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Chief Adetunji Ibraheem Odediji is a community leader and Agbaakin of Ila-Orangun, Osun State. He is a staff of Osun State College of Education, Ila-Orangun, where he works in the Bursary Department. His wife, Alhaja Shakirat, is an accountant with Ila Local Government Council. The couple has been married for 38 years.
In this interview with LATEEF DADA, the Odedijis assert that “couples should know that marriage is an institution where you don’t graduate. When you graduate, it means you are no longer there.
How long has your union lasted till date?
Chief Adetunji: To be precise, it started in 1985. So it is 38 years now that we started.
Can you remember the particular place you first saw her?
Chief Adetunji It is a long story. My mum usually sold moinmoin and my wife’s mother was selling pepper, onions and other ingredients for the moinmoin. My wife happened to be a customer of my mother’s because she usually sold pepper to her mother. She was in secondary school while I was at Ibadan Polytechnic. Anytime I came home from school and saw her in my mother’s shop, I usually called her my wife jokingly. She was always feeling too shy. Anytime she was bringing ingredients for my mother, she would turn back once she saw me. What I want to bring out is that anything that God has planned, nobody can change it. Whenever she was coming at times, she would pack small ones inside a bag for my mother. I later discovered that she told her mother that she had a customer that usually bought things from her very well and that prompted her mother to be packaging the small ones for her sometimes.
Later on, I went back to school. Some years after, I came to Ila and I concluded that this lady was ripe enough to ask out. I recollect that the day I went for my matriculation in the polytechnic, I have a younger brother who was her classmate, they came to my matriculation that time and all of us took pictures together. After that, I came to Ila and I said ‘Let us make this thing true.’ That is how it started.
How did you feel on that day he approached you?
Alhaja Shakirat: I feel somehow when he said it. Very shy. I did not accept it on that day. But later, I succumbed and accepted that it is the will of God.
When you told your parents, what was their reaction?
Alhaja Shakirat: He was roaming about our house for a long time, hiding beside the fence. That was the usual practice at that time. You could not go in directly. My parents suspected that a man was moving around our house. When I told my parents, they said their house is a good house and his parents are also good. So my parents agreed with me to marry him.
Why did parents usually consider the background of a suitor during your time?
Chief Adetunji: Yes, it is very important. You can marry a bad wife, but you cannot afford to have bad in-laws. If the family of one’s wife is very good, if the woman you want to marry is not good, they would teach her how to behave and they won’t support her if she misbehaves. Also, it is our culture in Yorubaland to look at the parents’ background. For example, there are some homes in which they don’t live long. That is one of those good things that we are no longer doing that is causing divorce here and there.
In Islam, we are asked to consider four things. Family background is part of it and the most important among the four is religion. I thank God that I went to a good family to marry my wife. My parents supported me immediately after I mentioned their family. They said her mother lived in our house and her mother’s sister was married to our family. They knew them very well. Our compound is not far from each other.
What attracted you to him? Is it money?
Alhaja Shakirat: There’s no money. He’s a good person and he has religion. People knew him as a good person.
How has God blessed the marriage?
Chief Adetunji: What I can say is that Allah has blessed this marriage. I furthered my education after our marriage and she also did. When we married, I didn’t have a job; it was shortly after our marriage that I got a job. She was selling ingredients because of the knowledge she gained from her mother in buying and selling. She later went to school and she got a job. She is now an accountant at the local government. We were blessed with children and they have all graduated, except the baby of the house. And they are doing well.
How did you cope with house chores combined with work and children?
Alhaja Shakirat: God did not give me any problems. If you have contentment and patience, coping in the husband’s house is not difficult. When the children came, we were coping gently. I didn’t have a problem combining the tasks.
How do you manage your wife’s family?
Chief Adetunji: We don’t take things difficult. She has a sister. When she told her that she wanted to marry me, her sister said, is that not Brother Emperor? That was my alias. So, we are like relatives. Her parents didn’t give me a problem at all. Even during our wedding, they said we should bring whatever we had. It is only the Sadaki (wife’s gift) that they insisted that I should not skip. I didn’t experience any difficulty. There was an intimate friend who wanted to block her from marrying me, but she didn’t listen to him. That was the only thing that would have been a hindrance.
Madam, you knew that a man did not have a job, no house, and no car at the time. Yet he wanted to marry you. Were you scared?
