it did extremely well. But it was difficult before we could actually find a proper audience for it. Before Owuro Lojo, there had been so much emphasis on stories on babalawos and witches, and things like that. But these things are not in Owuro Lojo, so that your average marketer in Idumota would look at you and say, there is no babalawo or witches. And at that time, there were very few well known Yoruba actors. If they were not there, nobody was prepared to look at the content or the quality of the work. Thank God we proved them wrong.

Q: What is your impression on Nollywood, Nigeria’s fledgling movie industry?
A: I’d rather not talk about that. Many of them are professional colleagues.

Q: Do see hope there?
A: Yes, I am a very positive person

Q: What actually prepared you to establish a school mainly for the less privileged?
A: My parents were middle class in terms of income. But at one point in my life, my mother who was a very industrious entrepreneur had a setback in her business. And for the first time in my life, I found myself as a teenager, anxious about where school fees was going to come from. And I think the contrast from what my life had been before that setback left a very strong impression on me. So I guess that is one of the reasons I’m a little more sensitive than others.

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