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Last week, I saw a
curious thing. It was seven in the morning and most people were
standing patiently getting ready for work. Our morning mooning was
disturbed by a loud shout. From a building along the road six men ran
out racing in different directions.

There was little to
draw attention to five of the men. They appeared as well dressed as
most of us-if indeed slightly better. It was the sixth man who drew our
attention and curiosity. He was running just as hard as the other five.
He appeared to be using all the muscles in his body. We could clearly
see this because he was naked.

Last week, I ran
into a disturbing thing. It was barely seven in the morning and I was
standing on the road wondering if I would again be late for work. My
morning musings was disturbed by a loud cry.

From a building
across the road six men rushed out running in different directions.
Five of them were running away and the last was chasing. It was the
last who drew our attention. We were mildly amused about the fact that
he was naked. We were greatly disturbed that his cry-which had drawn
our attention-had been the words “Thief! Thief!”

Last week, I ran
into a shameful thing. I was standing on the road wondering how long I
would have to wait for a bus when a cry of anger broke me from my
reverie. From a building close to me, six men ran out in different
directions. The first five were fully clothed. The last man clearly
wasn’t. Three of them raced in my direction with the naked man in
pursuit. He screamed the words “Thief. Thief” as he raced after them.

For some funny
reason no one seemed to react. I watched in stunned silence as the
thieves ran by me. I didn’t do anything. They were there. I could see
them. I could touch them. I could have easily tacked one of them. And
yet I failed to do something. For some funny reason, I was stunned into
inaction by the urgency of the situation that required action. I, and
about 60 other waiting people along the road.

Last week, I ran
into a brave thing. A man had been having his bath when an incessant
knock on the door forced him to address the unnamed visitors in nothing
but a towel. There were five of them waiting for him. Holding a bag
that seemed to hold the tools of the trade, they announced that they
were PHCN officers.

By the time, the
towel clad man realised that this was not true; they had forced their
way into his home and pulled out knives. He was slashed in his arm and
hacked across his forehead with a machete. While he stood there in
bloodied shock he was asked to lie down and put his hands behind his
back. He didn’t. He instead charged at two of them and ran through the
open door leaving his towel behind. He resisted and because of that, he
probably lived.

Last week, I ran
into an inspirational thing. Five thieves were foiled by a man who
refused to be robbed at 7 in the morning. Sensing their mission had
failed, they fled in different directions. Their mission might have
been over but those of their victim had only begun. With nothing on but
his bare skin brightly streaked with blood, he raced after them.

His face was
covered in blood and he probably had difficulty seeing. There were
blood prints following his every step. He was hardly the tallest of
men, easily dwarfed by the thieves. He had no shoes on. He had no
clothes. He had little to spur him on except the injustice of his
morning events. Few might have stayed to weep about their troubles.
This man didn’t. He ran. By God, he ran.

Last week, I
witnessed a familiar thing. A thief was once again caught on the
streets. He wasn’t arrested by policemen but by the man whom he had
tried to rob. With nothing on except his skin and honour, a naked and
bleeding man ran after a thief for almost a kilometre before tackling
and pushing him into the gutter. It was only then that people rushed to
his assistance.

Last week, I witnessed the painful picture of the present. I
witnessed the ugliness of the country brought sharply to painful light
at 7 on a Tuesday morning. But within the vista of gloom and apparent
despair, a naked man, running the length of a mile, brought to fore the
vision of hope and the promise of a better future. It is a vision that
I look forward to living.

I guard my person (all my body parts i.e. bare arms, breasts,
buttocks etc) very jealously when inside public transportation. Of course there
are those that simply delight in violating me. These come in the form of
elbows, (person beside you!), knees (attack from the rear!), the thighs and the
knobbly knees of the chap beside you can also do some damage. Mr. Macho
requires space for the sacs to breathe (so he spreads his legs as far as the
east is from the west and every other person can take a jump!).

