ACCORDING to her younger brother, Olumide Oyediran, “I can’t remember Mama sitting down”.
“She was always up by four a.m. or five,” Ayotola continues her narrative. “God help you if you are not…. We had to get up and read the Bible and pray in Yoruba for like an hour with her retinue of staff. You had to cram Psalms 23, 91, and 121 in Yoruba and Our Lord’s Prayer… I just can’t think of a time when she wasn’t part of our lives”.
Unlike Chief Awolowo who wanted the grandchildren to live a complete life of middle-class children, Ayotola revealed that H.I.D allowed them to experience the regular world.
“We used to buy food (in the neighbourhood canteens). Papa was very much against eating out, like buying buka (neighbourhood canteen) food. But Mama didn’t mind very much. So we used to be part of that. And Balogun was a very lively place. I remember if anybody stole anything, the practice was for a used tyre to be hung on the neck of such person before they got lynched and set on fire. It was really tragic. But we saw what was going on, even though we were not part of it”.
She continues, “I think it was just a robust environment and we soaked up everything that happened (in Central Lagos). We were not prevented from experiencing it. Mama was not the type that sheltered you beyond a certain point. We knew our boundaries, but it was not like don’t touch this. I can’t even remember being told not to do something. But we just knew what we were not supposed to do. We understood everything, we could speak the language”.
As kids, H.I.D used to plait the hairs of her grandchildren.
“She was our Iya Onidiri (hairstylist or hair weaver), declares the Oyedirans’ youngest daughter.
When they were much younger, the grandchildren loved their grandfather, Chief Awolowo, more. “Papa was just always too easy, just lovely”.
It wasn’t that their grandfather let them do whatever they wanted, but he was far more indulgent.
“I think of the two of them”, Ayotola says, “Mama was the stricter half. I think as children, we loved it when she was but she always came as a package with Papa. However, we found her to be strict”.
H.I.D’s grandson-in-law, Damola Aderemi agrees with Ayotola, adding, “Mama is like a hard task master”. But he concedes that after he married her granddaughter, Oluwakemi Oyediran, he found her to be very accommodating and fair, even to her in-laws. “She treats both sides (her grandchildren and their spouses) as her children. She is still a very fair person”.
Still, Ayotola’s sister, Yemisi, emphasizes the point about their grandmother’s “strictness”.
“Growing up, I think Papa was everybody’s favourite. Mama was so strict. You will get beaten for the smallest thing. Everything was an offence: you couldn’t chew gum, as teenagers you were not allowed to make-up, speaking English to your parents was considered rude. She would ask ‘how can the children be speaking English to their parents?”
Continues Yemisi, “when I was in MGHS, Papa used to give us pocket money, 50 kobo every morning. We will go and greet him, myself, Kemi, Funke and Segun. Then, he will give us 50 kobo each daily. We knew Mama didn’t like it. She felt he was spoiling us. She convinced him that she was a business woman and she was the one that carried cash, so she will be the one to give us pocket money. Yours truly, in less than a month, Mama reduced the daily 50 kobo to 50 per week!”
Did they protest the “injustice”?
“No!” Yemisi retorted. “You can’t, because Papa had absolute confidence in Mama. Anything Mama said, he believed. So, you can’t report Mama to Papa. It was a lost battle from the beginning.”
That love between the two which made it impossible for anyone to come between them is something that Mrs. Olubisi Osinbajo, the mother of the current Vice President also verifies. Osinbajo, whose mother-in-law founded the Apostolic Church along with H.I.D’s mother, knew H.I.D well since she married into the Osinbajos’ family. She was also with her in days of tribulation following H.I.D to Broad Street, Prisons to deliver Awolowo’s meals.
“Mama provided worthy examples for us in the Mothers’ Union (in the Anglican Church), especially by the way she loved husband and dotted over him. By her love, she took him out of the reach of any other woman. Mama loved Papa in a way that was so glaring,” observes the old lady. “So, this was a shining example to us then on how to love our husbands and safeguard our marriages. We tried to emulate her. She guided us on how to manage the home and to care for one’s husband which really endeared me to her as a role model. Mama has always been exemplary in terms of godliness”.
Says Mrs. Osinbajo recalling the years of tribulations in the lives of the Awolowos, “I used to and I still wonder what manner of rare human beings the two of them are because they are just exceptional in everything.”
As they were growing up, unlike the generation of Yemisi, H.I.D’s much younger grandchildren didn’t find her that tough. She had been softened by age by the time they grew up. Even though she remained firm, they didn’t experience the disciplinary regime that the grand-daughters particularly went through.
“Grandma is very cordial.” This is Wemimo Dosunu’s assessment of her grandmother. “She is hard working and a family woman”.
Wemimo, the Dosumu’s only child, also emphasizes her grandmothers’ powerfully retentive memory which she says is almost unbelievable for “a woman her age”. Two of H.I.D’s great-grandchildren, Adekepemi and Adewojumi, both Aderemis say that she is “very generous, pleasant and funny”. Adekepemi adds that “she is very witty, with a very wicked sense of humour!”
Even though he is much older than the Wemimo generation of grandchildren, Olumide Oyediran too does not share the memory of H.I.D as a disciplinarian. “She didn’t have a cane for the grandchildren like Papa did. She was quite indulgent”, he says.
But he share his siblings’ view of H.I.D’s attitude to “spoiling” the grandchildren with money when they were kids.
“When we travelled abroad on holidays, if Papa gives us money and you also ask her for money, Mama will ask why she had to give us money when Papa had already given us. So, she will give us half of what Papa gave us. And we would say “Mama ko ni fun e ni nkankan”, typical Ijebu woman!’ that was the banter amongst us”.
However, Olumide described H.I.D as “a very loving woman, very caring”.
“When she got older, it was now easier to get things out of her. Maybe it’s because one now understands her better and I guess her not giving us a few things we asked for in the past was not because she was stingy. It was part of building us to be what we are today”.
Indeed, in her old age, her children and grandchildren attest that she has been very generous towards them – and others too. She has built houses for some while intervening in critical ways when some of them are in need of financial intervention.
H.I.D’s personal assistant and secretary, Chinwe Ero-Philips, who started working with her in 2004 says her experience with the matriarch of the Awolowo family “has been wonderful”. “Given that I am not from Yorubaland”, explains the Igbo lady, “many people were wondering how I would cope working with her. She is a perfectionist too and very strict. And she is a very powerful woman. But when I resumed, she accepted me warmly. I had learnt the culture of respect, such as kneeling down to greet older people, which is very important in Yorubaland”.
She adds that working with HID has given her the opportunity to meet so many eminent people, whom she often asks her to walk to the door as she became too old to walk.
“She has been very kind towards me. People sometimes ask when they hear my name, “where is she from?” Some people would want their children to replace me. But she will say I don’t mind where she is from. She will insist that she is happy with me. She also vouches for my competence and loyalty”.
Chinwe’s assistant, Oluwatoyin Onanusi, who was employed as stand-in for Chinwe when she went on leave in 2011, but has been retained as her assistant since then, also says H.I.D is “a disciplinarian”. But Oluwatoyin says the old woman is one who combines discipline with “love of family and people”. “When I resume work by eight in the morning, Mama is already seated. She is a woman of strength. Even at her age, she can sit at meetings for long hours. Her memory is also (enormous)”.
In terms of personal discipline, Ayotola revealed that she used to assume that Chief Awolowo was the more disciplined person because of the way he arranged his schedules.
TO BE CONTINUED
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