Nollywood actress Omowunmi Dada has drawn a hard line around the kind of home she wants to build. In a conversation with VJ Adams that is now making the rounds, she said she ended a relationship after the man she met as a Christian began fasting for Ramadan to please his mother, then made it clear that any children they had would also have to know the mosque. For her, that was not a small difference of habit. It was the end of the road.
She told the story without naming him. They met as Christians. Sometime later Ramadan arrived and he announced that he was fasting. When she asked why, the answer was not conviction in the faith they had been sharing.
“I dated someone who, when I met him, was a Christian, and then sometime later Ramadan started, and he said he was fasting. I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because that is what will make his mom happy.’ He said being a Muslim is what will make his mom happy. Right then, I knew I couldn’t be with him.”
He did not walk away first. According to the actress, he asked her to stay and even offered to attend church with her. The catch was the next generation. Their children, he said, would also visit the mosque and learn about Islam. That was the part she could not swallow. She wants a practising Christian husband and a household that stands in one place on Sunday morning, not a family split between two altars.
“I have nothing against Muslims; I have Muslim friends who are amazing people, by the way. But for the kind of family that I want to raise, I would love to raise my children the Christian way. I want to be able to hold hands with my husband in one faith, in unity as a family.”
In her telling, church attendance as a favour is not the same thing as a shared life. Unity, for her, is not a compromise timetable. It is one faith under one roof.
That stance fits a public life she has long tied to values. Born in Lagos on 2 October 1989 and trained in Theatre Arts at the University of Lagos, Dada broke through as Folake in M-Net’s Jemeji and has moved between English and Yoruba work, voice acting and presenting since 2013. She has said before that she keeps her private life private and that God directs her path. This interview is one of the few times she has let the dating door open, and she opened it only wide enough to explain a dealbreaker.