Producers Of Goge Africa, Isaac and Nneka Moses Share How They’ve Been Sustaining Their Marriage And Family For 27 Years
Nneka and Metche Issac Moses of the Goge Africa fame met in 1996 and got married in October 1997.
In a recent interview with Daily Sun, the couple shared the story of their incredible journey, including how their relationship started and blossomed into being husband and wife, as well as promoters of one of Africa’s biggest culture and tourism brands.
Goge Africa has been an interesting pan-African tourism and cultural programme on television for years, with loads of dramatic visuals that keep a lot of people glued to their televisions when it is on air.
See excerpts below:
What is it like working with your better half?
Nneka: The truth is, Isaac is a very understanding person. He’s an easy-going person. He’s not that sort of man that barks at you. He would say, Nne, I told you not to put this thing on the floor. Why is it on the floor? And I would quickly go and remove it.
Isaac is an easy-going person. Anybody that knows Isaac reading this article would know I am saying the truth. Because he is that sort of person, it becomes easy for me to work with him. But we have a lot of technical quarrels on set, “No, no, no, let’s not do that, etc.”
Actually, most times, I do like a powerpoint presentation to him, like I’m talking to the MD of a bank. Anytime I have an idea, I have to make a presentation to him, whether in the bedroom, at the dining table, or in the office, I need to make a presentation. He would ask questions and I would explain.
We talk, each time, there’s a lot of communication going on between us at any point in time, verbally, body language, eye contact messages; like you are here and we are talking to each other, you would not know. He is great to work with.
I don’t think I can get a better boss. Isaac is one man that does not intimidate women, whether you are his wife or anybody. He’s a good man and he pampers women. He believes that women are intelligent.
He is not egocentric, but when you look at him, with his voice, his command of English language, the baritone and the kind of physique he has, some people think he could be snobbish. God has given him everything to be a snob, but he is not a snob.
How about you?
Isaac: How is it working with my wife? Great! Fun! I get to know her the more and she also gets to know me the more. She understands me, my body language. She knows I don’t want this and I want this.
She knows that I have to swallow. I don’t want to eat too much rice, yam or beans. She knows that swallow is key. She is not stressful. The only time we have conflict is during production.
How did you meet your husband?
Nneka: We met on the set of a movie. Love in Vandetta. It was produced by Zach Orji. Zack Orji’s wife, Ngozi, was my friend. Ngo invited me to come and help them with the costume of that movie, so they could take costumes from my boutique.
I agreed to costume the movie and they were going to pay me some paltry sum at the time because Nollywood was not big at that time. She said, why don’t you act in the movie as well? You will do well. I know you can act. They cast me as Isaac’s girlfriend and Kate Henshaw was my friend in the movie. That was how I met him. That was in 1996.
How did you meet your wife?
Isaac: We met in a movie called Love in Vandetta. It’s a home video. They were using her house as location. She acted in a particular role in that movie and I acted as her boyfriend.
What was the attraction?
Nneka: It was not love at first sight. It was repulsion. He repulsed me after the first time we met by the way he acted. He pissed me off and I gave it back to him. He came back to beg, that he was sorry, he would make it up to me.
Could we go out on a lunch date? I accepted the lunch date, which was also a disaster. He took me to a Mama Put joint at Shitta in Surulere. I had dressed up thinking we were going to a posh restaurant. When we got there, he picked a plate and said, Nne, pick your plate, we are eating here and you will like it.
He said, Take the big plate, I want to buy turkey for you. I was livid with anger. I cooled down but in my heart, I said I would never go out with him again and that was our first and last date. But the food was quite tasty.
What did you find attractive in her?
Isaac: For a gentleman, I had friends who were wild guys. We went to clubs, had different girls. You saw different girls and you tended to compare mannerisms. This one didn’t ask me too many questions. If I said I was coming to see her and I did not show up, she didn’t argue or quarrel when she saw me.
If she saw me, fine, if I don’t show up, no problem. I think I liked her style. For others, when they didn’t saw me, they thought I had taken another girl out. She was not much stress, so I gradually started liking her style. One day, one of my girlfriends tore my shirt.
I don’t beat women. She said I kept her waiting; that I stood her up. I took the cloth to Nneka’s shop to mend – she used to make clothes then. I saw that she was mature. A year down the line, I proposed. I didn’t know I was going to marry a girl in Nigeria. The kind of girls I used to meet, me, Hanks Anuku, JT Tom-West, Chidi Mokeme, we used to go to the club and hang out.
I liked amala and I took her to an amala joint in Shitta, Surulere. Guess what, she started liking amala but she wasn’t quite happy the day I took her there. Till date, we send someone to buy amala for us from a place close to our house.
Did he propose to you that day?
Nneka: No, but one thing led to another. He proposed to me in a compromising position where I couldn’t say no. Such a position every woman would just say, yes, yes, yes.
Did you propose to her after the outing?
Isaac: No. I didn’t start out with the I-want-to-marry-you stuff. I don’t think I wanted to marry a girl from Nigeria. The kind of girls that we used to meet, I wasn’t interested in Nigerian girls.