People simply don’t get (comprehension is a vague reality in
their world) that invasion of my personal space cannot be tolerated. I
understand perfectly the peculiarity of sharing a bus with total strangers for
certain distances; the ritual they want to enact with me is what I take
objection to.

The soft swell of my breasts, abdomen and my backside get the
very points of the joints of fellow commuters. In this battle to keep my orbs
safe the trickiest is guarding the chest area; this often entails a tango or a
waltz of the upper arms in conjunction with a twist here and there.

God was very creative when making people and so He made them
small, big, medium and then various in-betweens. The combination of these souls
when commuting comes in varied forms. The more ample companions usually take up
more of the allotted space than the not so generous in proportion.

The most humorous of the sagas is that the little person on the
row gets shoved, squashed and vigorously sandwiched between the others. Even
when the little person has gone the whole hog in shifting, he or she still gets
moved by the greater mass that must be accommodated! In all, commuting and
moving about in public transportation is another survival skill that’s to be
perfected and honed in the great City of Excellence.

It makes for interesting
tales and incidents whilst going about the activities of seeking your daily
bread. The tales of passenger-to-passenger, passenger-to-conductor,
LASTMA-to-driver encounters are a telling for another day.

Nigeria’s
preparation for the FIFA World Cup has never been anything to rave
about. From beginning to end it was characterised by lapses, which for
the most part were avoidable.

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), the
country’s football governing body, which normally ought to drive the
process to ensure that Nigeria puts up a decent showing at the global
tournament, somehow manages to make simple things like appointing a
coach for the squad and organising friendly matches to enable the
technical crew assess the form and fitness of players, look incredibly
difficult.

While the build-up to our three previous
appearances in 1994, 1998 and 2002 were chaotic to say the least, they
appear hi-tech and extremely organised compared to what we are
witnessing now with regard to our preparations for this year’s World
Cup in South Africa, which begins in exactly one month’s time.

The 2002 edition of the Mundial, which is on
record as being the shoddiest in terms of organisation, has come out
smelling like roses. When then Eagles coach Amodu Shuaibu was fired
with five months to the tournament and Adegboye Onigbinde was handed
the reins and Nigerians despaired, the leadership of the NFF (then NFA)
managed to arrange a number of friendly matches before the squad
departed for the tournament, which was held in Korea/Japan.

A similar scenario plays out today. By a quirk of
fate Amodu, who returned as coach of the squad in 2008 following the
exit of German Bert Vogts, was relieved of his appointment after
guiding the team to qualify for the World Cup. Former Sweden coach,
Lars Lagerback was appointed in his stead.

The process that threw up the Swede was
exasperatingly convoluting to the football faithful who wanted the
process speeded up to afford the new coach time to shake up the squad,
which many Nigerians agree appeared listless during both the qualifiers
for the World Cup and the 2010 Nation Cup in Angola in January.

As it turns out, we are paying for that delay. The
time wasted in naming the new coach and the seeming inability of the
leadership of the football federation to arrange even one quality
friendly match for the Eagles mean that with thirty days to the World
Cup, Nigerians do not believe that their national team can square up to
their opponents.

And they can hardly be blamed. While Nigeria’s
group opponents, Argentina, Greece and South Korea, named their
provisional squads weeks ago, Nigeria’s tentative squad for the
tournament was released only last night.

How Lagerback arrived at the list will continue to
exercise the imagination of football fans who know that unlike other
coaches going to the World Cup, the Swede has not had any personal or
professional interaction with the players since he took on the job in
late February.

Now, that this list is out and the major football
leagues where our players ply their trade in Europe have either ended
or will end this weekend, Lagerback needs to force the issue of
friendly matches with the NFF. He must extract a commitment from them
to keep faith with already proposed friendly games with Saudi Arabia,
North Korea and Colombia to enable him get a feel of his squad or watch
them get battered in South Africa.

