“ONE particular holiday in the UK’, Yemisi remembers yet another trip with H.I.D, “Funke and I had to do the grocery shopping. They normally had the cook and Papa will also travel with his personal secretary. But the cook will cook in the house but all the grocery shopping we had to do. You will be in the kitchen to help them prepare food. In London, we will be up at five a.m…. We travelled to exotic places. In New York, we stayed in the best hotels, in suites”.
The grandchildren who lived with Mama, particularly the granddaughters, are all now grateful for the discipline she instilled in them and the values she taught them.
YemisiSubair, who has a bakery, revealed that there are times when she had to work round the clock with her staff for days. When they ask her where she gets the energy to work like that alongside her staff, she would say “if you have a grandma like mine this is not work”.
H.I.D’s first granddaughter shares a similar view.
“I was more involved with Mama and it has helped me a lot because being….. I had to bring up my children on my own, but because I had been exposed to a lot at the domestic level (by Mama) when I was very young, responsibilities that other people find difficult are usually easy for me… Sometimes when the housemaids are busy, Mama would say ‘go and join them’.
Dolapo Osinbajo, now the wife of the Vice President, who also lived with her grandmother at Apapa, echoes her cousins. “Learning to serve everyone, I got that from her”, she says.
Dolapo reveals that she was particularly struck not only by the way H.I.D entertained, but also how she handled a variety of people. She adds that the lessons she learnt from her grandmother have become critical in her current position of the number two woman in Nigeria.
Her husband, Vice President YemiOsinbajo, who “grew up in the hands of Mama,”, agrees.Osinbajo’s paternal grandmother and H.I.D’s mother, Elizabeth Awoloja co-founded the Apostolic Church in Ikenne.
“My grand-mother and her mother were co-founders of the Apostolic Church in Ikenne”, he adds, maintaining that “what you see (in H.I.D) is a kind of resoluteness….. that is important to have if you are the wife of person that had the kind of influence Awo had. And, of course, not just that kind of influence but also the very chequered life that he lived; the travails and tragedies he had to face, while remaining resolutely committed to the principles and the objectives he had set. I think such a person will require the resoluteness of Mama, because she could have been a weak link. And if she had been a weak link – don’t forget that she is a business woman – she could have embarrassed him. If her love for money was excessive, she could have compromised when he was in jail and obviously offers of various kinds were made to her that would have put her under a lot of pressure to persuade Papa to renounce what he stood for. But she remained very resolute. I think that is really what history will remember about her; that she stood by one of the true icons of Nigeria’s political history; one who might be the only Nigerian whose thoughts and ideas were transformational”.
Even in her old age, H.I.D still puts her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to work.
At 97 in 2013, H.I.D sent for her accountant grandchild, Yemisi, who was based in Lagos.
“She called me and said I should come (to Ikenne) and re-arrange her wardrobe. I had to go. There was nothing wrong with the clothes in her wardrobes, as far as I was concerned. But she opened it and she asked me to bring everything out. Then she asked that all the blouses should go this way, and so on”.
In old age, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren have found her to be a “fantastic company”. She tells them stories about the past and jokes a lot with them.
Beyond that, they have come to understand her critical role in the life of the awe-inspiring life of their grandfather, Chief ObafemiAwolowo.
Recently, KemiAderemi summed things up on behalf of the grand-children.
Says Kemi, “I looked at all Papa was able to achieve and I thought, certainly, she is to be admired and emulated as what a good wife should be. Because if she didn’t give him (Chief Awolowo) a good and settled home, he certainly would not have been able to go out and achieve all that he was able to achieve. She is someone that I admire greatly, because not only did she hold the home front, she also was a very astute politician and a very brilliant entrepreneur and business woman”.
Continues Kemi, “There is no other political dynasty in Nigeria like the Awolowo dynasty. And that is a combination of what Papa (Awolowo) did and the way Mama (H.I.D) upholds the legacy. She is the radiation centre-point for continuing the Awolowo legacy”.
When H.I.D clocked 92, her last daughter, Tokunbo, describes her as “a wonderful mother, an exemplary woman of substance, a shiningexampleof womanhood….. She is a strong woman who makes for harmony in the home; a very strict woman who taught me and my other siblings about love. She knew how to deal with her children. We thank her for showing Jesus Christ to us early in life”, added the occupational health physician.
“Mama is like the Biblical Deborah. She is a wonderful woman”, says Tokunbo’s husband, also a medical doctor, Gbolahan Dosumu. “She is a role model to womanhood. As a mother in-law, she is like a mother to me. Whenever we asked for anything she would provide”.
Dosumu remembers the role that his mother-in-law played when his wife could not conceive for a long time.
“Despite the fact that both of us are doctors, she was the one that financed all our medical expenses. In fact, when she went to Israel with Papa and my mother – my mother went with them, they went to the Wailing Wall, all of them were praying for us to have Wemimo. She is a very generous woman and very compassionate”, states H.I.D’s son-in-law.
Ayotola adds: “I think when the dust settles, we would be seen as some of the most privileged people on earth. I keep on thinking because I have a reference point (in Mama). DolapoOsinbajo now – with all the weight of being the wife of the Vice President – I cannot imagine that she doesn’t reference some of Mama’s traits in trying to manage her husband and her life in its current form….”
TO BE CONTINUED
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