By Eferovo Igho
Mama Christiana TitiJesu Tigari Igho was born, 87 years ago, to grand Pa Kpeji Vuakpor of Avwefedjaye Family of Egbo-Uhurie in Urhobo Land and grand Ma Mugini Kpeji (nee Adoghor, Eziakpor family of Otor-Iyede in Isoko Land).
One of many children of a polygamous home, Mama was sandwiched maternally between two siblings: Lady Kpeji, her elder sister and David Gbalagba Kpeji, her younger brother.
FATHER, UNCLE AND CHILDHOOD PIETY
It must be said that Mama’s father gave himself to serving strange gods. Living a wealthy man with kingly lifestyle and actually holding near kingly status with near kingly approval and recognition, it was no surprise that he intimately related with kings, emirs and the very notables far and near. That his two daughters, Lady and Koko, were respectively married to Olu Erejuwa II, the Olu of Warri (1951-64 and 1966-87) and Sam Warri Esi of Igbudu-Warri explains it well or is a testament to that, even though it might be desired he used that rare position and platform to help settle the lingering Urhobo/Itsekiri’s Warri problem once and for all.
This was a man you would say, in his days, was stinking rich. Of course, he had one of the first storey buildings and one of the first motor cars in Urhobo land. Some say he rode on chariot too. For the benefit of doubt, this is the Kpeji of that proverbial saying: wo vwe ‘rho ghanghanghan kire achichan Kpeji’. For the uninformed it used to be jocularly used thus in most of Urhobo land on people with very big ears, ‘your ears are standing humongously large like Kpeji’s umbrella’. In the absence of a king in Jeremi land in those days he sat as king, if you will: but without The True God.
Contrariwise, Mama father’s brother, Muotu Kpeji, was not just only a devout Christian, but the one who brought the Anglican Church to Egbo-Uhurie and cared little or nothing about worldly affluence. Thank God, Mama chose the God and ways of Muotu, and that very early, though living with her father.
Her reminiscence of Muotu are ever sweet and resounding to the ear: a pious, celibate, unassuming and wholly dedicated man of God. So resonating, you always wished you saw or met such a man yourself. Though Mama never stayed with him, she apparently tapped much from this saint of God. We should say in passing that after Grand Uncle Muotu exited here to Heaven, men like Grand Pa Lafua took over the headship of the Anglican Church Egbo-Uhurie.
Noted for piety at school, home and wider community growing up, Mama represented the ideal girl any parent should desire. And because, too, she also feared the cane so much, she ensured she did nothing at school that attracts that. And that became a plus for her in character moulding.
Her commitment to and position with God as a youth may perhaps be well explained in the ‘paybacks’ she had from God, and of these reaped fruits we may now speak:
OUTSTANDING CHILDHOOD MIRACLES
- Refusing to take medication and eventually left almost dead in her childhood days, Jesus Christ physically visited her on her sickbed taking away the then colonial time’s deadly and without-cure smallpox disease. Christ visited her! Some who berated her for not taking medication knew some shame while others thought highly of her God.
- Still on the miraculous at childhood: Mama, as she normally did, had gone to spend the holiday at Warri with Baseki Owivri, her elder cousin. This particular holiday trip was different. Yes, she was rescued, actually found, unscathed in a night conflagration that brought down to whole ashes a building she was sleeping in, EXCEPT HERSELF AND HER BED.
So astounding a miracle, the city of Warri went agog in the morning, carried her on shoulders jubilating and dancing to and fro half breadth of then Old Warri City – we mean an unthinkable crowd built up by neighbours, joined by passers-by and workers going to work early that morning dancing from what is today Warri/Ogbijo Markets area to Merogun Water-Side and back to point of departure.
Uncle Baseki, a UAC upward mobile staff at the time, came back from a trip to know of this marvellous deliverance, and of course, he was handed akimbo, then lavish nods, beams and smiles followed, and lastly: full-blown gratitude to God too. By the way, Baseki is the father of Stella Owivri, Miss Nigeria 1970.
- Then again, like the smart and agile young girl that she was, Mama went for some owhe (bush mango), climbed the tree to some high altitude. Plucking one owhe after the other she misstepped, and suddenly came tumbling down, one tree branch after the other changing her course of descent, and by the time she got to earth she was gone, picked up dead. Really? Well, her God did it again!
- Indeed, the list of Mama’s miraculous deliverances counting into marriage runs ad infinitum
CHILD PRODIGY AND SHATTERED DREAMS
At the St. Mark Primary School, Egbo-Uhurie which was then also a Standard School where other children from other primary schools in parts of Urhobo Land come to finish up, Mama always took first in examinations. But this attracted beatings sometimes from her male classmates.
