Zainab Olagunju, one of the wives of late highlife musician, Fatai Rolling Dollars, says the veteran musician asked for her forgiveness moments before he took his last breath.
The widow bore two children for him - – Jamiu and Mojeed – before he passed on. They got married in 1999 and lived together in Mushin before they eventually moved to Agege, both in Lagos State.
“On the day that he took his last breath, June 12, I got to the hospital and saw them passing a drip into his body. The last thing he told me was that he had offended me and my conscience. When I asked what he meant by that, his voice faded out completely,” she said.
The widow stated that she was sure he wanted to ask her to forgive him for marrying another wife after her. She said that although she had suspected he was unfaithful, he denied it anytime she confronted him.
Zainab said, “I feel he wanted to confess to me that he had married another wife because he never told me about it before his exit. I used to ask him about it, but he always denied it. I feel he wanted to tell me about Sherifatu Olagunju, his last wife.
“When I found out, I was not angry. As a human being, if you hear that your husband is not faithful, you would be pained. I used to see her with my husband but I did not know there was anything between them. He always denied it but when we were burying him in Ikorodu and Sherifatu saw how everything was, she calmed down and accepted me as her senior. I also took her as my junior. Three days after the burial of my husband, she came to live with me and we didn’t fight. We see ourselves more as sisters. ”
Reminiscing on the last days of the juju maestro, she stated that his sickness began when he travelled to America. She said that barely two weeks after he travelled, Rolling Dollar called her to say that he was ill. She asked him to pray for him so that he would not die in a foreign land.
The widow said, “Baba went to America in March. After he had spent two weeks, he called me and told me that he was in the hospital because he was ill. When I asked what was wrong with him, he said that he had pneumonia.
“Since he told me that, I always made it a point of duty to call him just to check how he was faring. When his manager, Samson, took him on the trip, nothing was wrong with him then. It got to a stage when I called him and did not get any reply. I just kept praying. Later, one of his kids that went with him called me to tell me that he was feeling better.
“I told her to give him the phone, but she said she was not with him; she said she would call me when she was with him. She eventually called me and when I spoke with my husband, he told me to pray for him not to die in a foreign land. Immediately he said that, I prayed against that such would not happen in his life.”
Zainab stated that when her husband returned and she saw him, she broke down and started crying as he looked very frail. When she noticed that he was not himself, she suggested taking him to the hospital and he agreed.
At the hospital where he was admitted, instead of getting better, his condition got worse. The guitarist, who walked into the hospital, could no lonegr move around unaided after few days. She told Our correspondent that she had to put him on her back and carry him to the toilet whenever he needed to relieve himself.
“When he got back from his trip on May 17, when I saw the way my husband was looking, I burst into tears. I could not believe my eyes. He told me that instead of crying, I should be thankful to God for sparing his life.
“He was looking frail. On the third day of his arrival, I noticed he was still not himself. I suggested that we go to the hospital and he agreed. We went to Ahmadiyah Hospital around Sango in Ogun State. He had been using the hospital before he travelled. When the doctor checked him, he advised that he should be admitted. They admitted him at the hospital and took good care of him.
“The only problem was that they never found out about the leg that he kept complaining was paining him. The leg wasn’t paining him when we left home for the hospital. I just noticed that with the way he was looking frail, his eyes were white and devoid of blood. He kept complaining about his leg and how it was aching. At first, when we got to the hospital, whenever he wanted to go to the toilet, he wobbled while walking but five days after, he could not walk again.
“I would carry him on my back whenever he wanted to go to the toilet. When the doctor had done a thorough check up and found nothing wrong with him, they had to discharge him,” the widow stated.
Ever since he got back from the hospital, he never left the house. When his manager came to check him at home, he was shocked that her husband’s health hadn’t improved.
“Again, the doctor said that he was going to admit him. We agreed and I said I would be staying in the hospital with my husband. I said that my only problem was how my children would be taken care of. There was nobody around to take care of them. Whenever I looked at him, I got scared because of the way he was breathing.
“He was not breathing normally, it was as if he was struggling to breathe. On the third day of his admission to the hospital, his case became worse; he could not hear anything till you put your mouth very close to his ears. The doctor said that it was pneumonia and Baba also refused to eat.
“A day before his exit, when I told him I was going home to freshen up, he asked me to bring the kids to see him in the hospital. I told him that I could not because the hospital was far. I told him that when he recovers, he would see his children at home. Shortly after, he passed on. He was a very nice and accommodating man. I miss a lot about him because we slept and ate together.