When last week I was confronted with a litany of deaths – the
death of a brother-in-law, the death of a friend 12 days after his wedding, the
death of a poet-friend Esiaba Irobi, and then the death of a president – I
thought of the myth of how death entered the world and became “homeless.” Amos
Tutuola’s version of the myth in The Palm-wine Drinkard tells us that the
palm-wine drinkard went to Death’s house, captured and brought him to the
world, an assignment he had to carry out in order to get information from an
old man (also identified as a “god”) concerning the whereabouts of his dead
tapster.

If one were as adventurous as Tutuola’s palm-wine drinkard, one
would have set out for “Dead’s town” in search of these dead Nigerians,
especially the poet, Esiaba Irobi, whose friendship and professional
interaction one had enjoyed over many years. Searching for a dead poet in
“Dead’s town” may appear the craziest of all expeditions but perhaps it would
help one to be cured of the fear of being called upon suddenly to remove the
garment of flesh and move into another realm of intelligence.

Searching for the dead, one must acknowledge, is indeed part of
the traditional Igbo performance at funerals. Usually, it is the peers of the
deceased, or more specifically members of the deceased’s age-group, that lead
the search team to locations such as the marketplace, the village square, or
the stream. These are considered the most likely places where the spirits of
the dead also visit to conduct their business.

The ritual performance of looking for the dead relative or
friend is merely a way of demonstrating to the dead how much they are missed.
Certainly those looking for their deceased relatives in the market place,
chanting “Iwe, Iwe di anyi n’obi,” would break into a run if they should catch
a glimpse of the spiritual or physical forms of those they are searching for
buying and selling.

I should think that it is in our hearts that we have to search
for and talk with our dead relatives and friends, to deal with the
“homelessness” of death, instead of running away from “him” like the old man
who set the palm-wine drunkard on the difficult task of binding and bringing
death to him.

Culturally, not many people would want to discuss their own
impending deaths, or their desire to interact with the dead. We normally
postpone such thoughts, or banish them from our minds entirely. Many of us
believe that it is better for our death to just happen. There is no need to
think about it or prepare for it.

Tell members of your family that you will die next year and some
break into tears, others filled with rage scold you and warn you to stop
thinking such an “evil” thought. Some may also try to exorcise the devil that
is making such “evil” suggestions to you, introducing the power of logos: “I
reject it in Jesus’ name!” Such expressions of anger and fear are perfectly in
line with the discovery by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (in her On Death and Dying)
that individuals facing death (their relatives inclusive) normally exhibit five
phases of reconciliation with their circumstances, in the following order:

(1) The stage of DENIAL and ISOLATION, as demonstrated in the
expression “No, it cannot be true,” or “it cannot be me!” (2) The stage of
ANGER, as manifested in “Why me?” responses; (3) The stage of BARGAINING, in
which we try to see if death could be postponed, at least on the basis of good
behaviour, or for some unfinished business; (4) The stage of DEPRESSION, for
instance for impending losses; and (5) The stage of ACCEPTANCE, the stage of
resignation, often expressed in “I cannot fight it any longer” or when the
dying person calls a friend or relative to whisper, “This body is no longer
mine; I have to go.” The search for a dead friend or peer, as performed in
traditional Igbo funerals, is perhaps a manifestation of that human resistance
to the reality of death and dying. We, as searchers, are angry that such a
death should occur, angry that we should be the ones affected and not other
people.

Along with John Donne the poet we proclaim, “Death, thou shall
die,” as part of the expression of anger and depression. It appears we find it
difficult to reconcile with our reality that we must move on. I suspect that if
I should meet the deceased that I am searching for, he would likely laugh and
point out to me that he is free now, and that the real tragedy is that of my
forgetting that I would, one day, and at any time, continue the journey out of
the flesh.

Death, indeed, is a lonely business. One dies alone, even in the
midst of a multitude.

One goes with nothing, not even one’s skin. One does not even
remember one’s name, I guess. So, that means that one does not even go with
one’s name. Esiaba has just beaten me to it. Someday, it will be my turn and I
will go alone.