And because her performances were always so startling, they also attracted a rare visit from the Western Region’s Education Ministry team in Ibadan that came to see this child of educational marvel at Egbo-Uhurie; finding Mama, took down notes to work with, and headed back to Ibadan!
But not too long Mama lost her father, Kpeji. With that a great educational dream of becoming for instance one of the first lady Professors or Permanent Secretaries in the then Western Region or Mid-Western Region was shattered. That was because there was no one to properly coordinate Grand Pa’s wealth to advantage or to pursue a scholarship scheme for this bright young girl in her teens.
Well too, those Mama’s father left behind fell to the ‘why train the girl child’ syndrome, a syndrome which badly ate into the fabrics of pre-colonial times and which explains also why Mama was almost always the only girl child in each of her class all through her school years. Of course, that made her always-first-in-class feat even more startling.
The account of Mama’s childhood highly impressive academic feat her husband, Viemudu Igho, her elder brother, Thompson Kpeji and her two elder cousins Baseki Owivri and David Owivri were wont to tell. Of course, that should not be a surprising thing given the relationship. But it is another matter when you hear Mama’s classmates corroborating the same.
Virtually all her classmates Mama’s children met over the years, be it David Mafuvbe Siakpere of Egbo-Uhurie who became an educationist, Ogbodogbo of Ekakpamre and renown Ughelli Medical Drug dealer, Kutzy Oghenekaro of Owhrode and an Oil Industry Worker or Gedegbe of Orhuwhorun, the recurring theme you hear from them is: ‘Ah, dem no de take first from her ooo’. Some said it with depressing pity, knowing how she ended up, others elatedly praising a very rare and astonishing feat! Still, Samson Obosheya Mughelli, Mama’s elder cousin cum classmate and the third oldest man in Egbo-Uhurie presently has a most profound memory and most thrilling narrative of Mama to tell: O sweet old age, O what readiness to pour out his heart in a reminiscence like none!
It was not surprising therefore that Mama’s teachers especially Mr Omodoro, her Standard 2 class teacher, were so disturbed with this Mama’s twist of fate.
JOURNEY INTO MARRIAGE
Well, with a most promising educational career scuttled, what should be next?
Aropleni Lafagha who hailed from Owhrode in Udu and who had finished his lower primary school at Owhrode had come like many others to St Mark Primary School Egbo-Uhurie to finish his Standard. Because the chastity of Mama always presented itself to the glare of all around, Aropleni was no exception, therefore. Doing his two years of Standard 1 and 2 at St Mark in the year 1947/48 and Mama doing same with the 1948/49 class, Aropleni did not need more than the one year (1948) he and Mama spent together at St Mark Primary School to wrap up his very high godly and intellectual estimation of Mama.
So, both having finished from St Mark, and Aropleni knowing that this bundle of intelligence and piety had lost her dad with no hope of pursuing her career further, ‘dreamt an idea’ on his own – thought his elder cousin, Viemudu Igho, need to have such a rare young lady for a wife.
Without more ado, he set the ball rolling at Owhrode. Viemudu was all ears listening to Aropleni and before he (Aropleni) was done with his high points and consummate narrative (of this lady), Viemudu was all resolved. And before you could say, Jack Robinson, Viemudu pulled together a team and came calling to Egbo-Uhurie. After a few of such calls and meetings with the Kpeji and Owivri families, the marriage contract was sealed.
In 1952 Mama moved from Egbo-Uhurie to Owhrode her (now) marital home. Needless saying that Mama married as a virgin at age 19, her piety coming again to the fore! Aropleni was damn right. And we may fast forward to say that, Viemudu was the only man Mama knew all her life: how instructive and what a lesson for today’s folks!
Mama was to invariably move with her husband to several places: Lagos, Okpare-Olomu, Warri, Ashaka, Asabase etc, places the husband served as Produce Inspector in the then Marketing Boards of the colonial and early post-colonial era. That was before the husband left her for Overseas to read Law, and Mama on a well-settled arrangement had to go to Owhrode to stay ‘in the interim’, thereafter to join the husband in the U.K. eventually.
The second part of that arrangement was never to come, and Mama had to stay at Owhrode for 10 years. All efforts by Mama and Thompson Kpeji (Mama’s elder brother and friend of her husband) to see that materialised was to no avail. Well, Mama buckled down to an unpalatable reality and she did not only reveal the ‘amebo’ (darling wife) she is to her community of in-laws but engaged in community service, such as writing and reading letters for the aged and unschooled/unread young men and women and teaching a good number of the young ladies sewing.
