Popular Nigerian singer, Tope Alabi has revealed how her mother checked that her virginity was intact every three months to prevent her from being misguided or bring shame on the family. The gospel artiste stated this in an interview with Punch. Speaking on her mother's support for her music career and her life generally she said
"Yes, she did because she was also a singer. She always sang around the house. She believed that one didn’t have to be immoral simply because she is a singer. Every other member of my family was not pleased with my music career but my mother never took offence.
"She taught me that a female shouldn’t be too close to men. For example, I was never bathed at the same time with my male siblings. My mother used to check if my virginity was intact every three months interval before I got married; especially whenever I returned from movie locations.
"When I newly got married to my husband, we went to the National Theatre in Lagos to watch a movie and actors like Yinka Quadri, Ebun Oloyede, among others were there. When they saw my husband, they congratulated him and told him that he had chosen a good and exemplary wife. That made my husband quite happy. My mum was very strict and she never spared the rod. She also showed me a lot of motherly love.
"My mum always taught me to be respectful. She mandated me to always kneel when greeting elderly people and I still do that till date, even for people I am older than."
On her music career she said
"I started my entertainment career as an actress and back then, they didn’t do personalised soundtracks for movies. One day, one of my colleagues, Adio Majesta, said I should be able to compose songs for movies. He told me the title of the movie and that was how I started making soundtracks for movies. He believed I could do it because I always sang whenever we were on location and sometimes, I used the incident happening at that particular time to compose songs."