Recently
I travelled through a state capital and found in the middle of the
city, a huge wide billboard, which towered high above with the image of
one person sprawled across it. It was the picture of the state governor
so thickly decked in traditional attire, complete with a walking stick.
He looked more like a character out of a Nollywood movie, smiling down
at onlookers in that I have arrived manner of Nigerian big men, with a
bold inscription “Imagine another four years” taking up the remaining
space on the board.

Four years of what I asked myself?

I took a look
around me, at the people who daily walked past this giant billboard,
who without options look up at the smiling face on the billboard as
they walk past, the people whose imaginations the governor is so bent
on tickling.

The people didn’t
seem to be smiling back. Not the little girl of school age with a bowl
of pure water on her head who was timing the flow of traffic in order
to cross over to the other side of the road in good time to appeal to
the people getting off the bus:

Not the young lady
holding out a long strip of yellow, green and blue cards from under an
umbrella few yards away beckoning me to recharge my phone. All I could
see was a struggling young girl trying to pinch out a living, her
beauty concealed by years of sitting out at the mercy of the elements:

Not the lady
traffic warden who was having a tough time directing the traffic. Her
face showed tiredness, her shoes too. Her yellow uniform was now
tending towards pale. She was cursing and showing her five fingers to
the bus drivers who showed her theirs too as they sped away, coughing
out thick black smoke, like chimneys:

Not the two boys,
no more than thirteen who were exchanging punches right under the
billboard of the smiling governor. All that clawing and bickering meant
some issue of survival had led to the fight.

I looked back at the huge billboard and I asked my self again, another four years of what?

Perhaps if the
governor had spent the last four years doing his best to translate the
billions accruing to the state into schools to take the children off
the streets; into jobs that ensured their parents wouldn’t have to send
them out to the streets; into traffic lights to ease the work of the
lady warden; into well tarred roads that wouldn’t create such herd of
noisy smoky cars and impatient uncultured drivers. Perhaps if the
governor had done all this already, the next four years wouldn’t have
been so difficult to imagine.

But he didn’t. He
spends more time in Abuja than in the state capital. He goes off to the
ends of the earth, flying first class with a large delegation, which
includes his girlfriends, chasing what he calls foreign investment.
When he is around, he speeds past in his noisy convoy. When the workers
ask for more pay, he complains about dwindling fortunes and the global
economic melt down.

And while we
seemingly recline and resign to fate, with the opposition joining him
in Government House to drink sparkling wine in fine glasses, he doesn’t
leave us alone in peace. He follows us around, right to the streets to
rob pepper into the festering injury, to mock us and tickle our
imagination, requesting of us the use for his own benefit the very last
article we own, our thought.

“Imagine another four years!” I refuse to imagine sir.

These are the kind
of billboards, such damning symbols of government, erected from our
common wealth that I believe Wole Soyinka once called on us to throw
food morsels at every morning religiously before going out to find a
living. Perhaps it is apt to resound that call today. A call to act out
our denouncement of non performing governments, to voice out our
frustrations which we’ve held up for too long in our hearts, to reject
the perpetuation of our misery, to say no to another four years: to say
enough is enough.

We have today, a
window of opportunity to decide what happens in the next four years.
Maurice Iwu who superintended the last electoral hoax that gave us the
likes of the governor on the billboard has been removed. The electoral
reforms or at least some of what is left of the Uwais panel report
seems to be heading into our law books and most importantly the new
President Goodluck Jonathan has promised on more than one occasion to
organise an election in which votes will count and will be counted. Its
now up to us to take the right decisions the very first of which is to
ensure we are registered to vote. INEC says it’s an ongoing process at
every Local Government office nationwide.

Let’s equip ourselves to rephrase the line on the billboard. Let’s
ask the governor and his like across the country “Imagine life outside
Government House”. Yes we can.

