OBITUARY: How Kefee survived a failed marriage and found love again

Born Kefee Obareki in Sapele, Delta State, she had all the signs of stardom stamped on her: a beautiful voice, a restless spirit and a ting of controversy.

She started quite early and by eight, she was already in the church choir.

Even as a teenage chorister, rumours were spreading that she was sleeping with the choir director, Alec Godwin ─ the pastor’s son. The rumours nearly broke the church as the pastor was accused of protecting his son.

It was all rumours, Godwin would reveal years later, but it did not stop the two of them from eventually falling in love and getting married, against the wishes of Kefee’s mother, Ejirooghene.

Godwin recalled, when the marriage eventually headed for the rocks, that Kefee’s mother told her something on the day of their wedding which remained a mystery to him.

According to Godwin, Kefee came out of the conversation looking sad and “did not sleep with me for three days”.

The marriage lasted from 2005 to 2008, and the divorce was as dirty as it could be.

Godwin told an interviewer the beginning of their crisis: “It all started on March 16, 2008, on a Sunday morning. There was a programme in Abuja and she was supposed to go and minister in church. She said there was no need for me to join her and that I should just drop her at the airport and come and pick her up when she came back. I agreed.

“But when she came back from Abuja, I started noticing some changes. Kefee never liked staying at home alone. But since she came back, Kefee could afford to stay alone and she was always with her phone. It was strange. For the first time, Kefee would walk away while we are recording. She would be away for at least an hour and nobody would know where she was. She was always telling me she was playing games on her phone or that she was holding family meeting with her mom on the phone. I never really bought those excuses.

“After about two or three weeks, I had to investigate her phone. It was all about her phone. As she slept one night, I went through her inbox and the first message I saw was sent to her by a man called Uche. It reads, ‘How can you continue to stay with a man you say you don’t love?’ She replied with, ‘I have to take this step by step. We can’t rush this. I promise I will get out. I love you.’ I read a lot of things about babies in the text messages. It was obvious that she had told him we didn’t have a child. He kept telling her how he was going to give her twins from their first intercourse.”

Kefee, a graduate of public administration from the University of Benin, denied all the allegations, and the divorce papers at the Enugu magistrate court were quite scandalous.

She said her reasons for wanting a divorce were that Godwin was “always demanding anal sex and he bedwets”.

She accused him of womanising, sleeping with her friends and even the girlfriend of his friend. She also accused him of always beating her up, such that she had to learn Taekwando in order to defend herself.

Above all, money. She said Godwin, who was the producer and promoter of her music career (she released her chart-busting Branama album on Alex Music), was ripping her off.

Godwin denied all these accusations. He said he never asked for anal sex and was always faithful to her “because I met her a virgin”.