WHEN A PR lady on the phone tells me that Ify Adenuga is beside her and I can start speaking, I do not say her name. I call her Aunty. Though she is a new author, she is also from a generation of women who are the same age as my own Nigerian mother. To call her anything different would feel foreign, perhaps even taboo.

But I soon learn it might not have mattered. Adenuga has little time for traditions that don’t suit her.

During our interview, she tells The Voice why she couldn’t speak her mind as a child, says her generation must listen to young Nigerian protesters and explains how she raised her family differently. 

“I can’t remember which one of my children first said to me: ‘Mummy, that’s silly’,” she says. 

“But I can tell you, it grated me.”

In case you don’t know who her impressive children are, they are MC Skepta, MC JME, broadcaster Julie Adenuga and graphic designer Jason Adenuga. 

And in Nigerian culture, speaking like that to someone older than you is usually a sign of disrespect. 

“But when I thought about it, it was a way of showing me something,” she explains. From that point onwards, she learned to listen to them.

When I ask her the secret to her successful family, she says that in her household, teamwork came before hierarchy. It sounds like it was partly philosophy, partly survival strategy.

“Everybody was doing everything they could to make sure the family was winning or surviving. I didn’t set that boundary that I’m the parent, you’re the child. They saw me for who I was” she explains. 

Adenuga tells me that she is still learning from her children now, and her generation should follow her lead. 

Tribalism

Especially, when it comes to young Nigerians who are currently protesting police brutality. 

“Hand on heart,” she starts “This is the first time I can see Nigerians speaking in one voice.” 

Having married a Yoruba man herself, with all the controversy that brings for an Igbo woman (they are from two different Nigerian tribes), she knows how unique it is to see such unity. 

In her own way, Adenuga is a freedom fighter too. 

“I’ve never thought, because I’m a woman, I should behave in a certain way, or because I’m Nigerian, I should behave in a certain way. No. It’s always been about chasing freedom, chasing happiness.” 

That instinct has been with her since childhood. She tells me she wasn’t abused or mistreated, but she was unhappy growing up. 

“I couldn’t ask questions. I couldn’t be myself” she shares. 

A different childhood

The relationship she shares with her children now is miles away from the relationship she had with her own parents. It’s something she did intentionally, giving them a childhood very different to her own. 

Of course, the Biafran war being part of her adolescence may have contributed to that too.

When I asked her what surviving something like that teaches you, she tells me simply: “It made me believe human beings are problem-solving machines.” 

From her parents she learned resilience, she explains. That mindset has served her, as she raised her children in the UK while she studied and faced difficulties that many Black parents today will relate to. 

That, and writing which she has done since her childhood: “Wherever I am, I have a notepad and a pencil and eraser.”

It has helped her relieve stress, process things and remember the past.

Now, it will also be a gift for her grandchildren. 

“And my great grandchildren to come” she tells me. 

Endless Fortune by Ify Adenuga is available at all good bookstores.

Interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.