Sophia Momodu Says Fame Did Not Give Her a Voice After Pregnancy

Sophia Momodu tells a UNGA side panel she lost her voice after public mockery of her pregnancy as a pastor’s daughter

Sophia Momodu, the Nigerian entrepreneur and mother of Imade Adeleke, spoke at a side panel during the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York about the mockery that followed her pregnancy outside marriage.

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Momodu, whose daughter with singer David Adeleke, known as Davido, was born on 14 May 2015, said the reaction was harsher because she had been raised as a pastor’s daughter.

Fame, she said, did not give her a voice. The story around the pregnancy drowned it out.

“This is my life story. I am a pastor’s daughter who got pregnant out of wedlock by a global superstar. And I was mocked. It was crazy. And I had to find my strength in the midst of all of that,” she said. “And for the longest time, I didn’t have a voice. I was famous, I was popular, but I didn’t have a voice. It kept getting drowned out by whatever negativity was around that story. If you’re Nigerian and you’re here, you know that it’s almost a taboo to be a pastor’s daughter and have a child out of wedlock.”

She said she later found the nerve to tell the story in her own words and discovered that other women had lived through similar judgement.

Hearing them, she said, helped her stop carrying the shame as if it were the whole of her name.

The remarks were shared from a UNGA-week panel and from her Instagram story. They sit apart from her public disputes with Davido over co-parenting.

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Here the subject was narrower: what Nigerian religious expectation can do to a young woman when a private pregnancy becomes a public spectacle, and how long it can take to speak again.