The Sun News Online | Woman of the Sun

Take Onyeka Onwenu’s stage presence, Stella Monye’s electrifying performance, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde’s irresistible screen face and add them together.

The result is Muma Gee, an unabashedly seductive Nigerian performer now wowing audiences from Abuja to Lagos, Port Harcourt and Benin and even outside the country. Like other fast-rising artistes in the country today, she has become a regular at concerts, especially those sponsored by Nigerian Breweries Plc in their Star Mega Jam and Star Trek promos.

No musical concert, it now seems, is quite complete without Muma Gee. Audiences can’t wait to watch her perform.

Corporate bodies swoon over her, bankrolling her for tours on festive occasions like Christmas and Easter and special days like Valentine Day, thus making her one of the most sought after female performers at the moment. She recognises that much and is grateful to God for that.

"We have loads of artistes in Lagos," Muma Gee confessed to a female reporter recently, " but I think God has given me the ability to be unique. It is that uniqueness that gets people attracted to me." With her elaborate costume and even more elaborate stage setting, Muma Gee truly stands out.

At the last count, she had chalked up about a dozen concerts and twice as many road shows. But what her teeming fans know little of is her private performances, given in posh homes for bankers, businessmen and politicians living at Ikoyi and Victoria Island, Asokoro and Maitama in the federal capital territory and for expatriate staff of multinational oil companies in Port Harcourt.

Muma Gee did not just become a success overnight. It was as a student at the university that she started what would eventually morph into a lifelong romance with the stage. She joined a musical troupe while in school, thus giving her early exposure to shows. Next, she set up and ran a salon called Scrub where her fellow female students went for retouches and coiffeurs.

"That was the very first time we started recognizing her talent for showbiz," says Ikemefuna Osigwe, a graduate of Urban and Regional Planning from the same university. "She is also uniquely attractive, with very round and seductive eyes."

But Muma Gee did not just wash, shampoo, tease, snip, curl and retouch hairs. She engaged herself in other ways. She went on shows in the campus, performing on special days like Valentine Day and Miss UniPort. Her beauty kept audiences coming.

Her voice ensured they stayed to listen. It was not uncommon then, Ikemefuna recalls, to see wealthy students asking Muma Gee to perform on birthday gigs for their girlfriends and other special occasions.

After graduation, she naturally took up music. Initially, it was tough, as is the case with relatively young and unknown artistes hoping to strike out on their own.

But Muma Gee was determined, and so she never stopped singing and composing songs, giving performances here and there even though there was little or no pay.
"I knew there was going to be a break for her and a big one at that," says a fan who has followed her career since university. "She knew what she wanted and she knew how to get it."

How true! Under a decade of Muma Gee’s career as a musician, she seems destined for nowhere else but the top. Part of the reason for her success lies in her discipline: studying Theatre Arts no doubt gave her an advantage. Another reason is the resourcefulness of people from the very place she is natured.
Ekpeye community in Ahoada is one of the most enterprising in all of Rivers state.

They are mainly civil servants, fishermen and farmers with a good number of them living and working in the richer city of Port Harcourt. Among its more prominent citizens is former deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Chibudom Nwuche. Muma Gee is now Ekpeye’s most prominent cultural ambassador, and Nigeria’s by extension.

Muma Gee is now the darling of the media, pursued by gossip journalists and paparazzi alike. Scandals have trailed her too. But like one who has developed a thick skin against what she calls smear campaign, she has moved on. "I am too loved to be embarrassed by any of the scandals," she jovially told a reporter recently. She is aware there are all sorts of stories about her. She does not much care because, as she quaintly put it, " it keeps me relevant."

She has, like many celebs the world over, become public property, no more privacy. Once in Port Harcourt, she braved it to the streets disguised with a scarf and dark glasses. Somebody recognised her and soon she was mobbed. Muma Gee fled the place as fast as she could.

However, what she is not desperate to do is marry soon. For her, marriage can stay. "Once I get into marriage, I will not be able to concentrate. I am an African woman in totality. I am very domesticated. So, once I am married, because I know the value of marriage, I will not have a divided attention on my home. I will concentrate on my children and my husband because I would not want to lose him." For now, Muma Gee is married to her career - music.