Despite being the wish of most Nigerians to raise their families in Lagos, veteran actor, Peter Fatomilola, has hinted that Lagos is not a city to raise children with morals.
In an encounter with The Point, Fatomilola stated that living in Lagos could only give him money, and not satisfaction.
“What we have in Lagos is money; no culture, no morals. I’ve been living in Ife for over 40 years. I am from Ekiti State, but Ife is the home of culture and center of civilisation,” he stated.
He also explained that the major reason he stopped playing the role of Papa Ajasco and featuring in Wale Adenuga’s ‘Super Story’ was the distance between Ife and Lagos.
He narrated, “Wale Adenuga is a younger friend of mine, when I was under Ola Rotimi and Wole Soyinka. So, when he wanted to start ‘Papa Ajasco,’ he contacted me. He told me that he had studied me well, saying I was the best person who could interpret the role to his satisfaction. We shot the first episode in 1983.
“Ten years later, I joined him to shoot ‘Binta My Daughter,’ and I acted Papa Ajasco there too. I was also part of ‘Super Story’ before I opted out, due to the hassles of travelling to Lagos from Ife.”
Fatomilola added that everything one does would end someday, explaining that such belief prompted him to leave ‘Papa Ajasco’ for the younger generation to do their parts as well.
Mostly known to play the role of an herbalist in movies, the thespian declared that was also who he was in real life, and he had never felt ashamed to be called a traditionalist.
He stated, “My father, late Chief Abraham Ojo Fatomilola, was the head of the herbalists in my town. We call that ‘Olu Awo’ or ‘Agba Awo.’
“In fact, I only wanted to study ‘Ifa’ and was always around my father, because it was great fun with him. When people came with goats, sheep, ducks and chickens, my father would take the parts he needed and instruct us to roast the other parts.”
But for his mother, he would not have taken education seriously, because of his love for ‘Ifa.’
“My mother was determined to make sure I had education. I was already a teenager before I started school.”
Right now, Fatomilola is the ‘Olu Awo’ of Ifishin Ekiti. So, all he says in movies are not acting or fake. At age 9, he said he could interpret the ‘Odu Ifa’ very well.