Alhaja Shakirat: He was living in his family house which his father built. He lived there. We did our wedding in their family house and we were living comfortably there. His mother was so caring. She took me as her daughter. What made me accept to marry him then was that it’s God that does all things. When someone already has the mindset to do certain things, table it before God and he will do it. I told God that our future will be better so I waited for this time and everything is going on smoothly.
How did you live with your husband’s family?
Alhaja Shakirat: The background I came from is a big family where I lived. I didn’t have a problem living with my husband’s family. At least I lived with them for 15 years with no issues. I never had any quarrels or disagreements with my mother-in-law. So also my father-in-law. And we lived in the same house. Nobody ever settled any matter for us because I took both of them as my father and mother. They took me as their daughter.
How has the union been?
Chief Adetunji: My wife is a calm woman, so she does not make the journey look rough for me. You know when you are growing, you hardly forget the youthful age. I would go out between 7:30 and 8:00pm till the late hours. I usually went to parties. She would tell me not to stay too long outside. That was how we still live together till now. But we thank God today, 38 years of marriage. Nobody has ever settled any dispute for us, because she already knows who I am, and when I’m angry. I know when she’s angry too. So nobody has ever for once settled a fight, not even my mother or her mother, not even friends for 38 years.
What do you think causes divorce nowadays?
Alhaja Shakirat: Couples no longer have patience, endurance and commitment. And there are some women, if God blesses them a little more than their husband, they become proud. She won’t behave very well to her husband again. If it is a man that knows that his wife does not have a job, he begins to carry ladies around. But a woman that has endurance will have peace over her children and there will not be issues and problems. Particularly if they have religion, things will be well for them.
Chief Adetunji: To me the reason for divorce this day is that firstly, couples don’t have the fear of God. Anybody that does not have the fear of God, there’s nothing you will give them that will make any sense to them – both male and female. The person you bought a car for will not be happy. Instead, she will insult you that her friend’s husband bought a jeep for her. Secondly, we call something submissiveness. When a lady cannot submit to her husband, it’s an issue. Maybe she came from a rich family, she will not respect her husband. So if there is no respect between them, the home will surely break. The woman must submit to the husband.
Our religion says that a woman should always submit to her husband. No man will want a woman to disrespect him. Even if it’s the woman that is putting food on the table, it will get to a stage that the husband will tell her to get out with her wealth if there is no respect. Another thing is where they both met. Couples that met at a dancing stage will not settle down at home.
The family background of both the husband and the wife is also important. A person that you went to her house and her mother was not in her father’s house because the house is already broken. One has to be careful if you discover that the father and mother are not living together. You must rethink before marrying such a woman.
Pride or ego is also causing divorce. Imagine a woman telling her husband that she has a higher certificate than him.
Madam, you had been making money before your husband graduated. How did you support him?
Alhaja Shakirat: It is not when you have money that you will do certain things. The period you were saying, it is not as if I had huge money. I was only helping my mother to sell pepper but when it got to a stage, I asked my mother to stop the sales of pepper because she was becoming old. Then I took over her business. Then it was my gain that we would all manage. That made us live in love.
What advice could you give couples?
Chief Adetunji: My first advice to them is to always have the fear of God. Secondly, there’s no how husband and wife will live together and not have disagreements. It is just for them to both endure together and live in peace, love, and commitment. Women were said to be created from a man. So you should not expect perfection from them. Patience is the key. Your wife is selling goods and you met a man in her shop. You don’t just start fighting, especially when she is selling what men and women are buying. The secret is that you must be blind to some things. So, I advise couples to have the fear of God. Men should also avoid looking at beauty only. The wife must be submissive and the husband must be blind. I still play a fatherly role to some younger sisters of my wife, even to those that are older than me among her sisters. They will call me and ask for guidance on some matters.
Finally, couples should know that marriage is an institution from where you don’t graduate. When you graduate, it means you are no longer there. It is only death that should separate husband and wife.
Alhaja Shakirat: We must not be covetous. Where God says you will get to, you will surely get there. If you don’t have money today you will have tomorrow. Our mothers married our fathers who were just farmers. They had patience and their children became somebody in life. So we must be contented with what we have and couples should wait on God for the right time because God’s promises will never fail.
Also, they should not rush beyond their time because most of the youth out there today are rushing to get things before their time. A married woman who thinks what her husband is giving her is small should be patient. What your husband gave you should be okay for you. Women should stop pushing their husbands to do what will ruin their lives. Some women have been used for rituals. They can’t be contented with what their husband gave them. Couples should have religion and believe that good times will come if they are prayerful.
