I’ll die if I stop eating African foods - Yemi Solade

Yemi Solade has been acting for three and a half decades. The thespian spoke with JOAN OMIONAWELE on his private life, fashion preference, marriage and other issues. Excerpts
You are 53 years old. How have you been able to maintain the good looks?
I have an engineering department in my life that takes care of that.

I don’t get that?
When you buy a generator, you must have an engineer. My wife and members of my family as well as my Chief Engineer, God – take care of that. I also take care of myself; I give my body what it wants. When the body wants it, eat right, drink right, work hard and play hard.

In your movies, you are always given the role of a doctor, playboy or rich husband. Is this always deliberate?
It’s not deliberate. I think there are things producers see in actors that make them cast them in certain roles. I have different looks and they must have looked at my face, as I have an osomo (Casanova) kind of look. That’s their estimation of my physical attributes. They just look around for a Casanova and after the long search, they just rest the job on my shoulders.

Aside all that we see on the screen, who is the real Yemi Solade?
I am very down to earth. I am an indoor person. I love to be on my own. Even within the family unit, I love to be on my own. I have a sense of humour. Sometimes it could be reckless, but I am moderate. I love to project my culture, though I am not a tribalist. I like to dress and act like a Yoruba man, because it gives me inner peace to act like that which is mine.
I am a pan-Africanist; I believe in Kwame Nkrumah’s philosophy, which promotes Negritudism; that which shows I am a true African. I am also very Afro-centric. I love to eat my African meal, dip my hand into a plate of fufu and gbegiri (soup made from beans) with goat meat and shaki (offal) in the buka (local canteen), which also makes me a bukatarian. Anywhere I am in the world, I look for bukas to eat because, if I eat anything other than African foods, I will probably die. I think other Chinese cuisines are poisonous, because even when you enter a Chinese restaurant, for instance what they write on their menu list you cannot read. I socialise averagely, especially when I am with my homies and friends (non-actors).

Don’t you socialise with actors?
No, I don’t.

Why?
They are my colleagues. I have my friends scattered in different fields. I guess that is cool for me.

Share with us an experience you once had with a stubborn female fan?
Many of them are stubborn. They want to get close, forgetting that I am a family man.

So, how do you keep them at bay without being rude?
I use my talent as an actor. You see, the best job in this world is acting. When they want to hook up with me, I tell them it’s fine and tell them I would get back; but of course I won’t get back to you, because it is not everybody you welcome closely. You don’t know what that may turn into.
A few of them have scandalised me, even online; they have posted some nasty things about me, which are not true. There was one lady who was getting familiar with me on the phone. I lashed at her, she then started calling me names. So I went on Facebook to tell my colleagues to beware of these names. She then thought she could deal with me, so she paid someone to write that I was sending nude pictures to her.
There was also another National Youths Service Corps member who wanted to get close to me and asked me to take her out for an event. I asked her to go on her own and then she got rude and started saying that I cursed her, and said she would die. I was not happy about it, because this was a young lady, a corps member at that. I did my Nysc almost 30 years ago. She also added the sex issue. I just felt she wanted to be popular and now she is popular like Genevieve. Congrats to her.
One has to be really careful. Let them appreciate my works, but I won’t be saucy or nasty. We can chat on social networks and on the phone, but that is where it ends.

Do you have memories of childhood?
I grew up in Surulere. I had so much fun as a child because the population had not exploded. On Saturdays, we would be on the field playing football. We also used to fly kites, but I don’t see any of those anymore. Also during festive periods, we followed masquerades whenever they came out. School closed at 1.00pm everyday and we would go home and ride bicycles. Life was meaningful then.

Some of your colleagues are going into politics. Are you also thinking of going in that direction?
Well, I want to be in government, as a technocrat, to be an adviser to work for the people; but I don’t want to play politics. I can’t come out to say I want to run for an elective post because I don’t have the stamina for it. I don’t have the mind to lie to the public, knowing full well that I would not deliver on all of those things.

What are your hobbies?
I play music everywhere I go, really loud music. I dance a lot. I love clothes and also love looking nice. I also love taking pictures. If you are on my BB (BlackBerry network), you would know that I take lots of pictures.

How do you maintain your skin tone?
I just use the best beauty products. I also have some Italian stuff I use on my skin, because I would not like to have blisters or breakouts. In fact, if I had not been an actor, I think I would have been better looking.

Why do you think so?
Because I have freckles that were caused by halogen lights. It’s a hot place to act because you are working under intensive lights.

You were also a teacher at some point...
Yes. I lectured for about six years at a polytechnic in Maiduguri, Borno State, but I got bored and left. I discovered that the education system was not dynamic. I was teaching them from textbooks that were published years before I was born; there was nothing new. The society is so advanced that you cannot feed students with obsolete knowledge. So, I decided to leave.

You are married...
Very married.

So, why are you not wearing your wedding ring?
It’s bondage. I am a free person. When I want to sleep, I sleep like Adam. I like my skin to be free all the time.

Can you tell me something that nobody knows about you?
Some people don’t know that I am married. A lot of people don’t know how close I am to my wife and  children. I am very friendly. I am also a very deep person. People also don’t know that I am a high chief, Agba Akin Igbimi of Abeokuta. It (the chieftaincy title) is hereditary. People don’t know that I am a Master of Ceremonies (MC); I anchor events. I am a motivational speaker; I talk to youths at tertiary institutions who are losing it because of their delusion and excess love for material things.

Can you tell me some of the negative things you have read about yourself in the media?
There was one that they listed celebrities whose marriages had crashed and my own caption was ‘Yemi Solade opens up on his three failed marriages’.

Are you saying there were no failed marriages?
Only one. I was married to my first wife and she said she wasn’t ready to live in Nigeria anymore, and she left. We could not cope with distance and then broke it up. I have been married to my present wife for over a decade, so what are we talking about? I never granted an interview to the journalist that wrote that about me. I had all it took to make him pay for what he did, but because it wasn’t a story about me doing drugs or rituals, I allowed the sleeping dog to lie.

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