In a heartbreaking story, Mr. Moses Otabor, the father of Nigerian reality show star and actress, Ijeoma Josephina Otabor known as Phyna, has made a public complaint that his daughter seems to have eloped from the family circle shortly after winning N100 million in a popular reality TV show, Big Brother Naija (BBNaija) in 2022.
The distressed 68-year old father, from Ekpeon in Edo State, Nigeria, says he’s deeply distressed that his daughter abandoned him jobless and left the family in poverty while they see her on social media living the good life.
In October 2022, Phyna won the first place in the reality BBNaja Show Season 7, earning the top prize of N100,000,000 or about $100,000.
But Otabor says soon after collecting the winning, his daughter disappeared and broke her promise to fund his new business and help the family financially.
“I haven’t seen Phyna, my daughter since she won BBNaija ‘Level Up’ edition last year. She hasn’t returned home since then. I don’t know why? I am a professional hearse driver, and when she won the reality TV show, she asked me to do away with all my old cars, promising to change my life. But since then, I haven’t seen her. And I don’t have a car again”, he complained.
“I sold all my four cars because at the time , my daughter won the show. I thought that God had finally answered our prayers. I called her on the telephone, and she said God has blessed us. She asked me to do away with all my old cars, or she would give them out to Aboki, any day she returned. So, instead of allowing her to dash out my cars to scavengers, I decided to sell them as scraps and used the proceeds to renovate my house. And that was the beginning of my suffering. I stopped doing my business because I had no car again. And my neighbours thought I was either stingy or pretending as if my daughter just won a N100 million grand prize. I was the Vice-Chairman of our association, but when I couldn’t show up at our station for some time, they replaced me with another person.
“From that moment, things started getting tough for me. I am even looking for somebody that will give me a car on hire purchase. I need help, it has come to that point. I don’t want to die in silence.’
Phyna, he said, doesn’t take calls from family members anymore and worse of all, they don’t even know her whereabout since the 2022 cash windfall. “I only see her on Facebook or Instagram whenever she shares new photos on these platforms,” he lamented.
Efforts by some reporters to reach Phyna didn’t end well either. She was reported to have dropped the call as soon as she observed the direction of the conversation.
But an obviously embarrassed Phyna herself just moments ago took to her Instagram page to post the following words, perhaps in response to her father’s public outcry; “When I d!e, feed my body to my family to eat. They must eat my corpse”, suggesting deep disharmony within the family.
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