Shade: Heartbeat of Razaq Okoya’s Dynasty

At first blush, billionaire businessman and Chairman, Eleganza Group, Chief Razaq Okoya, had been smitten with the ravishing beauty of then 21-year-old Folashade Nimota (nee Adeleye)

She charmed the billionaire with her attractive curvature, come-hither-look and shape that could make any full-blooded man drool.

But beyond this, Okoya, who was then 59, could see what many, including his immediate family and critics, could not see in the young Ijebu-Ode native.

So, with a steely and unbent resolve, he planned and eventually married the University of Lagos graduate of Sociology in an elaborate wedding that was the talk of the town for many months.

Twenty-four years after their marriage, not a few are still wondering how the heart of the respected octogenarian business mogul beats only for hazel-eyed Shade.

It is no news that the successful industrialist’s first wife was Kuburat, who bore him seven children. It is also a fact that Okoya later took a second wife, Ajoke. But sadly, the connubial relationship hit the rocks in 2001, after some irreconcilable differences.

The relationship got messier shortly after Ajoke moved out of their Ikoyi Crescent, Lagos residence. At the time, many were shocked when news broke that Okoya denied the paternity of their last child, Rasheed, though a DNA report from London later proved him wrong.

Kristin Hannah once said, “A wrecked marriage scares everyone. It’s like a rock tossed into a still blue pond; the ripples go on and on”, Okoya, who has lived through that bitter experience, seemed to be in a hurry to literally inhale the future and exhale the past; hence he wooed and married Shade.

At the outset, Shade reportedly deployed her native intelligence to survive the unhealthy rivalry, with its attendant emotional problems, allegedly fuelled by her husband’s only sister, Wosilat, and his one-time favourite daughter, Biola.

Today, the 46-year-old beauty and mother of four keeps thanking her Creator for making her the envy of her critics, who never gave her marriage any chance of survival.

She has gotten his heart to herself alone,  the numero uno of Okoya’s heart while in her smiles alone, the 84-year-old billionaire finds happiness.

Interestingly, unlike many in her social status, Shade cannot be tagged with the disdainful brush of a “Trophy Wife,” as she has proven to be a strong-willed, hardworking and go-getter woman.

In her capacity as the Managing Director of Eleganza Group, she has turned around the fortunes of the family’s business and saved the almost moribund conglomerate.