“If he travelled, I’d know he was out of town but with exit, it means I would never see him again except we meet in heaven. While he was alive, he never joked with his kids because he used to say that the kids that are meant to be his grandchildren are now his children. We appeal to well-meaning Nigerians that as my husband is late, they should assist us with setting up a business so we can feed our kids, and most especially, pay their school fees,” she said.
The music legend’s last wife, Sherifatu, however, told US that she had dreamt of his exit in 2009. But when she told her husband, he dismissed it, stating that it meant he was going to live longer.
She said, “When I heard about Baba’s exit, it pained me because it just happened all of a sudden. Around 2009, I dreamt about him dying. I called him and told him about it but he told me that such thing would never happen to him.
“He said he would live long and we took it in good faith. And another thing is that Baba was not the kind of person that could fall ill easily. I even used to joke with him, asking him if he never used to fall sick and he would tell me that it was not in his nature to be indisposed. It wasn’t until he travelled that I was called that he was sick and we all expected that by the time he would come back, he would be okay. It was the second day he came back that he was admitted to the hospital.”
The 31-year-old woman stated that the doctor had hinted her that FRD was close to his end when he was taken to the hospital but he did not know exactly when it would happen.
She said, “When I called the doctor to know how Baba was doing and that I wanted to talk to him, he said I couldn’t talk to him, that I should come to his office. When I got to his office, he asked about my identity. I told him I was his junior wife and he asked me how many children I had. I told him two; then he asked me if I could take what he wanted to tell me and I told him ‘yes’.
“He said that the sickness affecting Baba had no remedy, that it wasn’t like fever that once someone uses drugs, it goes. But he didn’t disclose the real thing that was wrong with Baba to me. I asked the doctor if the sickness was going to kill him and he said ‘yes’, but he couldn’t say if it would be this year or the next and that we should just keep praying.”
Sherifatu said that when Rolling Dollar died, his last child, a three-year-old girl, Temitope, knew about it.
“The second day after that, Baba’s younger brother called me that he wanted to come to my house so that I would be able to take him to the hospital. I called the doctor to know about his health immediately and he told me he was getting better. So, I just went inside to have my bath while his brother was still waiting in the living room. It was shortly afterwards that we got a call on the phone and his brother suddenly screamed.
“It was the noise that made me rush out of the bathroom. I asked him what happened, but he refused to tell me. But with the way he shouted, I knew something was wrong, as if Baba was dead. When he finally told me, I was shocked but I had to comport myself. I got dressed and we started calling all the people we needed to call to inform them about his death.
“That was what I was doing when Baba’s last child, Temitope, who is only three years old, came to meet me and said, ‘My mummy, you are crying’. I told her I was not crying and then she told me she knew why I was crying, it was because Baba had died. I asked her how she knew and she didn’t talk again. It was at that moment that my sister and I got dressed and left the house for the hospital,” Sherifatu said.
The widow said that the intelligence of the little girl often surprised her and her husband. Often times, she said, her husband would thank God for giving him such a brilliant child.
“It amazed me that my little child understood everything that was going on. It was something we already knew about because she had always been like that since. Even Baba then used to ask how she learnt how to talk like that because her behaviour was too matured for her age. Everything she did was always a thing of happiness to Baba because he was always grateful to God that he could give him a brilliant child like her,” she said.
Taking a trip down memory lane, in 2009 to be exact, Sherifatu said that she met Baba when he came to buy some goods from her. She said that with the death of Baba, she would not re-marry.
The 31-year-old mother said, “I met Baba where I had a shop then and we had a discussion. It was funny because I never thought I would be privileged to talk to such a person. Besides, I didn’t even know he was famous because I never saw him on television. I just knew he used to come to my place to buy goods from me and I just saw him as an elderly person that wanted to buy goods and needed my assistance to his car. “But then, he told me that he didn’t come with his car, that his house was not far from my shop. So he kept coming every time. It was on one of his visits to my shop that he said it like a joke that he liked me o, and that he would like to marry me and take care of me.
“But I declined and told him immediately that I could not marry a man with a wife. But he insisted that he was going to take care of me. It was from then that I agreed with him and decided to marry him. In 2002, we started getting close and I got pregnant for him. Since then, we got together. There is nothing more to do after Baba’s death other than to look for a good way to take care of the children that he left behind.
“I’m not going to re-marry. I just want to sit down and take care of my children because their education is very important. That’s what I want to do for Baba.”
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