Real Reason Kazeem Adeoti Dumped His Wife For Mercy Aigbe
The social media has been agog all week since Nollywood actress, Mercy Aigbe unveiled her new husband, movie marketer and producer, Alhaji Kazeem Adeoti, popularly known as Adekaz. Although THEWILL exclusively reported their relationship and secret wedding which happened shortly after Mercy converted to Islam and adopted the name, Minnah, it wasn’t until a week ago that the actress chose to unveil her new man to the world. A lot of stories have also been bandied around about the circumstances leading to their marriage. Most of the stories are not only false, they are fueled by Mercy’s ex-husband, Lanre Gentry, who has since remarried and Adekaz’s estranged wife, Funsho.
One such false story was posted on Instagram by Gentry shortly after Mercy’s unveiling. It was a group photograph of Adekaz and Funsho flanked by Mercy and Gentry. The caption insinuated that Gentry, Mercy, Adekaz and Funsho were family friends and many quickly assumed that Mercy began an affair with Adekaz while still married to Gentry.
It was also wrongly assumed that Mercy took advantage of her friendship with Funsho and snatched Adekaz from her. Mercy and Adekaz quickly countered these narratives.
The quartet were never family friends and the picture Gentry posted was taken at the 40th birthday party of Adekaz, years ago, which was well attended by Nollywood practitioners as Adekaz is considered an influential man in the movie industry.
Another indication that Funsho was part of the falsehood came when she posted a picture of herself and her children with Adekaz on Facebook with a caption suggesting that Adekaz never appreciated her as his wife and mother of his children. The picture elicited pity from a cross section of Nigerians who wasted no time vilifying Mercy. However what Funsho failed to tell the world is that she has been separated from Adekaz and what led to the demise of their 20-year-old marriage were some issues around her refusal to relocate from the United States to Nigeria.
Funsho, who has been playing the victim, also failed to tell Nigerians that whenever she visited Nigeria sometime, she would refuse to get in touch with her husband. Instead, she took to vilifying him as a dead-beat father who did not take care of his children. She fueled the tale that she was responsible for his success in business, which is far from the truth as Adekaz has always been successful and fulfills his parental obligation as well as taking care of other bills. Both Adekaz and Funsho lived in Minnesota, USA where he was a licensed mortgage broker. A few years ago, he began to nurse the idea of relocating to Nigeria and taking advantage of the burgeoning movie industry. But Funsho vehemently dismissed the idea of relocation. She would later give in, come to Nigeria but then changed her mind almost immediately and returned to the US. Adekaz kept pressing her to return to Nigeria and be with him. By now, he had set up his movie production outfit, Adekaz Productions and Ibaka TV, but Funsho remained resolute. Adekaz told her point blank that he would marry another wife if she didn’t return as agreed. Besides, his religion permitted him to have as many wives as he could afford to care for. Well, she didn’t and her refusal took a toll on their marriage. In 2021, she came to Nigeria around the time of her birthday to try to patch things up with her husband, hoping he would drop the idea of relocation, but seeing he wasn’t ready to do so, she returned to the US. Her indignation further bolstered his relationship with Mercy which was already a foregone issue only waiting to be formalised. While Adekaz’s marriage to Mercy is his second attempt at love, it is Mercy’s third attempt at marriage, having been married briefly to the father of her first daughter, Michelle who is an undergraduate. Her second attempt was with hotelier, Lanre Gentry with whom she has a son named Olajuwon.