71 this year, Jacobs turned out to be
almost as witty and informed as any professional with that baritone
voice that often leaves indelible impressions on his audience. This
interview eventually turned out be two hours of intriguing discussion on
family, Nollywood and politics.
Looking at your journey through your career, how fulfilling has it been?
When we started, people didn’t think
that there was any road there. I remember that a lot of my friends
didn’t respect what I was doing, but they always said ‘Olu, you are different‘. I will say ‘how different am I?’
If you don’t like and respect somebody in my profession just because of
your own bias, how can you say I am different? I am not different; it
is to me that those insults are being passed. It went as far as some
people dodging me because I came to their offices to see them. Those
friends that didn’t respect my talent, I had to stay away from them and I
was mingling more with people that were in entertainment like me. At
the end of the day, I am what I am today and to the glory of God it has
been a very fulfilling experience.
You and your wife are usually tagged Nollywood’s most celebrated couple. How did you meet?
I was having a meeting at the National
Theatre and the door opened a young lady came in. I looked at her. I
have never met her before in my life and I said to the people in the
room ‘ladies and gentlemen, this is the lady I am going to marry‘. Everybody laughed. She looked at me up and down, hissed and left. Today, she is my wife and that was 27years ago.
With the rate at which celebrity marriages are crashing, how have you been able to keep it together?
It is God. There are other forces
outside that you need to take cognizance of but when you do, you have to
make sure that they don’t take control over your life. You are now
thinking for two. No decision you take should be for yourself alone.
It’s for two and it must remain for two. You have to always remember
that. If my wife goes out, and she finds out that she would not be able
to make it back at the time she initially thought she would, she picks
up the phone and calls me to tell me. Fine! You are thinking for two,
she knows where I am, I know where she is. We still do this till
tomorrow. Communicating like that helps a lot, once we are talking, you
have an idea of where I am and I have an idea of where you are. I am not
saying that it should be every minute calls. Sometimes just being
together in a room not necessarily saying anything is also important.
So who cooks for you when she is not around?
I am very familiar with the kitchen. Sometimes, I say, ‘okay everybody move, I want to do the cooking today’. I was a bachelor for a long time and I made sure that no woman would come and do ‘iyanga’
for me. I can cook anything; fish, chicken, different types of dishes, I
can cook them. I feel at home in the kitchen so if she is there, I can
come and join her though sometimes she drives me away.
How do you resolve your quarrels when you have one?
You learn not to pick on anything your
partner says. It interferes with the relationship. If something happens
and you want to discuss it, discuss it till the two of you resolve it.
Why won’t we argue? I have a mind, she has a mind so why shouldn’t we
argue. We must argue but as we do so, we must finish up that argument so
we can start another one. We must quarrel, it is resolving it that is
the task. Anybody can fight but how many can sit down and resolve it?
You must finish one fight before another and you cannot jump because if
you jump it will pull you back. We thank God and pray to him to continue
to guide us and give us the wisdom to relate properly, and to be as
fair and honest as possible. Apart from that, we just take it as it
comes.
Since you got married, your wife has maintained her maiden name. Why has she not adopted your own name?
She is her own individual. When I met her, she was an actress known as Joke Silva
so why should marrying me now deny her and her audience her name. She
is Miss Joke Silva who is Mrs. Joke Jacobs. It is as simple as that.
People now begin to say what they like. They have even written that we
are separated and all sort of stuffs. When she is working, she is Joke
Silva but she is Mrs. Joke Jacobs at home.
