By Patricia Uyeh,
”Omniknowest” crooner, Aituaje Iruobe, popularly called  Waje, in a recent chat, revealed that she used to sell chin-chin with her friend, Ijeoma Uzodima before she finally ventured into music.

She said:

”I don’t like cooking but I love to bake and I did that for a while with my friend Ijeoma Uzodima. We used to have this chin chin company and we used to sell everything in our stock. I remember that the magistrates in Onitsha at the time used to order from us and we used to sell it in a small can for about N600.

“We would cut 50kg chin chin for three days and my back would be paining me. I probably would have continued with that if I was not a singer. Ijeoma who is my very good friend was actually the one who used to push me,” she said.

She continued:

”When I started my career, it was someone that drew my attention that I could make money from music.

“I remember the first time I sang in my school in UNN, I was wearing a red dress and I sang Whitney Houston’s ‘I will always love you.’ It was just my voice and there was no instrumental, the crowd went crazy. I think after my performance, they gave me about N500.

“That was enough for a week in school. I remember the first time I earned N300,000, it was from Zain Mobile Telecomms. They had an end of the year party in Enugu and they asked me to come and perform. When I got the money, I went haywire.

I am the first in my family, so the money really helped to stabilise a few things.”