Goodnight Aunty Jadesola!

By Funsho Adegbola

Jadesola-AkandeIt was with great shock and total distress that I received the news of the passing of our dearest Aunty Jadesola. Indeed, I found it unbelievable, especially as my friend and brother, Kunle Ajibade had seen her the day before at Gani Fawehinmi’s 70th birthday. On the morning of 10th April 2008, Aunty had called me to encourage me for my mum’s fifth memorial.

Aunty Jade was an old girl of the oldest and best girls’ school in Nigeria , St Anne’s School, Ibadan . During my years at St. Anne’s, 1970 till 1975, when old girls like her, Professors Oyinade Olurin, Bolanle Awe, Bopo Oshuntokun, my mother, Honorable Justice Atinuke Ige and other leading women came for career and inspirational talks, I held them in total awe and adopted them as my role-models. As I grew older, I studied them all more closely and became even closer to all of them either through my mother or through their respective children.

During the Abacha years, I became closer to Aunty Jade especially, since my father, Chief Bola Ige was a member of NADECO and I was a member of Concerned Professionals. I learnt a lot from her. In 2001 when my late father, the then Attorney-General was assassinated in his bedroom, she and her late husband, Uncle Debo were very supportive of our family. Her husband, Uncle Debo was even appointed by the former Governor of Oyo State, Alhaji Lam Adesina to prosecute the case. He did so until he realized that the murder trial was a pre-scripted ‘exercise in futility’. Sometimes, Aunty Jade would accompany her husband to Ibadan , and would visit our mother after the court session, until our mother died in April 2003. Unfortunately in the summer of 2005, Uncle Debo slumped and died soon after his arrival in England .

Aunty Jade bore the grief of her husband’s loss, with ‘quiet brave endurance’. She had her NGO and wonderful children and grandchildren to keep her going. She and Uncle Debo were most proud when their daughter, Justice Adenike Coker was elevated to the bench of Lagos State .

Indeed, she was ‘highly favored and blessed among women’. She set up a foundation in honour of her mother, Iyalode Wuraola Esan Foundation, for the upliftment and empowerment of educationally and socially-disadvantaged girls and young women. I had volunteered to work at the centre. In the past two years, we were both on the Advancement Board of the University of Ibadan , chaired by the former Head of State, H.E. Abdulsalam Abubakar, and she was such a committed member. Having been a Vice-Chancellor at Lagos State University she gave us valuable insights and contributions about how to raise funds for the development of U.I. We shall definitely miss her as she was our in-house mother.

The most wonderful thing about Aunty Jade was that anything that affected any woman affected her. She was the arrow-head of the women’s march to protest the deaths of the victims in the Sosoliso air crash Unfortunately, our ‘friendly police’ tear-gassed her and other concerned mothers who were old enough to be their mothers. She supported women in leadership positions, market-women, professionals, women in management and business. In fact, all women were her sisters. Today, all women rise and call her blessed, a worthy daughter of an industrious and educationist mother, a supportive wife to her late husband and a great mother and grandmother to Nike and her grandchildren.

Pity, Aunty Jade didn’t live till the age of seventy, and I am sure her children will miss her a great deal. However, please be comforted that she was a beautiful woman, a beacon of light to the best of Nigerian women. She has run her race and finished her course, there lies a crown prepared before her. Our consolation is that it is only goodnight because we shall meet on the resurrection morn. Goodnight, Aunty Jade, may light perpetual shine upon you. It is well with your soul. Peace, perfect peace.

Adegbola wrote in from Ibadan.