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When veteran
journalist and relationship expert, Bunmi Sofola launched
the collection of her works about ten years ago, it was
an instant hit. Page after page, you are brought face to
face with knotty issues that affect relationships and of
course, some of the intrigues that also go with
relationships.
Aunty Bunmi as she is fondly called,
is frank, down to earth and will call any sex organ by
its name and not by any contraption.
Sex is a major issue in her writing and counselling.
These are issues parents will not address. The
churches are too spiritual to talk about it. Faced with
sexual problems, a lot of people turn to Aunty Bunmi for
help. Over the years, these problems have drawn hundreds
and thousands of people to her column.
As she turns 60 next
week, the amiable journalist is set to launch another
collection of her works, entitled “Yours Sincerely
- The Vanguard years”. Billed for Wednesday, May 6th at
the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the event
will attract friends and well wishers to a programme
expected to be a memorable one. In this chat at the
Vanguard office in Lagos, I took up Yours Sincerely on
the knotty issue of sex. She had a good laugh at my
questions as she spoke once again very frakly and true to
type. Enjoy
The issue of sex is big
with your column. Even though a lot of people wouldn’t
like to be seen reading soft sells, they hide behind
serious newspapers to gulp information on sex. Why
is sex such a big issue?
My column is not just about sex. It is about
relationships but sex oriented. You’d discover that in
Nigeria, the average person is either enjoying sex or not
enjoying sex or having too much or too little sex. And of
course, there are problems attached to sex that they take
so seriously. When you are young, you have all these STDs
and when you start getting older, the women have
menopause to grapple with while the men have prostrate
issues to grapple with. At one stage or the other, you
always have one sexual problem or the other and that is
what I try to address in my column. It’s not strictly sex
all the time.
So our lives revolve
around sex?
Yes, because without sex,
you won’t have children.
But sex sometimes is not
for the purpose of having children?
Yes, I agree but let me
tell you, without good sex, you won’t have a good
marriage. One thing you should know is that with good
sex, bad marriages have been sustained. So sex is part of
you. It is part of everybody, therefore, it has to be
addressed. It’s a big deal. I talk to people on one on
one. When you read my answers, you feel as if I am
talking to you. I don’t preach. I don’t admonish except
if I have to. I just put the person in my position as if
the person is in front of me and make it as personal as
possible.
When are we going to get to the point where people
can be open about sex and not hide under anonymous to ask
questions?
The average Nigerian is hypocritical about sex. When you
are having sex, you don’t talk about it. But now, the
younger ones are open. They know what they want. The men
talk about sex.
They brag about sex all
of the time. Women seldom do. A few of them do these days
but they seldom do. It’s going to stay that way for a
long time except you want people to give you a bad name.
If your focus is to get married, you can’t start bragging
that you’ve slept with about 6-7 men in the last three,
four months. People would not want to marry you. You are
not marriage material. So whatever you do, you keep
to yourself.
So for young people
who need counselling, can’t parents be open so that
children can have correct information?
Some parents are open with sex but most of them are
afraid that if they urge their children to go for it or
don’t go for it, they might take them more seriously. If
you have a 19 or 20 year old child, you suspect she might
be having sex, but you won’t take her to the doctor’s to
kit her with birth control pills.
It’s like you are saying
now, I know you are having sex, then go ahead and do it.
Because you don’t want that, you sort of skirt around the
matter. It’s a very difficult situation. Each parent will
have to use her own method. You tell her, let me know
when it happens. She will never tell you.
However, let her know
that whatever friend she has in this world, you are
always her number one best friend and she would always
come to you to talk. But some of them will come to the
mother when they realise that their friends are not
telling them the truth. The truth is you have to be your
own counsellor. You know what you want, you know what you
want for your children because even your friends will
come and as
k you questions they already have answers to. They are
just testing your own ground. It’s a very tricky
thing.
So beside sex, what are
the big issues with relationship?
Deceit is very rampant.
Men have two to four women on the wing. Women do the same
too sometimes. You cannot be sure who has affection for
you. These days, you have couples coming together to get
married. Then three to four months to the time, the
wedding is called off and in the next six months, the
girl has remarried.
They always have
contingency plans. I don’t blame them. With all these
things they see happening every day and with this
economic situation, women are earning fantastic salaries
now. So, they can do what they want and they can tell a
man to go and take a jump. All these are a fall out of
the economic independence. And when they get married and
see that this man is a nasty man, they just decide to
hang around, have two or three children and then
leave.
