By Temitope Ojo

Veteran Waka singer, Salawa Abeni, has revealed that men still pester her for love despite her age.

The 57-year-old said she has learned to treat such men with respect while turning them down.

In an interview with Punch published on Saturday, she said: “Men still pester me for love but I am always very careful with them even though you cannot know which one is good or bad from mere appearance.

“I mentioned it in one of my songs that if I laugh too much, they will call me a prostitute if I frown too much, they will say I am proud. But it is good to be very diplomatic with them and not to be rude to them.”

Abeni also talked about the rate of broken marriages especially in the entertainment industry, she added that every man or woman needs a companion; therefore people must make their marriages work.

“The truth is that every adult male or female wants to be in a happy marriage. They should note that two wrongs can never make a right. One has to be cool-headed and patient.

“Those in the entertainment industry need to take things easy. While they make others happy with their talents, they must also make themselves happy by building good homes,” she said.

For many years in the 80s and 90s, Salawa Abeni released albums that endeared her to lovers of her genre of music, waka. However, she dropped out of the entertainment scene afterwards and only recently returned.

On what led to her absence, she stated in another interview that she was ill for like five or six years. “It started in 2008 and I didn’t recover until six years after. I was not performing on stage and other social events. Suddenly, I became terribly ill and couldn’t go out. I could not think of work because I could not walk—I was paralysed.”