Salawa Abeni and Kollington Ayinla are not back together. This is contrary to what recent news would have you believe.
The Nigerian music legends, who were married for 8 years before an acrimonious separation and divorce spent time together in February, as part of commitments for an infomercial project they are working on for real estate company Adron Homes.
And the media went wild with news of a reunion.
“If this interview is about my alleged reunion with Kollington, I am not ready to say anything about it. It was just an advertisement. I don’t have time for things like that,” Salawa told Punch Newspaper in an interview.
According to The Nation, “Real estate Company, Adron Homes and Property, has reunited the one-time lovebirds in its forthcoming Valentine promo for Nigerians. At the ceremony, the duo were spotted sharing cozy hugs and smiling at each other as if they never had a rough relationship.”
Before Salawa and Kollington got married in 1986, she was married to Lateef Adepoju who had signed her to her first recording contract under his Leader Records label. The relationship wasn’t quite fulfilling for Salawa and she soon rekindled the affair she had with Ayinla Kollington before she married Adepoju.
But she and Kollington had a falling out and in 1981 she released ‘Ikilo’ (‘Warning’) followed by ‘Eni Tori Ele Ku’ (‘The Man Who Died Because of A Babe’) in 1982. Kollington responded by claiming paternity of Salawa’s child with Adepoju on his ‘Tani O Jo’ (‘Who Does The Child Resemble’) record.
Adepoju then got involved and threatened to sue Kollington for defaming his wife. However, in a plot twist of epic proportions, Salawa dumped her older husband Adepoju and pitched her tent with the younger Kollington. They got married in 1986 and she celebrated the union with a new record Ife Dara Pupo’ (‘Love Is Good’).
Along with marrying Kollington, Salawa also signed to his label Kollington records. When they had their first child, Kollington released the record “E Mi No O Jo” (‘The Baby Resembles Me’) to welcome the child. Together, Salawa and Kollington were the most high profile celebrity marriages of the 80s and early 90s.
Unfortunately, by the early 90s cracks were starting to show again in the relationship. They had survived really tough times like when Kollington’s mansion in Alagbado (the entire neighborhood is named in his honor) got burnt in 1990. But she wasn’t happy – she was one of at least 15 women who were married to the mega star, Kollington Ayinla.
Salawa was faced with a choice – stay in an unhappy marriage or face her career, after all she also had her own audiences and pulled her own crowds. She chose the latter. She had three kids with Kollington – two boys and a girl. By the time the marriage ended in 1994, Salawa had recorded 27 albums and released a couple more before the turn of the millennium. She also had a short stint with SONY music and appeared in a couple of Yoruba movies.
In a 2014 interview with The Nation, Kollington said, “In my case, I regret marrying many wives. If I knew things would later turn out like this, I wouldn’t have married so many women. Human beings are unpredictable! Don’t also forget that women are very jealous; they don’t like rivalry in any way. But we were too young and ignorant to know all these at that time.”