By Olukorede Yishau
I remember it as if it was yesterday but it is over a decade already. Star writer and former Associate Editor with The Nation, Taiwo Ogundipe, wrote this beautiful piece about how you and Pastor Taiwo Odukoya met in London where you were a music director.
The story detailed how Pastor Taiwo was able to keep the relationship secret until it was time for the wedding ceremony. Pastor Taiwo, as he is fondly called, had lost his first wife, Pastor Bimbo, in the 2005 Sosoliso plane crash. He married you four years after.
Years after your wedding, I moved to Ilupeju and became a passive member of the Fountain of Life Church and worshipped there almost every Sunday. I saw you on many Sundays in the last three years and, in the last two years, nothing told me you were battling cancer and would lose the fight. All I saw was a woman who loved God and was not shy of singing it out to the Heavens. The few times you were on the pulpit you gave a good account of yourself.
I remember your message in which you spoke about the day you admitted to your kids that you were having sex. Generally, you showed yourself as God’s ambassador. Then came Tuesday, your darling husband announced that you had died. It was a rude shock to me and I suspect to millions of others.
Pastor Taiwo, on his verified Instagram page, said: “She battled cancer for the better part of two years, she stood on the Word of God, and she fought. She gave me 11 beautiful years of marriage and two wonderful boys, who I know will be very significant in life. I loved her with all my heart, but who am I to fight with the will of God.
“The truth is, at one point in our lives, we all will have to say goodbye. So for now, till we meet again in glory, Goodbye Nomthi,” Pastor Odukoya wrote.
In your eventful life, you were married for 11 years, served as an Associate Senior Pastor at Fountain of Life Church and was Founder and Chairperson of Fountain Initiative for Social Development.
You were also Chairman of Funda Wazi Foundation, a non-profit organisation committed to providing child-friendly resources and trainings to equip children and adults to ensuring children’s safety and well-being.
You authored several children books such as, “No! Don’t Touch Me There”, “A Bully Is Not A Hero”, “Help They Are Fighting Again”, “Boys and Girls Are Different But Equal”.
Now you belong to the ages having joined the ever growing list of beautiful souls cut short by cancer.
Greet our Sound Sultan, our one and only Naija Ninja, the Jagbajantis exponent— Olanrewaju Fasasi, who sang with his soul and heart. Cancer attacked him through his throat, the most important tool with which he sang and made us dance and listen with rapt attention.
Say hello to Gani Fawehinmi who cancer killed on September 5, 2009, because it destroyed his lungs.
Hug Mrs Funmi Olayinka, who was Ekiti State Deputy Governor during Governor Kayode Fayemi’s first term. Her beauty and brain did not let cancer show mercy. Cancer made her go through the torture that is chemotherapy and blackened her glowing skin and made her hair fall.
Say ranka dede to former President Umaru Yar’Adua who cancer made redundant for months before it eventually took him away in May 2010. His long absence from power gave us the doctrine of necessity and made Dr. Goodluck Jonathan acting President.
Pastor Nomthi, extend our greetings to Second Republic Senate Leader, Dr. Olusola Saraki, who struggled with cancer before it made him breathe his last on November 14, 2012.
Do not forget to greet the beauty who was ex-First Lady Maryam Babangida, wife of former military President Ibrahim Babangida, who cancer killed on December 27, 2009. It did not matter to cancer that she empowered women with the Better Life Programme for Rural Women which launched women’s centres, cottage industries, many co-operatives, farms and gardens, shops and markets, and social welfare programmes.
Like you, can we ever forget that cancer also robbed us of one of the best voices and faces on television? For two years it pushed ace broadcaster, Yinka Craig, up and down until it concluded its grim assignment on September 23, 2008, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, United States of America. Another television guru, Yusuf Jibo, a former Zonal Director of the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA), also fell after cancer froze his colon. Greet him for us.
And don’t forget our great crooner Sunny Okosun who had to stop the music on May 24, 2008, at 61, in the United States. No thanks to cancer, which also showed the Adams Oshiomhole’s family its scary sight when it took away his wife, Clara, on December 8, 2010. Pastor Nomthi, please greet Clara for us.
Last but not the least, greet Apple founder Steve Jobs. Even with his money, none of his doctors knew that his body was already full of cancer cells way before he was diagnosed in October 2003. In April 2008, he underwent a liver transplant in his bid to beat cancer, but by July 2011, it had spread throughout his body reaching up to his bones and ended it all for him in October 2011. He was just 56.
My final take: Pastor Nomthi’s death is another reminder that death is the only thing we all will share. We’ll not all be rich, we’ll not all have children, we’ll not all have houses, we’ll not all do so many other things but we will all die when our time comes. Take life simple.
• Yishau is a newspaper columnist and author of ‘In The Name of Our Father’and’Vaults of Secrets’.