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| TIWA SAVAGE AND HER HUSBAND TJ |
Nigerian female singer,Tiwa Savage has come-out to clear air waves about her broken marriage with TJ.
Check the written details of the interview below:
With the recent outburst of your husband on Instagram, why are you just about to respond to the allegations?
The honest truth is I was in my bedroom when my friend walked into the
room with a couple of other people and woke me up; and basically just
started narrating what had happened. When someone wakes you up from
sleep you… The honest truth, my first thought was I thought maybe they
found him dead.
When they said they didn’t know where he was, my
thought was, and everybody’s thought was, we need to find him. He’s
suicidal, we need to find him, we need to make sure he’s alive and he’s
well. So, my initial thought was not… I didn’t even know what he had
said. It was just ‘Let’s find him, let’s make sure that he’s okay and
he’s alive’. So I couldn’t respond to anything because I didn’t even
know the extent of what he had said till much later. Someone actually
took my phone away from me. They didn’t want me to see what was said
online. I was just scared for his life. I was just panicking.
At what point did you find out that he was okay and that nothing is wrong with him?
At about 10-11, we got a call. We were in my bedroom – Banky’s mum came
and she was praying, we were all praying. I know that his family in LA
were praying as well. About 10-11am, we got the call that he’s been
found on Lekki bridge and at least he was safe. He was, I believe in
Banky’s house, and he was okay.
I remember very well 2 years ago we
were all in Dubai for your wedding ceremony and yesterday was supposed
to be you anniversary. I saw on Instagram you posted videos of you guys
celebrating your new single which was trending yesterday, TJ wasn’t
there. At what point did all these events started?
My marriage and
relationship has been very public and at one point I decided that I
didn’t want to make it public anymore so I’m always nervous when it
comes to his birthday because if I post, they read meaning to it. If I
don’t then they’ll say we’ve broken up or there is a problem in our
relationship.
In this case, I knew the anniversary was coming and I
was either going to post or not, but the honest truth is that for the
past two months, TJ and I have not been together. And it was something
that we were trying to work through but for me I knew that this marriage
wasn’t going to work. It’s been like that for the past two months, I
didn’t know if I should post and keep up appearances or if I should face
reality.
Did he try to contact you on your anniversary?
I
haven’t spoken to TJ in about a week now, he had left the house. We were
supposed to get some documents for my son, his passport actually. So I
was calling TJ on Sunday night because the interview was on Monday and
he had booked the interview for Jam Jam online, so I wanted to know the
time and other details but he was reading the messages and he wasn’t
responding.
I remember I sent a message that reads, ‘TJ please let’s
at least be friends and good parents to Jamil and whatever is going on
between us please let’s do this for Jamil’, but he still didn’t respond,
so I left it and I know one day we’ll apply for his passport.
At what point did you realize the marriage won’t work?
I have covered up for a lot of hurt in our relationship. I was in
Jamaica recently and just before I went to Jamaica, I found out that I
was pregnant again. We both discussed it and tried to figure out how to
manage the situation, because it was another baby so soon. So I went to
London and got on a 10-hour flight to Jamaica to shoot a video with Busy
Signal.
But on the morning we were supposed to shoot the video,
while I was doing my make-up, I started bleeding uncontrollably, so I
started panicking and I called TJ. I took pictures and sent it to him,
they rushed me to the hospital, I had complications but I still couldn’t
reach him, so Thompson who was with me, had to help me sign all the
documents in the hospital.
So I got discharged from the hospital and
still tried to call TJ to let him know what happened because he didn’t
call to see how I was or know what happened.
I got back to Nigeria
and while we were sleeping, his phone was going off and it was middle of
the night and I kept on seeing the name calling him ‘Edible Catering’.
And it didn’t make sense because why would a catering company be calling
my husband at that time of the night and yes as a woman, I picked up
his phone and I went through his phone got into his Whatsapp and there’s
this long conversation with this same ‘Edible’ number.
And I’m
seeing stuff like ‘Can we meet at the hotel tonight’, ‘Do you live
alone’, and ‘Is it ok if I come by’. The last message I saw was, ‘I had
to leave at 7am today because you were still sleeping’. Then he
responded saying, ‘Yea because you knocked me out last night, it was a
great night’.
So obviously I woke him up and was like what’s going
on, and he said to me, it’s not what I think. Then I asked if all these
happened on our bed, then he said no it was at a hotel but nothing
happened that they were just chilling.
