Afro juju exponent, Sir Shina Peters, is having a turbulent time over wife, Sammie Ayoka’s failing health. The hitherto bubbly lady is down with cancer. Sammie is in the United States where she is receiving treatment from experts who have been battling to rescue her from the jaws of the life-threatening ailment.

Sammie is one of the few entertainers’ wives blessed with the rare intelligence of sustaining a celebrity marriage for over thirty two years. With her husband solidly beside her, the stylish lady has triumphed over tougher travails. Peters still eulogizes Sammie for her extreme patience towards him. In the hit album, Ace, the stage rocker did not only profess his love for the woman whom he said was there for him when he passed through hell, he literally professed love that would last a lifetime, part of what forms his guiding principle for standing behind the woman under intensive care. Decades down the line, Peters and Sammy have remained an inseparable couple through thick and thin. Even when Sammie had difficulty having babies for her celebrity husband, the Ogun-born guitarist, Peters went back to the studio to wax another album, Shinamania, in which he encouraged his wife to wait on God for a child just like the biblical Hannah.

Luck smiled on Sammie in her 40s and the couple were blessed with a baby boy. The man is said to have cut away from friends and the social circuit where he holds sway and retreated into oblivion. And suddenly, we found out that their Iju, Lagos, mansion remains under lock and key. Understandably, Peters has travelled to the US to physically lend a hand to his ailing wife.