Waking up with the news that Oscar Pistorious had killed his girlfriend sounded peculiar for a valentine‘s day morning,but I shrugged it off as one of those things. After all,they were in South-africa. Later in the evening,valentine‘s magic was still hovering around with a lot of people deeming it fit to wear dresses with color shades of red and white. Though power was out and the privileged generator owners filled the air with their usual sounds,there was still a feeling of serenity all around. I was sitting with some friends at a popular hangout called Mass at isheri Idimu,we were gisting about past girlfriends,silly gifts,fear for marriage while different genres of music celebrating love filled our ears,that was when my phone started buzzing. I picked up about five calls,in which all the callers wanted to verify from me if it was true that Goldie had died. I tried calling a couple of celebrities,they all told me they were in the verification process too. My friends sitting around me could decipher from my own end of the phone conversation that it was about Goldie dying. So they invaded their time-lines on twitter and alas! It was filled with ‘RIP GOLDIE’ and a couple of other tweets denouncing the ‘rumors’. I waited a couple of minutes to see if Derenle Edun was going to publicly deny the rumors or even Goldie harvey herself but none came from their camp. Instead as the night dragged on it became more evident that the Linda Ikeji‘s driven news was most likely genuine. Goldie had died and somehow it ruined my almost perfect valentine’s day. As the confirmation spread around the nation and also to some African countries,some secrets started being unraveled. Secrets like Goldie was probably abusing the use of drugs,Goldie lied about her age and the most unnerving, our Goldie was married. Throughout her musical career she had been plagued by one controversy or the other,either for her strange choice of costumes,musical videos or her opulence from a source we couldn’t put our fingers on. And then there was BBA. BBA actually opened our eyes to a part of Goldie we never saw,we saw the woman and not the artiste. We saw the fan and not the celebrity. We saw the tears and mood swings and not the glamour. Most especially we saw daily as she got more attracted to a guy that most Nigerians felt was below our standard. That was when we crucified her. We had expected Goldie to be saucy,snobbish and an eccentric lady but she was exactly the opposite. Most of us loathed the BBA house girl that could cook for Africa, especially when the drab looking kenyan started feeling like the boss. It wasn’t surprising that she didn’t get most of our votes as the weeks progressed,eventually she was dumped out of BBA and a couple of her country peeps used her teary face as their BBM dps followed by insulting pms. Most of us predicted the end of her career just as we wondered what will become of the annoying relationship with Mr prezzo and suggested she stay out of limelight for a while. But Goldie surprised us. She not only gave interviews,she also talked about her regrets and in some instances apologised for ‘falling our hands’. That was the Goldie we saw in BBA,the down to earth celebrity. We weren’t surprised again,even some of us started liking her more. Then her new singles started hitting the air-waves,followed by musical videos which showed a girl trying so hard to win back the love of Nigerians and remain relevant at it. We also heard about her upcoming reality TV show. Goldie had bounced back. At this point the Goldie we knew was a 28year old lady,doing hide and seek love with prezzo and appearing strong at events all over the world…but that was just one Goldie we later realized. For we didn’t know that we had a depressed 31year old woman, married to an ‘oyinbo’ and supposedly using drugs to fight the feeling of being unwanted by a populace who were once intrigued by her. We probaly should have realised that Derenle was always around her to give her strength and purpose and that what Goldie wanted from us more than anyother thing was to be accepted back. Typical of Goldie,her cause of death aint as clear either,but the loudest suspect is as a result of pulmonary embolism. Even at death the controversies continue, a lot of sympathies for a pioneer in female pop music in Nigeria also a lot of condemnation especially from our ‘holier than thou’ pastors who only see the bad in the entertainment industry. Now that she is dead,I wonder if there are many more secrets to be unveiled as the weeks go by,I think there would be..Most especially I am sure there will be many other lives of Goldie we will never know,so I suggest we respect the dead and the unknown..
Owolabi Adenola david. @davidflo1
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