Of course, to sustain her penchant for reading Mama was to daily send her children to collect dailies from Aropleni who had turned a merchant of some renown and a most regular subscriber of Nigerian dailies. How else could Aropleni keep Mama’s love for reading burning and how else could Mama keep the torchlight shining however dim.
Her impact at the St Barnabas Anglican Church, Owhrode as a key women leader and one of the leading choristers should get a volume. But one key point most stand out here:
COMPOSER OF LEADING CHRISTIAN SONGS
It was while still at Owhrode these 10 years that Mama composed some Christian songs, two of them Christian songs that have been sung over 50 years now across the Urhobo nation of Nigeria viz:
1) KONO SEYERI KPENU R’UGBENU RO ROVWORI
(Drawn from Psalm 24)
2) ETA WE MI NYO NA
3) Her Tune or version of the Hymn:
RIA RIE KETE R’OGHENE
In our Owhrode humble home, the children saw her craft those songs, listened to her practice and master them and occasionally joined her in singing them.
Then the songs moved to the St. Barnabas Owhrode Archdeaconry headquarters of the then Jeremi District of the Church where they were practised by the Choir, sang in choir processions and then by all; and not long sang by all Anglican Churches in Urhobo land, and much later by Urhobo Pentecostals, especially the first song.
HUSBAND’S RETURN FROM THE UK
When after 10 years in the UK the husband returned home, Mama moved temporarily with him to Lagos, after which they came to Warri to stay permanently.
Mama at this time was a Delta Radio, Urhobo Affairs Program Team Member and Discussant, a team headed then by Govina Dukuye. Perhaps sensing that was a deviation from her life purpose, Mama left that team to face the things of God. From the St Andrew’s Church, Warri, Mama eventually joined the Souls’ Harvesters Ministry, Warri, but occasionally attended some Deeper Life Bible Church programs.
SUM OF LIFE IN WARRI (1973 – 2020)
While at the home level Mama will ever be remembered as:
- Uncommon family Up-lifter,
- Nonpareil House Keeper,
- Home Builder par excellence,
- Caring mother like none, each of all four could make inviting chapters of an enthralling volume.
At the Warri Christian community level she proved herself as:
- A Committed Rural and Riverine Missionary, combing such even up to her old age with a Souls’ Harvesters Ministry’s Soul-Winning Team led by Brother Joseph Egboloje, our beloved brother who also has gone to glory,
- An Unrelenting Prison/Hospital Evangelist who was regularly reaching the Warri Prison and Warri Central Hospital and sundry Clinics with the Gospel of Christ, and in this having a faithful companion in Cecilia of God’s Grace Ministry, Warri.
Setting her heart on any worthy course and refusing to be deterred, Mama at the onset of her old age, did a bit of Theology and also ran a Chaplaincy course. She invariably qualified as a chaplain. At about the same time she was ordained, evangelist.
We see them as a mere paper representation of her hitherto rural/riverine, hospitals/clinics and prison evangelistic works, works she continued in (after those certificates) much longer into real old age when it was almost humanly; nay, femininely impossible to reach out any more.
WHAT GOD SPOKE BEFORE MAMA LEFT FOR HEAVEN!
The day was the 31st of May 2020. Mama’s daughter couldn’t go to the Church that 31st which was Sunday because Mama had almost given up the previous day. So, while she and Mama’s daughter-in-law were with her that morning, a man stood by the door leading into the parlour and exclaimed: ‘Ha, so it’s true! Ha! Is this Mama?’
When the daughter asked him who he is, he said, he was Mama’s colleague in an evangelism team, a fact hitherto unknown to the daughter. And he added that he had no idea Mama had been ill, but that: God told him that morning, during the Sunday Meeting at his Church, to ‘go and prepare her for Heaven’, failing which he would not see Mama again.
With those words, the man fell on his knees. And the daughter and daughter-in-law did likewise: and prayers were made. After prayer and subsequent praises to God, the man stood up and said: ‘Any time from now Mama will give up.’
On the 6th of June, Mama went the way of all flesh, yes, but hers was the death of the righteous, so pleasing to God. Today, Mama is missed by Earth at 87, now received by Heaven BRAND NEW, AND ETERNALLY SO! What show of Divine Mercy and Unmerited Favor! What Great Recompense of Reward in all Eternity! What eternal bliss with the Triune-God! BLESSED BE GOD. Amen.