Our former military
President Ibrahim Babangida is one individual about whom it is
difficult to be neutral. His many loyalists say they are willing to
follow him into the pits of hell-fire. His fans are all over the world,
ranging from a wealthy Jewish commodities magnate I met in Antwerp to a
former Guinean minister I met at a conference in Libreville and a
leading Cameroonian banking colleague in Paris, His foes are also
legion. And they swear that the hottest parts of sheol are reserved
precisely for his type. “Even when they cannot get their wives
pregnant, they say it is because of IBB”, he once lamented.

When you meet him
in person you will find him to be disarmingly charming, elegant and
witty. A man of good taste, he is unostentatious and unfailingly warm
and courteous — a good listener. He radiates a self-command and
charisma that one is likely to find only in the truly great. A
Bonaparte in a brown skin is the first impression I had when we first
shook hands. Some of us mourned with him and with Mohammed, Aminu,
Aisha and Halima when the agelessly beautiful Maryam went the way of
all flesh.

Even Babangida’s
worst enemies must get it very clear that he reserves a constitutional
right to aspire to any position in our fledgling democracy. Whether he
has a moral right to do so is another matter. His many critics have
painted him as this monster that wreaked untold havoc by the agency of
a corrupt and murderous military dictatorship. Much has been made about
the ‘missing’ US$12 billion oil windfall. Dele Giwa’s ghost refuses to
go away. There is also the dilemma of June 12. Others have dug up tales
about Bongos Ikwue and military aircraft that went up only to disappear
into the lagoon. A lot of it is hysterical nonsense.

As combative as the
armoured commander that he once was, Maradona has fired back, daring
anyone to produce evidence linking him to stolen funds. He has denied
ever knowing Dele Giwa. As for June 12, he would like to have us
believe he caved in to certain “powers”; powers that must remain
nameless. He insists he is the man of the hour because “the youths”
cannot save Nigeria.

That unfortunate
obiter from the mouth of our self-described ‘evil genius’ has only
succeeded in further fuelling the embers of mass opprobrium. Many say
they will never forgive him for having destroyed their future only to
turn round and mock them as leadership no-hopers.

For sheer political
shrewdness, few can match the wily Old Fox. But in the here and now, I
believe his dharma is to remain an elder statesman and ‘king maker’. At
three score and ten, he’s had his innings, as the cricket-loving
English would say. He should spend his time mentoring those ‘incapable’
young men that he has unwittingly insulted with such uncharacteristic
indiscretion. Besides, he has enough stocked up in his library to keep
anyone with a minimum of curiosity busy. He still owes us a book of
memoirs. And there are the grand children to dote over and the pupils
from the El-Amin Schools left behind by the immortal Maryam Babangida.
From time to time, government may have cause to use his talents on some
intractable African bushfires as it did not long ago in Guinea-Conakry.

From where I stand,
I see nothing new coming from the man once described as “the Prince of
the Niger”. Almost every misfortune that haunts our generation began
from his time: state-sponsored assassination; oil bunkering; armed
robbery; cultism; the collapse of NEPA; the culture of impunity;
disappearance of the railways; the grounding of Nigeria Airways;
devaluation of the naira; domestication of corruption; privatisation of
government; destruction of the universities; and the wholesale
humiliation of a gifted people.

If, in the vigour
of youth, Babangida led us down the gadarene slopes of collective
ruination, I do not see how, in old age, he can lead us back to glory.
There are many who covet his wealth and would never tell him these home
truths. He may not be the monster that he has been made out to be, but
I am not convinced he can muster the moral and intellectual wherewithal
to lead the New Nigeria of our dreams; a country destined to take its
rightful place among the leading nations of the twenty-first century.

The German-Jewish
literary critic Walter Benjamin, in his ninth thesis on the philosophy
of history, depicts the Angel of History as having turned his face
towards the past: “Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one
single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of
his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole
what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has
got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer
close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which
his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.”

The Babangida years began the process that hurled us from the
heights of world-historic ambition to the quagmire of an irresponsible,
beggarly fourth-world nation. He cannot give what he does not have.

