Statistics do not lie. Not many teenage pregnancies result in the mother going on to acquire several degrees, which makes Chocolate Lady an exception. At 14, she was already in the family way. W
hen the baby arrived, aged 15, it created a problem or two for the family. But the moment the teenage mother was whisked from her Anambra State base to that seaside resort, and enrolled at the school founded after a strike action by kids sympathising with the founder, silver lining replaced the gloom.
The journey to the capital, and from the town made famous by Asafo drummers, to the Ivory Tower, is littered with human exhibits of young girls who could not resist the temptation of teenage pregnancy.
Many of the stalls advertising Fanti kenkey in fashionable names at the junction where vehicles heading inland turn away from the coastal route owe their genesis to their owners becoming mothers before the age of 20. ‘Mama Tough;’ ‘Auntie Nana;’ ‘Hajia Memuna’; ‘Yaa Baby’, etc. The names are inviting. But that is not the only reason vehicle owners feel under compulsion to buy kenkey.
Waves of hands of sellers beckoning drivers to stop add to the thrill of marketing kenkey as a product on the coastal route. Unlike many of these victims of teenage pregnancy, sucked into lives of poverty and a daily struggle, Chocolate Lady has done well for herself. Riding through the vicissitudes of early motherhood, she made a name for herself at the Ivory Tower. She responded to shouts of ‘Ama Alata’ at the Faculty for I put it to you apprentices, through Makola and the institution for higher learning named after the Monarch of that famous island nation.
Now a woman of her own right, with strings of academic laurels, Chocolate Lady has an armoured car for security. But that is not what makes the woman tracing her roots to that state in South-Eastern Nigeria, unique.
Once upon a regime, she was considered for a slot at the Supreme Court. Her Attorney Primary is doing well for itself. Those with inside knowledge of how the woman, who once hated everything Ghanaian, came to head the vote itself, is told in stories of bravery.
Bungling state officials were said to have serious issues with the law firm, at a time the state had its office for legal issues and several attorneys. It is normal, under the story of her rise to fame, that many facts and fiction jumble themselves together.
That is why one claim is still under investigation. If you a male seeking to work in any of the outlets controlled by our Chocolate Lady, you must be tall and handsome.
I rest my case!
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