By Adesina Soyooye
Billionaire Femi Otedola, has just told one of his daughters: “I can no longer afford your school fees.”
If Otedola’s response to her daughter’s appeal that he pays her school fees was a joke, many see it as a bad one, meant to provoke the poor who, really, are unable to afford their children/wards school fees, making even the most brilliant to drop out of school.
As is the Femi Otedola family’s habit to put out a number of their flamboyant life style out there in the social media, his daughter, the beautiful and talented Disc Jockey, Florence, whose stage name is DJ Cuppy, had splashed on the social media the news of her admission into the prestigious Oxford University, London, to read African Studies.
It is a great feat, and admirable, for a young woman who does not, actually, need to go through the rigours of keeping awake to study, writing examinations, and projects. She already has a first degree and a Master’s degree, the later, in her area of current interest, music – Music Business.
And, of course, she is a multi-billionaire’s daughter, and in her own right, a millionaire, having done very well as a DJ. But, she still sought to improve herself, educationally.
As soon as she got the admission to Oxford University, she decided to share the good news with her parents – not through a normal phone, or during normal family chit-chat and happy moments. She chose to do so in a video, through the social media, in case anybody would dare to put a lie on her admission to Oxford.
She also put the name of her would-be hall of residence, when she does resume but, worried about her school fees.
In the video, through which she told her parents, she said: “Mama and Papa, I have news to share with you. Remember I applied at Oxford, last year, for my masters? I got it. I am going to Oxford University. I am going to Lady Margaret Hall”
She then added: ” I hope Papa would just pay for my school fees.”
A joke? Perhaps. But her father also matched her in the joke that is capable of making the poor shake their heads.
“I have paid for your school fees, long enough. I cannot afford to”, he responded.
Many interpreted this to mean a mockery of the poor. But others say father and daughter were just jiving, but admitted: “They didn’t need to make it a social media event.”
D.J. Cuppy, can, on her own, pay her fees. And school fees is absolutely nothing to Mr Otedola who, publicly, splashes billions of Naira on her children.
In 2020 in Abuja, he shook Nigeria when he contributed a whopping sum of five billion Naira, to this same daughter’s Foundation.
Months later, Otedola took his three daughters shopping abroad and, in an unbelievable, apparently, unplanned moment, bought for each of them, the latest Ferrari. Cost price: N100m, each.
The photograph of his daughters, each, standing by her own Ferrari, was a social media sensation for days.
DJ Cuppy will resume school at Oxford on October 21, 2021.
