This meant she had to abandon her romance with another who was studying at a university when her forced the decision on her.
She said in a report by Punch News on Saturday, March 23, 2019, that she could not resist her mother because during her days as a youth, parents usually decide who their children will marry.
Despite being unable to make a choice about the man she married, Patience Ozokwor, has stayed in her union for many years, almost as if they were betrothed.
"No, I wasn’t betrothed to him, but my mother was a kind of woman that always liked to punish any child that misbehaved publicly.
"You know all those Christian mothers that would be in the disciplinary section to punish children. So, she didn’t want her child to come out of secondary school and not get married because she was afraid you could bring her to where she had been punishing people.
"So she insisted I must get married. I said okay but I had a suitor. But she said no. I didn’t know what to do because I had put all my eggs in one basket; he was in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
"I was waiting to go to school so that I would marry him but my mother wouldn’t wait. So I had to obey her. There was a big fight but in our days, you would not be the one to say I will marry this person; it was your parents that would have the final say in your marriage, so I had to give up."
'God does not like divorce'
Despite being imposed upon by her mother, getting a divorce was not a path she wanted to explore because she thought it was ungodly.
Knowledge about the Bible was a deterrent for Patience Ozokwor, against seeking a divorce. [Opaque Life]
She had learned from studying the Bible that it can be a shameful to do. The actresses who separate from their partners can't also be blamed says Ozokwor in the conversation with Punch News.
"I am ashamed because I read the Bible a lot. I know that God does not like divorce, but I have discovered that it is not the problem of the actresses."
She shared with Punch that one of the reasons why there is separation in marriages happen when financial expectations haven't been met. This is mostly experienced by actors and the women who seek them.
"And for the men too, girls fall from hills to marry them because they think they have money and when they get in and don’t see the money, it will become a case of – is this marriage? I thought there would be money everywhere.
"But the issue is that when the money comes, it comes in big and if another one does not come immediately, that one will finish before another one comes. But one thing is certain, we are not going to wait for a long time before another one comes because if we don’t act, we can attend functions and they will pay us.
"Money will be coming in through various means but people don’t have patience; that is why our marriages fail."