Is it something
deeply rooted in our DNA or is it something learned: this ability we
have to be aggressive about the most mundane of things but docile about
very important things? When a driver overtakes us on the road in a
manner we consider improper, or someone gives us a look we don’t like
or understand, or speaks to us in a manner we consider rude, the
average Nigerian will aggressively confront the behaviour he has
identified as unacceptable. Brawls on the streets and markets are
common place, as is the parlance, ‘do you know who I am’ once the
gloves are off.

Compare this to our
attitude when it comes to holding our leaders to account and demanding
good governance. On that score we are fast earning the reputation as
the most docile people on earth. We seem to have lost not only our
ability to feel outrage at the most outlandish things, but also the
stomach to speak out and if necessary, protest against these things.

In Thailand, the
Red Shirts, the name given to the anti-government United Front for
Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) have been demonstrating for over a
month now. Their aim is to force the immediate dissolution of the Thai
government. Mostly poor and rural, the protestors are exerting a huge
price on the Thai economy as they have invaded business districts and
are doing all they can to make the country ungovernable. The numbers of
these protestors have been estimated at about 90,000 people. Try and
imagine this, a crowd of that magnitude who feel so strongly about
their country and the political process that for a month they have been
taking to the streets to show their displeasure.

What is impressive
about what is happening in Thailand has nothing to do with the
rightness or wrongness of the course the Red Shirts are fighting for.
The willingness though, to be mobilised, to be galvanised in such
numbers is striking. It is a clear indication of deep engagement of a
people with the destiny of their country and preparedness to influence
the process of governance in spite of the sacrifices this entails.

It is passion like this that builds great nations.

In Iran last year,
a similar spirit was on display. The country went to the polls in
unprecedented numbers. When the result of the elections was released,
supporters of the opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi believed a
fraud had been perpetuated and despite the obvious risk in publicly
protesting, they refused to slink away quietly to mourn and lament
their loss in their homes.

Instead they took
to the streets, in their thousands. They were tear gassed, bludgeoned
by police batons and some 72 people were killed, but still they kept
coming out, to protect their votes, to fight for a democratic society,
to help build a country they can all be proud of. When they held a
candle light vigil in Tehran to mourn those killed in the protest, they
numbered 100,000 strong.

We have had our
share of street protests in Nigeria in the last few months. The last
one was two weeks ago when Nigerian youths decide to march under the
banner of ‘Enough is enough’ as a way of insisting on electoral reforms.

Despite the
publicity that preceded the protest, and the organisers’ utilisation of
social media websites like Facebook and Twitter to call people out,
only 1,000 people showed up for the match. Another dismal turnout was
recorded at the Save Nigeria demonstration in Abuja and Lagos. Despite
the presence of notable personalities like Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka,
the people that showed up numbered only 5,000.

When exactly did
the culture of mass protest die in Nigeria? As an undergraduate student
demonstrations were a regular part of my university life. We believed
in our right to protest against the ills in our society. Led by an
active union at the local and national level, the street was our arena
to air our grievances against bad governance. We became experts not
just at soaking hankies and towels in water to protect our mouths and
noses against noxious tear gas that was a staple at these protests, but
also in guerrilla tactics.

Many of us were
excellent swingers and would throw stones and other missiles at the
wall of faceless and well equipped mobile policemen who were always
sent to stamp out our protests forcefully. Once we got our shot, we
would sprint away from the swinging batons to get temporary relief from
tear gas before returning to try and once again fight for our right to
peaceful protest against a tyrannical government.

This was the era of
military rule where dissent was not only not tolerated, but sometimes
met with death by bullets. It didn’t stop us though; we protested
whenever we felt there was a need. In fact, there was something almost
exhilarating about thumbing our noses at dictators who could only stay
in power because they had guns.

As we prepare for election in 2011, the question has to be asked,
are we prepared to put our necks on the line to protect the integrity
of the electoral process? Unless and until a substantial number of
Nigerians answer in the affirmative, changes that are necessary for the
advancement of this society will continue to elude us.

