The charm of a trusty wife strikes at first sight but it is her merit that wins the heart. Through war and peace, thick and thin, she submits herself to the task of protecting her husband and her marriage. Biola Ayeni does this with the valour of a trooper and the passion of a poet.

Thus it may be said that her love for her husband is true as the needle to the pole or the dial to the sun.

The fashion entrepreneur and wife of former Skye Bank Chairman, Tunde Ayeni, commits diligently to upholding the sacred tenets of their wedlock with the devotion of one who understands that the best moments in life are spent in the glory of a worthy spouse.

If you ask her, she would tell you that suspicion lowers the most promising matrimony to the petty level of the meddling Joneses. She would tell you that love’s transcendent bliss while surreal must scorn the fungus of distrust in order to fully thrive. Thus her decision to stand by her man in the wake of disconcerting allegations by an Abuja-based lawyer, claiming to be his wife and mother of his child.

Beyond family, Biola asserts herself in her craft with matchless ingenuity. The mother of three competes convincingly with the leading brands in the United Kingdom and the United States. She has won the most sceptical fashion buffs over even as she titillates the interests of the random enthusiast with her inventiveness and entrepreneurial depth. Ultimately, she has even her most ardent critics eating from her palms. In this interview, Mrs Ayeni bares her mind on several issues including the travails of Nigeria’s fashion industry and rumours of her husband’s alleged infidelity. Excerpts…

Married to a billionaire whose business tentacles spread all over the world certainly comes with challenges. What is the experience like?
What I want you to understand is that life is a package, and just like the pineapple, despite being known for sweetness, it has different segments that come with it. The first and the sweetest part is the bottom. The upper part of it is not that sweet, and when you cut it into two halves, you have the hard core, and when eaten, it has a mixture of bitter sweetness; it can cut your tongue or itch you. The outer skin is also another part of it that itches and can poke you, and the crown of the pineapple another part that is basically useless. Six parts all in one fruit! Such is life.

Being married to a successful man will definitely come with its own challenges, but how you manage everything that comes with it makes you a happy and fulfilled person. As for me, I woke up to that reality early in life when my husband started moving up the ladder of success and tended to travel a lot and I felt this is not what I bargained for in marriage. But I had to tell myself that if you have a husband that is always at home, you will not get some of the comforts you enjoy. It is the choice life has made for me, and i had to adapt to the unpleasant side of it.

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If you ask those whose husbands are home and around all the time, they would probably tell you they prefer to have a husband who is hardly around with all the comfort you get. The earlier one understands that finding satisfaction in what life throws at you is the only way to be happy in life, the better.

It was one thing for me to come to term with this reality and it is another thing to make our young children understand why their dad is not around most times like they see other parents do. When Iyiola was in the kindergarten, his graduation from nursery clashed with Bolaji’s graduation while she was doing A Level in London and I had to travel for a week to stay with her for that period. I told my husband to ensure he attended Iyiola’s graduation but a meeting came up that he needed to attend that day, and he tried to delegate someone to attend the meeting because he felt it was only a nursery graduation. So he told my sister to attend on his behalf.

Iyiola, went to wake his dad up in bed early in the morning and said: ‘Dad, you mean you won’t be at my graduation?’ He was about four years old at the period. My husband said he was compelled to shelve everything and attend the event because the way the boy put the question to him convicted him like it was a crime he was about to commit. At that young age Iyiola knew how to demand his rights.

Sometimes he came home insisting his dad had to come and pick him from school because his friend’s dads used to come to pick them up from school and he couldn’t understand why his dad couldn’t do that. I had to sit him down at that age and explain to him that his friends’ fathers are not in the same line of business as his dad. The fact that your Dad doesn’t pick you up from school doesn’t mean he loves you less than those whose father made out time to pick their children from school either because they didn’t have a driver or they just felt its right to do so.

These are some of the challenges I faced because of his business. I passed through the phase of suspicion of extramarital affairs, checking phones and insisting on accompanying him on a trip, and I grew up to see that those were mere traps and distractions that destablise peace in marriage. And finally come to realise that the best way to follow a man around is through prayers.

One thing you have to understand is that a handsome, successful and prominent man doesn’t have to be a flirt for him to start cheating on his wife, because even if he doesn’t chase women, women will chase him. And if they don’t, friends will influence him. And in these days of desperate runs girls using diabolical means to seduce innocent men, it is only a naive wife that will be blaming or fighting her husband over women.

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These girls even go as far as trying men of God! So when married to a successful man, you CAN trust your husband with everything but NOT with women! Its time to shift that trust to God and TRUST GOD concerning your husband that He will not allow him to hurt you or Let you down

What is the greatest sacrifice you have made in life?
You just hit something. The greatest sacrifice I have had to make in life is having to give up my own career as a lawyer to obey my husband’s directive to stay with the children because we can’t both be running after money, leaving home at 8 am and leaving the children in the hands of nannies. However, when I flash back or see some of my mates who are now Judges and Justices or SAN, the sacrifice hurts. But I thank God today that my children are well mannered and are doing well to the glory of God, And in the line of business that I chose for flexibility to work around the children, I found fulfillment.

