Reality TV Star, Phyna sits with host of #WithChude, Chude Jideonwo, to discuss growing up without her parents’ support, speaking about her abortion, and her clash with Chichi at the Big Brother Naija reunion.
“I grew up without parental love, my growing up was just somehow. Going to school was my choice, nobody asked me to, and encouragement was very far from me. The kind of family I came from when you were born, that is it. If you go to school, eat or wear clothes that are on you, just be grateful that you were brought to life. My aunty sponsored me through primary and secondary school. I remember when I was in SS3, I had two aunties, I was living with one and the younger one was living in that same community. The younger one will tell the older one, that, ‘You are just wasting your time, you are taking care of this girl now, you are just training her, if she grows, she will give her father bags of rice first. Are you training them in private schools? They should be in public schools’. Phyna also shared how she couldn’t get funds to enrol in a higher institution and this made her run away from home at age 16.”
“At some point, my dad said, he was not my father, and that I should look for my father. Anytime I called him for money it was one problem or the other. I don’t know who is worse between him and my mum. There was a day I was so sick; my lodge mates came, and they were like ‘Where is your mum and dad’s number’. I gave them the number, they called and after the person hung up, they said, ‘Was that your mum’, I checked the number and I said, ‘Yes’, they told me, ‘The person said that we shouldn’t call the number again, that they don’t know you’. It was back and forth like that all through my time in school. At some point, I was in father’s house, and I was preparing my own food, she also believed I was a prostitute”, she added.
Speaking about sharing her abortion story in the dailies, she said, “I didn’t give an interview. When I came out of the Big Brother house, everybody wanted to chase clout with fame. When I was in the house, there was a conversation, and everyone was talking. Before I come to that, the issue of abortion, na who talk hin own dem know right? There’s no woman that will tell me she has not done it once or twice do you get? Now, I didn’t give that interview to these people. It was a conversation in the house, and I wasn’t the only one that said things. People said whatever. I don‘t know what we were doing that day that we said it. So, I had already said it on television. Now the interview was on (the) phone after I left the house. I was surprised I saw it when the news was published. I told my manager, and we wanted to take it seriously. Everybody was like you know how people will talk and you just came out. You don‘t want to tarnish (your image). See, when I came out of the house I went through a whole lot. A whole lot was just going on. I didn’t have that interview. It was what the person watched on television.”
Phyna spoke about her interaction with Chi Chi and how she was sued for defamation. “I don’t think there are similarities between my experience with my parents and that of Chichi. Because according to her story, she said that her parents died when she was young. I will say she didn’t have an opportunity to spend time with her parents like me. People are different so I will speak for myself. I was able to channel mine into positivity and into building my life. It didn‘t make me bitter. It made me more jovial; I am very jovial till I switch. I remember there was a day they beat me, and rubbed pepper on my bum bum and my eyes. That was my aunty. When you are staying with somebody, you tend to meet things. It was not my aunty that I was living with, it was the other one. I used to be left-handed, and I was forced to stop. I came back from school one day, and they kept a hot rod in the fire to burn me for me to stop using my left hand.”
She also shared the reason she unfollowed ChiChi, “There is a reason I unfollowed her. When we were in South Africa, we went to Cape Town, and she chose to stop talking to me. Chichi is somehow, she can wake up today and choose to not talk to you. So, Chichi stopped talking to me during that period. She just stopped talking to me. Then our hotel room, when you come out, there’s a small lounge before the elevator. So she was always there, I’d always jam her there. Sometimes I’d say Chichi what’s up? She’ll just ignore me. Because I already know her, it comes like that, so I’ll just bone. The day I unfollowed her, it wasn’t only her I unfollowed. I unfollowed about six housemates that day. Something happened in Cape Town. I don’t want to talk about it because I don’t want to help anybody raise their career. Let me even say it. Before I went to South Africa, I went to Qatar with Chizzy. Chichi was not talking to me then, Amaka was not talking to me, Adekunle also stopped talking to me, Bryan stopped talking to me, Daniella talked to me but I didn’t trust her again because she was talking to me; but she was very close to Bryan, Amaka, Adekunle, people that don’t talk to me”.
Watch the excerpt, here.