When Abiodun
Kumuyi, wife of the General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Christian
Ministry passed on April 11 2009, very few sensed that she had
unobtrusively left behind lofty precepts far beyond the precincts of
church business. Fewer still were aware that although these ideas were
bred in a humble religious cradle they represented an answer to the
suffocating sophistication of a secular man.

Apart from her
husband Pastor W.F. Kumuyi, their two children Jerry and John along
with a cluster of brethren who worked with Biodun or watched her at
close quarters there was probably no other person (or group) in the
church that had an inkling of the great work she was doing as she paced
the grounds of Deeper Life Bible Church, Gbagada, Deeper Life Christian
Centre, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and International Bible Training
Centre, Ayobo, and as she travelled worldwide with her spouse.

The majority of
Deeper Life Church members and of the larger world may be forgiven if
we did not discern her contribution in her lifetime.

This world of
decadent values is given to recognising only the voluble and
voluminous. Our age contemns those who shroud what they do in
simplicity and meekness. Society approves the showy and upbraids the
lowly. It enlists a juggernaut to crush those who stand for
self-effacement.

But to be sure
Sister Biodun Kumuyi did not seek man’s approbation. There’s no record
she did, nor is there any that she lamented the lack of social
recognition. She couldn’t have, otherwise we would charge her with
being a closet Pharisee.

Starting with her
involvement with the Christian Women Mirror Magazine, Mummy (as she was
fondly called by the church folk) assembled a team of keen
professionals who of course were in the first instance genuine
believers. They shared her vision of delivering a monthly journal that
would cater for the interest of the women in the church.

We must quickly
address a point here to draw an enduring bestowal in this field.
Although the magazine started in October 1992 as a forum for the
sermons of the pastor, Biodun moved beyond that vision to accommodate
other features needed to build a woman into an all-round Christian
homemaker. Under her supervision as she heeded the plan of God for the
magazine, the publication became a quiet weapon of evangelism.

By the time Biodun died last year Christian Women Mirror had become a must-have in almost every Christian home!

Although it’s a
Deeper Life Christian Ministry effort, it has ceased to be a
denominational journal. The reason is because its contents are
Catholic, rooting fundamental Biblical teachings into everyday
practical use for the woman, her home, church and society.

Absolute credit for
this success must of course be given to God. But He used Biodun Kumuyi
as a vessel. He considered her a worthy of the vision. It was a high
calling which would have instilled in others a false sense of
self-esteem and achievement. Others would have flaunted the success as
a personal one. The manifestation of this elsewhere would be the ornate
display of the photograph of the woman behind the pastor. But Biodun,
out of deference to what the Bible teaches about the place of woman in
church, operated silently behind the scenes.

This style in no
way reduced her impact or influence. It rather was responsible for the
giant strides of her work, both in church, among the women and in the
society. It couldn’t have been otherwise.

Her modus operandi had divine approval!

Her work in the
Women Ministry of the Church was no less phenomenal. She was reputed to
have designed, planned and executed enriching programmes for women. For
this class of citizens who the society and government had neglected or
marginalised, the programmes offered hope and a sense of worth and
belonging.

Countless testimonies have streamed in since the woman’s death of how she demonstrated a squared understanding of the Bible.

In her usual quiet
and unassuming way, she was able to reach out to a many widows and
trained large numbers of fatherless children. She started women in
small-scale business through a scheme whereby they took loans and paid
back as their businesses grew. They didn’t pay any interest and for
some she wrote off their loans. Those who were genuinely struggling
with financial problems had a listening ear with her.

It is obvious that
death can’t destroy this noble pitch of servant hood, discipline,
humility and submissiveness wrought in a churchyard.

In turn these
affirmations of Sister Biodun’s work represent a stinging vote of
censure on our governments and institutions whose enormous resources,
aren’t deployed to the service of the common man, but rather are
ploughed into the coffers and interests of a selfish thieving class.

Ojewale, a Media Executive lives in Onibukun, Ota, Ogun State.