Award-winning Nigerian dancer and choreographer Kafayat Shafau, popularly known as Kaffy, has spoken about her family background, revealing how her parents went from riches to rags.
Kaffy shared this deeply personal story during an appearance on a recent episode of the Honest Bunch Podcast.
The 45-year-old dancer recounted her family’s journey from affluence to hardship, revealing how it shaped her childhood experience.
Kaffy said her “parents were in the league of MKO Abiola”, one of the richest people in Nigeria before his death, adding that they hosted legendary Nigerian entertainers like King Sunny Ade, Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, and Ebenezer Obey every weekend at the peak of their success.
However, things suddenly took a downward turn for the family, forcing her father to relocate to London, where he worked as a cleaner.
“My parents were in the league of MKO Abiola. They were the first people to spray dollar at parties. You would hear Sunny Ade and Barrister sing their praises. These people came to our house every weekend,” she recounted, noting that her parents, Alhaji Shafau and Alhaja Alake Lakonko, were once among Lagos’ high-profile socialites.
Kaffy recalled her experience living with lack, revealing that she drank garri for as long as seven months without a break.
She said, “There was a lot of times when living with our months there was no food for weeks and months. Hunger is mentor. If you want the body to sustain on only water because water is the only thing you see, it would. I drank garri for seven months without break, there was no Kwashiorkor.”
The foremost Nigerian dancer also recalled how the situation affected her mother, as she would sometimes have “psychotic breaks” and blame her children for her predicament.
“She would have psych+tic breaks and put all of us in the centre of the house, saying, ‘You are the reason why… your destiny should start providing for me because you’re the reason I am not anywhere in my life,’” Kaffy recounted.
