Family & LegacyFamily&Legacy

In early 1996 myself and a group of friends, Onitsha youths, decided to form an Onitsha youth association. We succeeded in forming it, and we were having several meetings. One of the things we decided to do for the end of that year was to have a December party.

At this time I had also started writing ICAN. At the party everywhere was filled up, and I was washing plates, because we were serving food and the plates were no longer available and nobody was ready to wash. So I took the plates and I was washing them.

While I was washing, two men came up to me. One was somebody I knew, also part of the Onitsha youth setup, Dubem Agbakoba; we were family friends too. He came up to me with his friend. This his friend is George Nwokedi, but I didn't know his name at that time. He introduced himself. He asked me what I was doing. I said I was washing plates, we needed to make sure people have plates to eat.

After some time they came back to ask whether I would join them, because they were going for another engagement. I said no, because I needed to be at PI by eight o'clock the following morning. He asked whether they could come and see me in school. I said no, I wouldn't want disturbance in school. I was a triangular student then: from house to library to PI.

But of course, Dubem knew my house. Three weeks later they came to the house, they came visiting. And that was how the friendship started.

From time to time he would buy provisions for me. But truly, because of the intensity of the preparation for ICAN, and knowing the background I was coming from, I didn't have much time.

Sometime in 1997 he asked if I could spare time to visit his dad, because his dad was not feeling well. For some reason he wanted me to meet him. So I went, I met the dad. And it turned out that his dad knew my dad. They were friends. Nothing had been said at this time. I just spent some time with him. And a month or two after that, his father passed on.

After the burial he invited me to their family house in Ajegunle. He had one room there; it was his father's house. My husband cooks very well, and that first day he made okra soup, and for the first time I ate okra soup with uziza leaf. It was fantastic. After I finished eating I just slept. I was coming from school, from PI, mentally drained and tired, and with the delicious okra soup I just went to sleep. Then I woke up and we went home.

That is how we were going until September 1998, when they had his father's first memorial service and he invited me, so I travelled down. It was there, after the memorial service, that we talked, and the next thing, we started planning for the traditional marriage. We had our traditional marriage in December 1998.

One thing I wish to note is that I didn't have a job then. I was still a student. He was very plain and clear with me: he was working as an admin officer at Ikoyi Club, and his salary was five thousand naira. But he loved bikes, and he had a power bike, and he rode it from Ajegunle proudly to Ikoyi where he was working. I was really fascinated by that power bike.

Shortly after the burial he got a job with Boeing. I remember the two of us studied for the interview. I posed as the interviewer, and I would be asking him questions and he would be answering. He went for that interview and, to the glory of God, he got the job. He moved from Lagos to Bonny Island, and he was being paid good money, and before we knew it he bought his first car, a Mercedes 200.

I am proud to say that I drove that Mercedes 200 in the Federal Mortgage Bank in 2007, when I joined the bank. A couple of people said to me, “Ah, madam, you still dey drive Mercedes 200?” And I would say, yes, that is my husband's vintage car, that was the first car he bought. All of you borrow money to buy car, and you are coming to tell me am I still driving Mercedes 200.

He didn't have a good job at the time. I didn't even have a job. But somehow I knew that we were going to be okay. It wasn't so easy: from Bonny he moved to Abuja and I was still in Lagos, so we were shuttling between Abuja and Lagos. But here we are today.

Anything I wanted to do, Mr Nwokedi gave me his maximum support. My career, my charity work. I know that most of the time it wasn't comfortable for him. There was a time we had over nine people living in the house, and we don't even have connection with them. I could see him struggling to understand it, but he never complained.

I jokingly always say that if I had the opportunity to marry again, I would marry into the Nwokedi family. I had fantastic sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, and above all my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law is the only person I will eat food from the same plate with. Growing up, everybody had their own plate, cup and spoon; you wash it, you go and keep it. But my mother-in-law, I eat from the same plate. I sleep on the same bed with her.