By Comfort Asemota
Nigerian actress and media personality, Ariyike Owolagba, popularly known as Ariyiike Dimples, has opened up about why she stepped away from church for several years.
In a recent episode of the Open Up Podcast, the actress shared that she stopped attending church for three years after a church elder criticized her fashion choices.
She explained that the elder told her she would go to hell for wearing a pencil skirt, which the elder deemed indecent. “In my community church, you see only elderly people. You barely see the young ones. The young ones have gone to other churches. It was too serious. Yes, you can have your doctrines, but there is a way you can simplify it for young people and take them in without judging them,” Ariyiike said.
The actress recalled the frustrating experience: “The reason I stopped going to church was because I wore a pencil skirt to church, and an elderly woman said I would go to hellfire. I was shocked and felt wrongly judged, so I stopped going to church for three years. Thankfully, I was already out of my parents’ house. The woman reported me to my dad. I had to take a picture of the skirt and send it to my mum to prove that I wasn’t dressing indecently. But my dad believed in the ideology of a community raising a child, so I chose to avoid the community church so they wouldn’t see me.”