The thing that hurt me the
most was that this happened while I was in Jamaica in a hospital and I
was sending him pictures but he didn’t bother to respond because he was
chilling with another woman in a hotel room.
At that point, I packed
my stuff, I took my son and I went to my friend’s house, her name is
Tiwa as well, I stayed the night there and she asked me one question,
‘What’s the next step?’. And I said to her, ‘I’m done’.
Has he been cheating on you before now?
I don’t think we have enough time to cover that, I don’t even know
where to start or which one to say first. I’ve covered up for so long
because I wanted people to believe this story that TJ is the head of the
house, he’s the one that takes care of me, a loving husband, I wanted
people to believe that and I wanted him to feel like a man, so I covered
up so many times.
Since my son has been born, TJ has not spent one
naira. I paid for the hospital bills, I paid for his flight to come to
London, I paid for the apartment we stayed for two months, the clothes,
the nursery, the grocery. Even when we were in London we didn’t just go
shopping for my son, we shopped for TJ as well so that when we come back
to Nigeria he’ll have new things because his excuse most times is, ‘I
don’t have money, I don’t have money…’
So I try to pay for
everything because I have to pay for everything, otherwise where would
we be? So at least he can go out to hustle or focus on the contracts
he’s looking for. And he’ll still tell me he doesn’t have money to buy
diapers but he has money to get haircut twice a week, he has money to do
laundry, he has money to take women to hotel rooms.
Is it possible that you do everything for him but still don’t respect him as a husband?
That’s a lie! I’m not going to sit here and lie to you that every time I
come home I cook… and I’m not going to make excuses and say it’s
because of my career that’s why I’m busy. I’m the same person that works
and puts money in the house, I’m the same person that works long hours
to make sure we have a roof over our heads. I come home late most times
and very tired, sometimes I’m out of the country. There’s no time that I
come downstairs to make something to eat and I don’t make for TJ and
because I know what my schedule is, I had to hire a cook and I don’t
think there’s anything wrong in that. Most times he leaves home and
doesn’t come back till 7am at times 2pm the following day, so how am I
supposed to cook for someone that’s not in the house?
You come back
drunk, angry; we were living on eggshells because we never know what
mood he’ll be in. At times I even pray that he’s with another woman, so
that way I know he’s still alive and has not gotten drunk in an accident
or something else.
When you sacked him as your manager, what job did he start doing?
I’ll never discredit or take away the fact that TJ hustled for me; I’ll
never deny that he worked hard for me or that he believed in me. But
the first time I realized there was foul play was a time when he booked
me for a wedding in London and our company policy is that you don’t go
for a show till you’ve been fully paid. So I got to London already and I
called the accountant to confirm if payment has been made and she was
like they still haven’t paid o, so I called TJ again and said these
people haven’t paid and he said ‘no its fine, just go, just go and
perform don’t worry everything is fine’.
Fortunately for me, I know
one of the organizers, I pulled him aside and was like, ‘bros what’s
going on, why haven’t you guys paid’, and he was like, ‘what are you
talking about, we’ve paid about four months ago’ and we tried to confirm
and realized they paid into TJ’s personal account and not company
account. Then the other thing was TJ would declare that they paid N3m
meanwhile they paid N4.5m, and out of the N3M he’s still receiving his
management fee of 40%. So you are basically stealing from your wife and
he doesn’t feel anything. So I had to perform at the wedding for free
because TJ had already squandered the money.
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He also accused your mum of ‘witchcraft’?
My mum is based in the UK and when I had Jamil she moved back to
Nigeria with us. If anyone has ever met my mother, she’s not like that.
She’s a sweet lady, she’s very British so she doesn’t hang up on
traditions and she doesn’t judge. Infact a lot of times my mum will say
to me, ‘Tiwa you are the wife, be patient, don’t shout, don’t curse, a
woman builds the home.’
Whenever we have issues, TJ always runs to
tell my mum and she always calms him down so she’s been nothing but a
great support for me. So I’ll love for him to tell me if there’s
something that my mother has done because I have no idea.
How about his allegations that you slept with Don Jazzy, Dr Sid and 2face?
I would say for the record, I have never cheated on my husband. Not
with Don Jazzy, not with Dr Sid, not with 2face or anybody, and I’m
willing to take a lie detector test for that. And he knows it in his
heart.