Because of your husband’s prominence, he is always in the news. Only recently, an Abuja-based lady alleged that your husband is the father of her baby. How do you react to such news and how has this affected you?
Let’s take it one step at a time. Thank God you said because of his prominence he is always in the news. When a man is successful, you know he will have a lot of enemies and they would write a lot of things about him. When you have made a name, you will become a target for traducers. And that is when it’s good for you to know whom you are married to. It’s important to know the kind of person you are married to.

There was some publication about some incident and people started calling me to make inquiries. They asked me how I was feeling or coping and I told them that I was fine. I don’t listen to what they say about my husband outside and I don’t need anyone to tell me who my husband is outside. I have my husband beside me. When I need to clarify things, we talk about it. We don’t hide anything from each other. I prefer to hear it directly from his mouth no matter how bad. He has no reason to lie to me because he knows I will stand by him any time, any day.Thus no matter what anyone says about him, it doesn’t bother me.

I know my husband to have a good heart and will stand by you through thick and thin once you are his friend. He is a loyal person to a fault. And even if you decide to make yourself his enemy by letting him down or cheating him, you will never find him looking for your downfall.

There was a friend of his who was even living with us when we newly got married, to tell you how close they were. They set up a business. My husband put down the money and the guy had the skills, and he ended up cheating him out of the business. They fought and parted ways. Four years down the line, my dad broke the news of the death of the guy and I was shocked.

When my husband returned from work that night, I broke the news to him without thinking of how he would react to it because I thought they were enemies, and he broke down and cried all night. I was so shocked that his anger over the friend on the issue of money had nothing to do with his love for the friend, because this was someone who hurt and offended my husband. If he can have some empathy for someone who offended him, imagine what he could do for someone who didn’t offend him.

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So he took up the education of his late friend’s kids at age 4 and age 2 and sponsored their education in private universities till they graduated. In the area of compassion you cant fault my husband. In the area of loyalty, you can’t fault him. My husband can be too trusting, and I warn him every time that it is not everybody that has a good heart towards you like you have towards them; but I see that he can’t change himself. It is his nature, so i just always pray that God gives him discernment of spirit to know who to run away from in his endeavours.

As for the impostor you mentioned, I will not glorify her by calling her a lady but somebody’s child. Because the age gap between her and my husband makes it more of an insult to refer to her as a lady. Her matter is not something I want to
entertain. As per your question on how I reacted to the news of her claim, truth be told, the first thing I did when I heard the news was to check with God if truly He would fold His arms and let anyone destroy a home He used His hands to build and guard jealously for 31 years, and He told me it is a lie, disregard it.

In the end, the truth will prevail. She knows the father of her child. And when i checked with my husband he told me the child is not his! GOD has spoken and my husband has also spoken, nothing else matters. So I am not moved by naysayers or rumour-mongering or her claims

She claims that she is Mrs Ayeni and her child is Ayeni’s daughter. How would you react to that?
I am not surprised she is parading herself to be who she is not, because by so doing, it becomes clearer that she is a desperate gold digger who thinks she can become Mrs Ayeni by merely pinning a child on her highest paying victim. And its quite surprising to know that despite her degree in Law, she needs somebody to tell her that a child is not a marriage certificate. Neither is it a security to maintain a fake lifestyle that she has become accustomed to. And to now think the child does not belong to my husband makes her claim more embarrassing.

Anyway, she has been warned through our lawyers to desist from parading herself as Mrs Ayeni, because she is not and she will never be as the Lord lives.

My husband and I are legally married. And as for her calling her child by my husband’s surname, Ayenis are many. The child is not Tunde Ayeni’s child. Period!. When she is tired of calling the child the borrowed name she will change it to her father’s name.

You said that your husband is quite generous and has a good heart and people take that for granted to say different things. It is alleged this particular impostor gets things from different men and claimed it’s your husband who buys her all this stuff…
(Cuts in) Let me tell you something; I didn’t want to go to this length before. But since you asked, I will answer. Hear is my take: it may appear as if my husband’s name is always associated with being in a messy affair with one lady or the other. It doesn’t change my opinion of my husband and you cannot convince me that my husband is a flirt, because i didn’t marry him as a flirt. Even if you show me all the evidence of how many women he has been with. Why? Because money makes a man misbehave, friends make a man misbehave, and strange women seduce men with all manner of jazz to make a man misbehave! Rather, I pity my husband as an unsuspecting, and naive victim of the level of desperation and diabolical tendencies of this kind of women he got association with because even with men, my husband is too trusting. So you can imagine level of his nonchalance that led to the mess.

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I mean you too take a look at it. How can a man who is happily married in his right senses be spending lavishly on a woman of that age? Such magnitude of spending should raise the question “in return for what? five-minute pleasure?” When spending becomes unusual, you should suspect that a man is under a spell. So whatever she claims my husband bought for her, she knows what she did to get it from him. But that season has ended. I promise you.

