Her StoryHerStory

We were not from an affluent home. When my mother was pregnant with me, my father would go to the motor parks to see if he could carry load, so that he could earn something. And somehow he knew within him that she was going to go into labour that day.

From morning till evening, until about half past six, he did not get a single load to carry. It meant going home empty-handed. Then, just as he was about to leave the park, traders arrived with their goods, going back to their place. He got that job, finished it, and earned a good sum of money.

On his way home he saw one big fowl going at a very reasonable price. All God's providence. He bought it out of what he had earned that evening. And when he got home they told him my mother had just been rushed to the hospital.

He left everything and ran. He arrived about the time she delivered, and asked them what she had. They said: a girl. My father did not stop to think about it. He said, “Her name is Obiageli. Indeed, she is one that has come to eat and enjoy.”

Part of my chores was to cook, even as a child, and to stay close to my mother. On her last pregnancy she had prepared to make bitter leaf, put everything together, and then labour started. They had to rush her out.

Myself and two of my siblings were just huddled around the fire, thinking what to do. For some reason I took it up. I must have been seven going on eight. I made the bitter leaf.

Your guess is as good as mine. It was indeed really bitter, because I do not think my mother had finished washing the bitterness out of the leaf, and I just packed everything in there with all the stuff. We ate it anyway, bitterness and all, and we were happy that I had been able to put up something.

When my father came back he did not scold me. He praised me. He was more impressed that I could take up the responsibility at all. And that was an eye-opener for me: commend every effort a child puts in, no matter how it turns out. It is one of the things I have tried to keep for the people I mentor. As long as somebody has put in the effort, it may not turn out well, but commend the person. That goes a long way.

I used to talk very late into the night with my father. He told me so many things, spiritual things, traditional things, the reasons why he did not do certain things. Resources may not have been there, but the values were, and the virtues, and the experience he made sure I got to know.

My father died in 1990. There is no day that I do not make reference to him. Everything I learned, even as a woman, my cycle, all of that; I learned from my father.

He wanted a boy. Here was I, a girl, so he put in everything and trained me like one. He kept telling me the responsibility of the house was on me, even though I had two half-brothers. The worst thing he could say to me was that he was disappointed in me. It was as good as flogging me.

I was very outspoken as a child, because of the relationship with my father and the things he taught me even before I started school. He taught me to speak up, to ask questions. He told me the most anybody can do is laugh at you, and half of the people there may not even know what they are laughing at.

I was a class prefect several times. I took part in everything, especially anything to do with dance and choir. My mother was a dancer and she sang; my father danced and sang too, and he was a wrestler. He would draw a circle and tell his opponent, “I am going to bring you down in this circle.” He always did.

In primary four or five I led the choir group. We went for a competition; I think it was the first time my school won a singing competition. The song was in Igbo.

The school instituted a competition for the valedictory speech, and asked students to put in their write-ups. I spent several nights writing and composing that speech. Eventually I won the competition.

On the day of the event they asked us to come in the morning for rehearsal, then go back and return in the afternoon. My father did not have a car, so I walked the distance from my house to the school. When I read the speech at the rehearsal, the English teacher said my voice was flat, that the second person would read my speech, but that she would mention my name.

I left that place very sad in my spirit, and cried all the way home. When I told my father, my father said: that cannot happen. Either they give me my paper to read, or they take the next person's paper, or the event will not hold.

Trust my father. We dressed up and marched back to the school. My father demanded to see the headmistress. After he narrated everything, the headmistress said she was not aware. She called for the first, second and third papers. She read them, and she picked mine. She told my father not to worry; I would stand on that podium and read my valedictory speech. That was how it was resolved.

I carried my activities over from primary school. I was in the debating society, the writing society, the mathematics society, the drama society, the girl guides. In JS2 I was made a library prefect, which was unprecedented for a junior student at that time. I loved reading, so it gave me the opportunity to read more, but most importantly I enjoyed senior privileges as a junior.

I was always being drafted into committees made up of school management, teachers and students. Almost more than five committees. So I started working in committees far back in secondary school.

My father never missed a visiting day. Every visiting day was a fanfare. He would come with all manner of food. I loved the small fresh fish they fry, so my mother would fry it and fill a big container, the fish would last me until the next visiting day. My corner, during and after visiting, was for everyone. My mother never cooked for me alone. When my own children entered secondary school it was the same, and I took it further: for the children whose parents were not in Abuja, we always made provision for them and for their friends.

There was a student who lived very close to my house, so if I needed anything I would write a letter to my father through her. My father would provide what I asked for, but he would read the letter, correct it, and ask me to rewrite it. Every comma, every full stop. If I missed one he would circle it and send it back. For one letter we could go back and forth three or four times until I got it right.

One of the things my father taught me was that anything you sign tells the next person your kind of personality and who you are. So you must be careful. You must check what it is you are signing.

Growing up I wanted to be a lawyer. My father was always drumming it into me to do medicine, but when I went to the hospital and they brought out the needles and the blood, I was always put off. Even as a child I knew I was never going to make it as a doctor. To satisfy my father I did all the sciences, with a combination such that I could swing either way.

I wanted to read law because I was fascinated by justice, fairness and the power of knowledge, which again came from the relationship I had with my father. At an early age I had a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, as instilled by him. He encouraged me to express my views, to be outspoken, to defend my belief. Sometimes he would take a position deliberately, just to see how I was going to defend myself.

I did that a lot with my colleagues too. I would throw something out to them to see how they would defend themselves, and I would watch them struggle. After a while I would say, calm down; I am trying to see how you can defend yourself. That is how I taught most of them to face external examiners and auditors.

So I saw law not necessarily as a profession, but as a tool for advocacy, a tool for empowerment, a tool to serve society. It was driven by personal ambition and by a desire to make a meaningful difference in people's lives. I also had an uncle who was a lawyer and a professor, so all of that played in my head.

But it wasn't to be. Perhaps, who knows, now that I am retired, I could go back to reading law again. I don't know.