And some can even
discover that after the two or three children, they can
sort of manage him. So they hang it there as long as it
doesn’t bother them too much. But when it is an abusive
relationship, then that is an entirely different kettle
of fish you have to deal with. A man will be goody-goody
before you get married then after marriage, the fangs are
out.
Isn’t it ironic that our mothers who didn’t have a
choice in who marries them have more lasting marriages
than young people today who by themselves decide who they
want to marry?
Do those marriages really last forever? Most of those
women weren’t doing anything. The highest level of
education some of them attained was secondary school.
Those women didn’t have a say in the matter. Today’s
woman have a say in who she wants to get married to. Our
mothers would have loved to leave but they didn’t have
any place to go to because the parents had sent them out
and they couldn’t take them back and they didn’t have any
job to go to. For better for worse that is why they cling
to their children. You’d find mothers in law not letting
go of their sons, not letting go of their daughters,
interfering in their affairs because they aren’t really
happy. They didn’t get that satisfaction in their
marriages.
What are some of the new issues that have arisen
between your first work and the one you are about to
launch?
If you compare the first book I launched ten years ago,
you’d see a lot of maturity with this new one and you’d
see a lot of problems that didn’t crop up then. Like
these relationships we are talking about now, how
flippant and uncaring people are and all these sexual
problems. We didn’t hear too much of AIDS and all these
religious things, it's like a cult now.
People are so despondent
and discouraged. They are hanging on to religion for an
answer they are not getting. Sometimes, they are conned
and you read about all these things in the papers. You
have to be your own counsellor. You talk to yourself. You
can’t deceive yourself when you are having a good
conversation with yourself. This is what I have, this is
what I can give out and this is what insult I can take.
With that, you can have a focus and move on with your
life without much interference.
Before the Vanguard years, what are some of the
knotty issues that affected relationships?
Well, I’ve told you all these nonchalance towards
relationships then these mega bucks, girls are now
earning, driving fantastic vehicles and you see that in
their attitude. You go to all these society weddings,
millions of naira are pumped into them, three or four
months later, the girl has packed her things and gone.
They don’t want to hang on. They prefer to have children
rather than go through a bad marriage or a bad
relationship. Some will just settle down have two or
three children by two or three different men. They don’t
care as long as they have the money to bring up the
children
Do we encourage this kind
of thing?
No, we don’t. But they
see it as an alternative to an abusive marriage. You see
a man who ordinarily wouldn’t talk down at you talking
down at you and then you say what the heck! and you walk
away. Why would you want to stay with a mediocre when you
know that first and foremost, you earn a better salary,
you have better brains than he does? Why would you want
to hang around so that he can lord it over you, tell you
what to do? So things like these are the issues. It will
stabilise with time but it’s going to take a long time or
never. In spite of these, we have some good marriages
because there are some mothers who really stay at the
background and beg their wards to please
stay.
Would you say your
readers are the ones who actually give this sex slant to
your writings?
No, not at all. I talk
about whatever I want to talk about but if it is sex they
are always hankering after, you discuss that and move on
to other things. Sex is not everything. Some are worried
about their future, some are worried about their
education and some others are worried about their
children.
They say as you grow older, thoughts of the spiritual
become upper most on one’s mind. But here you are
talking sex most of the time. How does this whole thing
affect you?
I’m a very happy-go-lucky person. What I write has
nothing to do with me. Like I said, I don’t think
sex, sex all the time. But if you don’t think about it,
you won’t write about it. And even if one were not
writing, sex is something we think about. At 60 I am
re-branding myself. They say 60 is the new 40. So now, I
am a 40 year old.
And
hot...
If I don’t look hot to you, I look hot
to me. That’s what matters.
For the launch what do you look forward
to?
I look forward to people who have read me to come and
rejoice with me, to come to the hall maybe buy the book
if they can and ask questions after the launch because I
am going to be around. It is going to be very interesting
and entertaining, no dull moment. I have a committee
chaired by Dr Omolara Adadevoh and they are working hard
to help package the launch. It’s going to be a lovely get
together and then I’m cutting my birthday cake
there.
After the launch, where
can people get the book to buy?
After the launch, I’ll
put it in my column where they can get the book to
buy.
You’ve been in this
profession for many years now. What has the practice of
journalism been like for you?
It’s fun. If it wasn’t
fun, would I still be there? It has its challenges, it’s
a very tasking job but you are still there. Larry King
says it all the time that it is the best job in the
world, doing what you love and getting paid for it. It
has its hassles too but I wouldn’t change all that for
any thing.
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