•Akinkoye
She has gait, and is an embodiment of knowledge. Olajumoke Akinkoye, a lawyer, presently assists the Bishop of Diocese of Lagos West (Anglican Communion) as the Human Resource Adviser. She spoke with Senior Reporter ANTHONIA SOYINGBE recently on her life.
Booking an appointment with her that Sunday morning was easy and her keeping up with the appointment was also easy. Gorgeously dressed on the first Sunday in year 2013, this woman of many parts, shortly after the church service at Archbishop Vinning Memorial Cathedral, spoke with Sunday Independent.
A woman of three professions, she started off as a broadcaster, ended up as a lawyer, but in between she became an administrator. A Theater Art and English graduate from the University of Ibadan, where she came out with Second Class Upper degree in 1976, she got married to her best friend in 1978, did her Masters in Public Administration at the University of Lagos.
She later enrolled in the University of Lagos Faculty of Law in 1994 and finished her programme in year 2000 and was called to Nigerian Bar. She is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria, and a former broadcaster before she took up more challenging roles in a financial institution.
For many, anyone who changes profession can be tagged as an unstable person. But to her, her passion for justice made her to go into law. Hear her; “I am a multi-faceted person and multi-talented, to the glory of God. I just realise that I do things which come naturally to me. I am very gifted in getting things done well. I also ensure that people perform at their top best. At every stage of my life, I find out that I am using all these three areas.
“I have a passion for ensuring justice and fair play. People around me will tell you I will not bulge an inch when I see injustice being serve. I am never at peace with myself until I see issues been straightened out. Even if I get to have a conversation with people and I see that the person I am speaking with appears to be going with a wrong impression of what the discussion is about, I persuade such a person to give me if it is just a minute, to explain the situation so that it will be very clear. I go an extra mile because I also have excellent persuasive skills.
“At times what we do and say are generally misunderstood by people; if there are misunderstandings somewhere you can always tighten up the loose ends. Let the person you are communicating with go away with a better impression of who you are and what you are representing.”
Born is Gusau, present Zamfara State, she was later brought down South to Ilesa, her home town. One of the things she detested while growing up she said was the way an average Nigerian boy will treat a girl. “A girl and a woman must be given their space to operate. I detest a man who runs his hands on a woman as if he is running his hands on a piano.” Maybe this also prompted her to go into the legal profession, to use the instrument of law to fight against all forms of violence against women.
She had finished making babies before she went to study law and she practised between 2002 and 2007. It wasn’t too difficult for her operating a chamber with three of her male classmates, because she went to the same university with them. With that, she understood them well.
Asked her experience with her male colleagues, she smiled and said, “It was nice working with three males. I was the queen and they celebrated me. I am very free with members of the opposite sex and when I was much younger, I used to love to do things that boys do. I had a broader mind, I could accommodate their jokes and I had great experience working with them.”
Life comes with loads of challenges and each comes with lessons for her. She experienced the greatest pain when she lost her husband seven months after her second child passed away in United Kingdom.
“Her husband’s death brought her out of the chambers. She managed his late husband’s sick health for about 18 months before he died.
“Initially, I was managing my career and my husband’s ill health, but when his ailment got worse, I had to abandon every other thing because that was my life. He was my best friend and I was so proud of him. Everybody knows they can do anything to me, but I can’t allow an ant touch my husband.
“Most times, we were at the University College, Ibadan; so, I spent a greater part of that year in Ibadan with him because our home is in Lagos. We went abroad and they told us there that he didn’t have much chance of making it. They wanted to continue with his treatment abroad, but my husband told them that he needed to return home; he died after we returned home.
“It was my nieces and my nephews who were staying with me them, who went back to the chambers to pull out my personal effects after the death of my husband. I never stepped into that office after his death.”
For this woman who enjoyed marital bliss for over three decades, memories of her still lingers in her mind. “When my husband died, it was as if my whole world had collapsed. About seven months before my husband died, we lost our second son. I felt the pain and it was a burning, hurting pain. My husband, in his ailment then, was there to encourage me to take heart. When the end eventually caught up with my husband, I knew I lost in all sides. My whole life literaly collapsed at that point and that was actually the turning point at which I had to pull out of the chambers because I became blank. That was when the Bishop invited me to come and work with him. At the time, I needed help. The church of God was there for me. The deaths made me see the futility of life,” she said while remembering her late husband.
We are in a world where people gossip and tend to backbite. Backbiting and gossips are not peculiar to public places, it also happened in places of worship. Our reporter asked Akintoye her experience working in church. She sighed and said, “It happens everywhere, but it is more disheartening when it happens in the church of God where people presume to hear the word of God. Most people don’t know that the tongue, which they use to gossip and backbite has been appropriated to murder. Working in the church, for me, comes with lots of pains because of what people say about me. For me, the gossips started before the death of my husband. I will rather come to church to serve than to backbite. I want to be productive, even in God’s house.”
A proud grandmother, her late father served as a clergy in the Anglican Church before he passed on. According to her, his actions “that was how we were brought up and then we took turns to lead the service in the house. We watched the way our father worked actively for the church and our mother gave him maximum support.”
Years after losing her husband, she still wears the seal of their wedding, which is her wedding ring. Humorously, this writer asked her if she is trying to scare away prospective suitors by wearing her wedding ring. With pride, she said, “I will not trade my wedding band for anything. In fact, they will have to bury me with it. My husband remains a light in my life and in all that I do. I will proudly wear this because that is who I am. It is too late to remarry because I don’t fall in love easily.”