READ: ‘Please leave him and his family alone’ – Annie Idibia’s manager
(Crying) this really hurts. I’m not going to pretend like I’ve not read
comments and what people are saying about me, it hurts. And it’s not
true.
So what do you think drove him to attempt suicide?
I know
that for any human being, when your finances are not straight, you’ll be
depressed and be bothered. So I know that for a while, since he stopped
working for me as my manager, he’s been struggling financially, but
that wasn’t my fault. I loved when we were working together and
everybody loved us, but he messed up by starting to steal from me and
being fraudulent, so I had no choice. I wanted to save my marriage by
separating the business from the home, but TJ loves to keep up with the
life, he wants to live a life that’s not true without a steady income.
He went to buy a car that he knew he couldn’t afford, and I ended up
paying the balance of about N3M and he says I took away his manhood
because he doesn’t want people to know am the breadwinner.
As a
woman I want him to be the breadwinner too, and that’s why I put the
balance of the car in his account so they’ll think it’s coming from him
and not me.
He also went to buy a Rolex watch and he still couldn’t
pay up the balance and so they called me and because I don’t want it to
get out in the press (people have threatened me with that before) so I
always find a way to put the money in his account so he can pay off the
debt.
He keeps on putting us in debt all the time. He goes out to
the clubs with women, spend money on drinks, leaves without paying and
the club owner would call me and I’ll end up going to pay.
The last
one that happened that I think really triggered this whole thing was
that he went to borrow N45m from someone and he’s lost the money. I just
found out. I was in the studio recording and got a call that EFCC is
investigating that TJ is in big trouble that people may hurt him. So in
my frantic move to try and suppress the situation no one could help
raise the N45m he went to borrow.
Or should we talk about the fact
that I walked in on him taking cocaine in my house when we were still
leaving in 1004 then. It was just after we got married and I didn’t even
know he does cocaine, only to walk into the kitchen and saw him
snuffing. I screamed TJ!!! And he quickly hid it and he started
screaming at me!
So the first thing I did was call his parents.
So I’m dealing with alcohol problems, the fact that you come home late,
infidelity, cocaine, debts, and a husband that’s jealous of his wife’s
success.
Didn’t you see these coming before you got married?
It’s a combination of everything; I didn’t know about the cocaine, I
didn’t know about his third child in Nigeria apart from the two abroad
that he tells everyone. I won’t say I didn’t see signs, even a lot of
people warned me about the type of person TJ is, but I made a mistake
and I’m not ashamed to say it at this point.
Now that I’ve made a
mistake, do I want to wait 10 years or 15 years? If you are not happy
you can leave and I was scared will I ever find somebody, will I ever
find happiness, will I ever find someone else to marry me?
I don’t
care at this point if I never get married again. All I care about now is
being happy for Jamil. I care about being strong; I care about not
walking on eggshells.
And you know what? I do want a man that works,
that can help me financially. Not saying he has to be a millionaire or
billionaire, but somebody that can help or at least not put me in more
debt.
Has he ever physically assaulted you?
No, and I’ll never
play that victim card. But it was a mentally abusive relationship
because all I hear everyday is how he made me, how he did this and that
for me, I created you, I took you from nothing. He didn’t find me in a
dustbin.
What’s the status of the marriage now?
It’s finally
over. It’s been over for a while and I’ve covered up for a while. I
think what happened is God sent because he’s made it easy for me to walk
away because of what he did on social media because he got so many
people angry, he called so many innocent names, he dragged many people
including his own family. So if I was to consider to make it work a lot
of people will warn me that if it happens again I can’t come back
crying. So he’s made it easy for me to finally walk away.
I’ll never stop him from seeing Jamil, never! But the only thing I’ll promise myself is to bring up my son to be a good man
Till now I don’t wish anything bad on him, even when he was abusing me.
First I was and still I’m concerned about him because I’m worried he
might see this interview and trigger something else or lead him to do
something bad but I don’t wish that for him.
Tonight I’m still going
to pray for him. If I didn’t care about him or his well-being, I won’t
have covered up for him for this long and even now I’m still helping him
find a way out from his debt.
But if there’s anything that I’ve
overlooked to Tunji, I’m absolutely sorry. If have done anything wrong
to neglect you or not make you feel like a man, Tunji I’m sorry and you
know I tried everything, you know I love you so much and I’m sorry. I
never wanted to divorce and I never wanted it to come to this and I want
him to get better. I’m not just saying it for the camera but I’ll
always pray for him!.
Watch the full interview below:
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