What about parental consent when he finally wanted to marry you?
Nneka: My people said I wanted to go and marry a musician. They said, no way! That can’t happen. Because, during that time, there was this promo that NTA was doing on NTA 2, “Your Reach-Out Station.”
In the promo, some musicians would rap and Isaac too would rap and he would do a signal to wrap up the act. Because they were dancing and rapping in the promo, my people now said, is that not the guy singing on NTA2? We can’t allow you to marry a musician after we have finished training you in the university.
I told my people that they should just accept him, if not I would elope with him. They now said, If anything happens in that marriage, don’t come home because we are showing you that this guy is a man around town. He is not ready to settle down, he’s a musician, look at the type of friends he keeps. But here we are today.
Isaac: Igbos would go and ask questions to be sure she is not Osu or if she’s not from a place where they should not marry. They did the same for me. Her parents did the same for me when they found out that she was bent on marrying me.
I love that. She’s beautiful, she’s young, she’s calm and she is smart. I said, why not? Though at first her people didn’t quite like me, they felt I would be a wife beater. Some people see me and they feel I’m going to be a rough person.
Then, I had muscles, and I wore dark glasses and my friends were also not easy-going guys. The way we were perceived, you know, people you see in movies, how they are perceived, just like musicians, people are wary of musicians.
What is your advice to young women wanting to marry?
Nneka: What works for me might not work for other people. For me, I notice that it pays me not to argue with my husband, not in public, not at home. In our 27 years of marriage, I’m not an argumentative person. I realised that sitting him down when he’s not upset and explaining my point of view works a lot with him. That’s the method I usually adopt.
I can’t talk down on him, not in public, not in private. Every man wants his ego to be massaged. I massage his ego because he is my king and he once said that because I treat him like a king, he treats me like his queen.
So, if you know what you want to get out of your relationship, your friend, your partner, you give it to him first. And in receiving it, it will be sweet. He will want to reciprocate, if he’s a good person. It’s not by accident that we have a joint bank account. He wanted it because of the first leg I put forward: If this girl can come in and calculate my money for me, I think I can trust her.
Till today, we still have a joint account. We have a joint account as a couple. I follow my instincts. I give him what I want him to give me and I got lucky because he gives it back to me, sometimes in sevenfold. The efficacy of prayers cannot be discarded in any relationship or anything you enter into in this life because prayer has a way of resetting situations and pushing you out for greatness.
There was a time in our journey when N2, 000 was big money, and when the hard times came we would drink garri and we were happy. The first time we went to a clubhouse, it was on Okada. We would dust our feet, enter the clubhouse and have fun.
I’m not preaching that everybody should go and marry a guy that does not have money. My preaching is, at any level you meet your man, support him. If he’s a good man, you will reap your reward. Some men are very callous. They use you to step up and when they step up they realise you are not good enough for them. It has happened to sisters. He takes me to the market and waits for me in the car.
Your advice to young men wanting to marry
Isaac: Your wife should be your best friend. As a matter of fact, my wife and I are so close that my friends are not as close as we used to be, and I understand. If your wife is your best friend, your other friends will actually give you space, and when you allow too many intruders into your private life you might have challenges.
Aside from that, a man must be open to his wife because, if you are with a woman and you don’t make her happy, if the woman decides you are going to die, she would do it nicely. Nobody will ever suspect her.
You live in the same house, you eat her food, she cooks for you; you are not always there when she cooks, so, it’s in your best interest to get her back. When you get her back, she’ll get your back. Treat her like a queen and she would treat you like a king.
I have female friends. She knows them. I introduce her to them and in a lot of places, some think she is my sister, while others know she is my wife. When she is with a guy, the first thing she does is to introduce the guy to me. So, most people I know she knows, and most people she knows I know. She knows my colleagues, associates in the voice-over parlance.
There’s no recipe for a successful marriage. It all depends on the two people involved. You put your cards face-up. Most times, when a man has challenges with women, it is because the woman is not sure of his finances, the woman is not sure of who his friends are, or where he goes when he says he’s going out.
I feel that there’s no point where my wife does not know where I am going or where I am. She knows. There are people I chat with on my phone but most people don’t know who they chat with, unless people who know this is Moses’ number.
They usually think they are chatting with madam and if my phone rings, if I’m not there, she picks, or if a message comes she will respond to it. Everything is open. We have a joint account because I trust her judgment. She knows what we have; she is not going to request for what we don’t have. So, we don’t have conflicts.
You travel together, how do you maintain the home front?
Nneka: Anywhere we are is home. Don’t forget, when we got married, that same year, we lost our child, eight months and two weeks. For years to come, we weren’t able to have a child. So, we kept travelling and travelling. Anywhere we were was our home. Later, Chikamara came.
So, anywhere we travelled, we went with our son. Now that he’s got into secondary school, we still travel with him but the school says it can only be during the holidays.
Anywhere we are, we try to communicate with him. Your home is anywhere you are. He is a family man. Most men build a shield to protect their family. Even before we got married, he took me everywhere he went.