Peter Okoye of the P-Square music duo has said the only thing he fears most in life is poverty, not death.
Speaking in an interview on the Nancy Isime show on Monday, the singer stated that he was not afraid of dying. His greatest fear, he said, was being broke. He rooted the statement in a childhood experience of acute hardship.
“I’m not afraid of death. The only thing I’m afraid of in this life is poverty. It is being broke,” he said. “I have tested it before. I have been in our house with our parents and a bulldozer came and demolished the house. We were living in a one-bedroom flat with me, my mom, my father, like the whole family. Six boys and two girls live in a one-bedroom apartment.
They have to divide the room with a curtain. So, the landlord has sold the compound and we’re trying to plead to give us some time. The next thing, we were at home, then a bulldozer came and demolished it. We have tasted poverty before.”
The account is concrete rather than abstract. A large family confined to a single room, a curtain as partition, a failed plea for time, and the sudden arrival of a bulldozer form a sequence that left a lasting imprint. For someone who later achieved commercial success in music, the memory functions as a reference point against which later security is measured.
Public figures who speak of poverty often do so in general terms. Okoye’s version is specific: the physical demolition of the family home while the household was still inside. That specificity explains why the fear is framed as more immediate than death. The experience of material collapse, once lived, remains a possible future rather than a distant concept.
Whether the statement is read as personal testimony or as context for his later financial disputes, the structural point is the same. Early exposure to sudden loss of shelter can shape risk perception long after circumstances improve. Okoye presents poverty not as a social statistic but as a lived possibility he has already encountered and does not wish to encounter again.
