Mrs Biobele Esther Odesola, a lawyer  and  founder of the City of Refuge Orphanage Homes, Abuja is the wife of retired Commandant of the Command and Staff College, Jaji, Air Vice-Marshal Sam Odesola and daughter of the first medical doctor in the  present day Rivers State.  She speaks  with  Saturday Tribune on her background and marriage. Excerpts:

Can you introduce yourself?
I am Mrs. Biobele Esther Odesola.

What does Biobele mean?
Biobele means Joy in English language, but  I am not a  Yoruba woman.  I am from Kalabari in Rivers State.

It’s  believed that people from your area  love marrying  their kinsmen.  How come you married a Yoruba  man?
Well, this is Nigeria and Nigeria is one.  We fell in love and got married.  I am a Nigerian and he is a Nigerian too.

Can you tell us where and how you met?
Well, we met in Abuja.  I came to Abuja from Lagos to attend a programme and after two years, he was transferred to Lagos and as God would have it, we met again in Lagos and one thing led to the other and we later got married .

Is he a lawyer like you?
No. He is a General in the Air Force though he is now  retired.  He is Air Vice – Marshal Samuel Odesola from Igbara-Oke in Ondo State.

It’s observed that quite a number of military men  marry more than a wife...
Many military men are married to only one wife.  In fact, in Military Law which comes from the British Law, it is mandatory that a military man must marry only one wife.  You cannot see a military man marrying two wives officially.  There are unofficial wives however. But as a rule, all military men must be officially married to one wife.  Even the Muslim military men who are religiously entitled to marry up to four wives must have only one official wife.

What was your growing up like?
I was born into a very strict but good family.  My father was already a medical doctor at the time I was born in 1957. His name is Dr. Dodiyi Emmanuel.  He was a physician to Dr.

Nnamdi Azikiwe.  That was in the 1960s. He  died at the age of 85.  He brought  me up  with  firm  hands.

The  practice in those days  was to have more than one  wife. Was it so with your family?
Interestingly, he was married to  only my mother who is still alive and is  80 years old.

From what you’ve said  you obviously  belong  to  the group of children refered to as born with the  silver spoon in their mouths. One then would  have expected you to be a household name in Nigerian politics or in other  visible endeavours...
Well It’s  true  I fall under the  category of the privileged  because my  father was already a medical doctor before Nigeria even got her Independence from Britain. My father was the first medical doctor in Abonema, a town in the  present day Rivers State.

Ours was a  privileged  family  then, but today, you have people  refer to your children as born with the  silver spoon,  which is not true.   In those days, there were no  medical doctors.  Though  Rivers State was not  then in existence,  but judging from what  held then, he was the first medical doctor from Rivers State.  My father trained in those days under  late Reverend Ransome Kuti, the father of the late legendary Afro Beat king, Fela.

He first went to Cambridge University, but when  there was  no one to assist him, he left for Czechoslovakia to study Medicine.  He was a close  friend of  late Professor Chike Obi.  They taught   and learnt Mathematics together. He would  boast in those days that he taught Chike Obi Mathematics. That is the kind of family I came from. And the likes of Justices Araka, Mbanefo, Anyaegbunam  were my father’s contemporaries.

They were not mates but contemporaries when my father was in the East working as a medical doctor from Orji River to Onitsha; from Onitsha to Enugu and Arochukwu and all  those areas.  I was very young then and while  growing up, I told myself  I wanted to have many children because then  I would see children on the streets and would start imagining that they were my kids.  Sometimes, I would imagine that I had 100 kids.  I grew up with that kind of  mindset  and so I developed interest in building and managing orphanages.  That was when I came to the reality that I could not possibly give birth to 100 children.  Again, the Lord spoke to me to look after orphans. When my husband was at the Command and Staff College, Jaji,  parents of many  children died  as a  result  of one problem or the other. Some  died  as a result of   war or from HIV and the children were  left  begging on the streets.  Seeing the plight of these  children,  I was touched  and that was  how  I  started  taking care  of the  children.

I was paying their school fees and assisting them in necessary areas I could.  Just before my husband retired, we  discussed  about running an orphange  and being a good husband who identifies with my  dreams  he paid for the first Orphanage.  I would say  our lives  are  dedicated to helping the needy. We  had  at that time  10 children of our own.  I believe that God was preparing us for the enormous responsibility coming  our  way.  My husband built the first Orphanage for me in 2004  and that was how we started  helping  the poor. One of the programmes I had as the wife of the Commandant of the Command and Staff College, Jaji was to help the orphans and the needy.  The Lord  impressed it on me that, that was actually what He called me to do.  Sometimes, we do things without actually knowing that God is leading us to  fulfill His  purpose for our lives.

That was when I told my husband  I  believe it  was time for me to follow my calling.  I am a lawyer by profession, but I have stopped practising   and this is what I do now.

It gives me fulfilment seeing   those who the devil otherwise would have killed and turned to a nobody, but who today have become responsible people in the society.

I have a B.Sc degree holder  here  today  who on Tuesday just came from Ghana where he graduated in Information Technology and when I see this, I feel fulfilled that I am doing what God has actually called me to do.  I don’t know what  would have become  of this young man if I did not come to his aid as a mother.

Medical doctors strive to keep people alive while soldiers  are trained to take lives in the course of protecting their territories.

What are the effects of these different characters on the way you conduct your affairs?

Well, military people do not take lives. The man I’m married to at home is a human being.  Outsiders see military officers  as not human beings but at home, they are all usually gentlemen, they are wonderful.  When a soldier is in his uniform, he is a soldier and he must be a soldier.  He behaves like a soldier and that is how to know a good soldier.  My husband is a very loving man,  tender, caring and God-fearing.  And behind that uniform, he is  flesh and blood.

You are a lawyer and there is the general  belief  that lawyers are stone-hearted whenever their professional fees are involved. How do you reconcile this with your soft hearted disposition towards children?
You see, people who are laymen say all kinds of things.  Lawyers are human beings just like other people and they are trained people who go to court to act out what they have learnt.  If  I am defending you, I expect you to bring all the rules and laws that will back up my case.  People think  lawyers are heartless but this is not.  As for reconciling both functions, you should note that I am first of all a mother, before being a professional.