Nollywood actress Moji Afolayan has spoken candidly about her lifelong rejection of polygamy, explaining that her own childhood in a polygamous home left lasting scars she never wanted to pass on. The veteran Yoruba star, daughter of the late legendary actor Ade Love and sister to filmmaker Kunle Afolayan, shared her views in a recent interview with African A-List that has drawn fresh attention this week.
Moji made it clear from the start that her stance comes from lived experience rather than theory.
“I grew up in a polygamous home, so I know what I experienced. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” she said.
She admitted she never planned to enter any form of blended or previously married household, yet life took an unexpected turn when she married actor Rasaq Olayiwola, better known as Ojopagogo.
The key difference, she stressed, was that Ojopagogo was a widower whose first wife had already passed away before their union.
“Although the man I married was a widower, his wife had died before I married him. And considering the age at which I married him, someone who had been married before and already had children was where I was supposed to end up and spend the rest of my life? But God understood everything. That is how I ended up in his house,” Moji explained.
The couple wed in 2004 and have built a family together while both remaining active in the industry.
She also pushed back against what she called online in-laws who freely criticise women without understanding the private battles they face at home.
“We have online in-laws who always interfere. They don’t know what the woman in the house is going through,” she noted.
Moji has long held a firm personal boundary: she would never knowingly marry a man who planned to take another wife later.
“I have said it before: I wouldn’t marry someone who would later take a second wife. I don’t have money, and you don’t have money. We both married each other as we were. It wasn’t someone who came from nowhere; I said this before I got married,” she added.
Turning to relationship advice, the actress offered a powerful warning about how people treat their partners.
“If you think you can disgrace a woman, or punish her without reason, the woman will repay you manyfold. If you sow into a woman’s life, she will give back multiple seeds. If you sow aggression into your woman’s life, she will give you multiple aggressions. That is why I am still alive today, and my father played his part too.”
Her comments arrive at a time when conversations about polygamy continue to surface in Nollywood. Earlier this year, her brother Kunle Afolayan publicly encouraged men to consider multiple partners, citing his own upbringing as the seventh child of a father with ten wives. In contrast, Kunle’s daughter Eyiyemi has stated she could never become a second or third wife because of the problems that often accompany such homes.