Jibola Dabo is a veteran actor that will always be remembered for his controversial role in Tonto Dikeh’s Dirty secret movie with the late Muna Obiekwe. See excerpts from his interview below:
Which movie would you say has been your most challenging?
I hate to advertise for any movie and I believe every movie I have been a part of has been challenging in several ways. However, the movie that I had to put extra effort is also
the movie I hate the most, ‘Dirty Secrets.’ I played a role
that is totally different from who I am in reality. I hate the character I played and for me to do it well, I had to become the character. I had to hate myself while doing so. It was bad. After the movie, I had to keep telling myself that the character I portrayed was not who I am.
Have you watched the movie?
I don’t want to see it. I have been asked if I could play such a role again and I told them ‘yes’ but only if I have access to the post-production stage. There are some things that
should have been edited in the movie that were not removed. There are some things an actor would do to make his acting real that should be edited but they released the movie like that. It was so raw and it was terrible for them to put everything out there.
You acted alongside the late Muna Obiekwe in the movie you’re talking about…I felt sad about it. But the young man had been sad for a while because he had been careless about his health.
He drank too much alcohol and he didn’t remember that he had a liver. He was also a chain smoker, but of course, there are also people that do it and live longer. I was saddened that we had lost another star because he was a great actor.
You dated popular actress, Ayo Mogaji, at some point in your life. What went wrong with the relationship?
I would say that the media made a pool out of a tea cup. She was my girlfriend in the 80s and when I returned to Nigeria, she was still unmarried. I funded a movie for her and we started dating again. She got pregnant for me and that was it. The media began to say that her husband abroad had come back home. I never got married to her; neither did I go to her parents to ask for her hand in marriage. She was my girlfriend and she got pregnant and I could not ask her to abort the
baby. I was old enough to have a child, so I had no objections. I love my son a lot and now she has her husband.
But why did you not get married to her?
Our lifestyles were not the same.
- Some believe you did not get married to her because it was reported that she normally got drunk at home.
No, it is not true. She was like that even before I came back to
Nigeria. I had known her for about three decades and she had always been like that. That is her style. I read in the papers after she left me where she said, ‘I drink, get drunk and smoke, so what?’ It was on the front page. So if I could not take that, I would let her go.
- But as her lover, don’t you think you could have helped change her lifestyle?
I could not change her because I am not God, but I tried to convince her to stop.