To answer your question on whether the allegation has affected my marriage or my home, I am happy to let you know that Christ is the bedrock of my home. He has built a wall of fire around it and I can confidently assure you that my home is not threatened, My marriage is solid, my husband’s love for me is not threatened, my husband is not lost. My children are unmoved by the claim, and my husband has no children outside of the three children we have together.

Do you have any advice for young ladies out there?
My advice is that they should marry their own friends and know what your husband is capable of doing or not doing so that you can properly defend him. In addition, build your home on Christ, not on trust. Trust may fail you along the line!
When you marry your own friend, it’s easy to see their pain and struggles rather than their faults and the injury they inflict so that you can render them the necessary support they need to live up to your expectation. That support is prayer. You cannot have a successful man or marriage without being prayerful.

A lot of people get into marriage praying for their husband to be rich without being prepared for what success brings with it. You need to know who your real spouse is. If I didn’t build my home on God and put my trust in God and have the power to differentiate an action that is my husband’s from what he did under influence, the enemies would have succeeded in their plans. But I thank God for his faithfulness in my life and the life of my husband and children.

As a fashion expert, can you describe Nigeria’s position in the world of fashion?
What I can say about the fashion industry in Nigeria is it has improved tremendously from what it used to be, but we are very far from what obtains in the western world because the improvement is wrongly channeled to made-to-measure that we have been practising since the colonial era!

If you look at the fashion industry in the Western world and compare it with the fashion industry in Nigeria, you will see that we are not even ready to compete. In Nigeria, as we speak, the leading designers are still practising made-to-measure and freehand cut and are making garments that cannot be sold abroad. Why? Because the focus is on Nigerian market and getting little money here and there. And because a lot of our designers still practice measure and sew for client, and do not have any defined sizing they can use to compete abroad, because sizing forces you to update your skills. We need to develop our skills and bring it at par with the Western world standard where garments are made through pattern making and computer-aided designs.

I have a passion for fashion designing, and when my husband mandated me not to practice I saw it as a great opportunity to practice what I enjoy doing. So because it was something i enjoyed doing form young age, it’s a talent i developed. My driving force was to develop my skills to be at the same level with what obtains in the fashion industry abroad. So I introduced pattern making to my business as far back as 1997 and I switched to computer aided design in 2014.

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If you want to compete with global brands, stop thinking locally. Think outside the box. If you don’t compare yourself with fashion designers abroad, you have not started. It’s not about making fantastic designs alone for individuals without being able to produce such in different size range within the shortest possible time and at the lowest possible cost.

I can understand that some people chose to be in made-to-measure to cater for celebrities and high end clients. But the kind of tailoring they practice to achieve it still leaves much to be desired compared to made-to-measure designers abroad. Divine Endowments started with made-to-measure in 1999 and has given birth to four arms of fashion industry to take care of diverse needs in the Nigerian fashion industry. Namely the ready-to-wear where we make our local ankara fabrics into ready-to-wear Western styles in blouses, dresses, men’s shirts, trousers, suits, children’s wear available in UK/US size ranges all located at international airports, new and old terminals in Lagos airports, MM2 Lagos and old domestic airports and Abuja International Airport in Nigeria, thereby ensuring foreigners who love to wear our ankara can bypass having to go to a tailor before they can have an ankara dress or African souvenir to take back to friends.

We also have the children brand, BJREMY, which takes care of children and young people’s fashion, and we have the Owambe by divine endowment, which takes care of the aso ebi and party wears of individuals

Lastly we discovered a need in the area of uniforms and we launched DEuniforms, established to take care of all professional uniforms, namely construction and site uniforms, hotel and catering uniforms, outdoor catering uniforms, medical uniforms, domestic staff, security, ‘corpers’ and force uniforms, school uniforms.

How would you say the economic reality of Nigeria has affected the fashion industry as described by you?
Basically the economic situation has affected a lot of things. COVID-19 especially changed a lot of things as a result of ban on large party gatherings, which made people to organise parties without aso ebi and with less crowd. I’m sure that this affected a lot of people whose line of business depended on made-to-measure. But for me, I practice more of ready-to-wear, and with the introduction of uniform line, we are grateful to God He has kept us busy and flourishing.

Are you a member of the fashion association and do you relate ideas like these back home to Nigerian designers? What do you think can be done to help the fashion industry?
I will not lie to you, when I used to have the time, I registered as a member of the FADAN, and as I widened my scope, it became very difficult be an active member.

What are your other business interests?
I am involved in the hospitality business. I like looking after people. Having attended parties and observed lapses, I decided to open an event centre.

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Now that the kids are done with school, as a strict Christian, what are you looking at?
Face my husband, my business and my ministry, because I am a pastor, and also guide my children to become firebrand Christians and become successful in life.

What does money mean to you?
Money is a good thing to have because it gives you comfort and respect. Money is something everyone needs and values. But the Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil. So for me, the rule is “never value money more than relationships”. Relationships outlive money. And that is one thing I see in my husband.