I wish to round up my official 80th Birthday Anniversary Celebrations with a revisit to my article under the Aba Saheed name, The Girls Are Ageing Gracefully, first published in September 2012. It is a special tribute to our girls who are now mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers!
I believe it was the huge response of readers to my article on The Boys Are Getting Old last Monday that prompted the Chairman of the Compass Editorial Board, Tayo Agunbiade, to demand of me a write-up on my women contemporaries who have been admitted into the prestigious Septuagenarian Club or closely reaching for the club.
I did warn her that writing on the age of a woman is a very delicate matter, especially so when William Goldsmith had warned in She Stoops To Conquer that ‘women and music should not be dated’.
Writing about women, particularly on subjects very dear to their heart such as children, their vital statistics, marriage and parents-in-law is like walking on a tight rope giving regard to peculiar sensitivities and sensibilities.
We were brought up with foreign religions-induced myth that women are weaker vessels, and must be treated as being inferior or second rate to the masculine gender in every material particular.
Experience however has proved beyond all doubts that women are by far more energetic than men. They may not appear to possess the animal strength which men tend to exhibit; women certainly are superior in carrying burdens and in multi-tasking.
Women are the last to go to bed in every home, and certainly the first to get up to prepare the household for the day: food, children, and the needs of the over-pampered men.
It is not a mean task to carry a fellow human being in one’s belly for nine months and to go through that excruciating labour at the time of delivery and the rigour of baby nursing till perhaps age 4!
They are also supremely more intuitive, more reflective and endowed with more wisdom and expression. They are also better managers.
Today, I am paying special tribute to the several women who were girls in the early sixties but are now gracefully bowing to the compelling dictates of age.
Like their male counterparts, women have no choice in the matter. They cannot fight arthritis. They cannot pick quarrel with the mandatory middle-age spread however much they diet or even starve. And menopause, like the men’s ED, must take its toll.
Perhaps, I should start with the radiant High School Girls of those days and begin with Funmilayo Obajimi, now Mrs Osoba, who made a successful career in Nursing and retired as a respected matron at the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan. 72 years old and still going strong, the then dainty girl of Ijebu Igbo Girls’ Grammar School looks every inch a 40 –year-old! A proud grand mother many times over, Chief Mrs Osoba combines wifely duties with church responsibilities even as she travels out of the country many times a year to visit with the grandchildren.
Ijebu Igbo Girls’ Grammar School paraded highly disciplined students in those days. The likes of Grace Ibru, Head Girl Rowaye, the Bamiros, the Baloguns and the Onabanjos while Our Lady of Apostles and Anglican Girls’ Grammar School, both in Ijebu Ode, churned out women who later became baronesses of industry and distinguished academics.
Dr Doyin Aboaba (now Abiola), Abike Mosuro, Esther Ogundalu, Bukola Bakare, Doyinsola Sonola (now Ojutiku), Ojuolape Tunwase (now Mrs Mustapha), Ngozi Egwuagwu, Bisola Fiberesima (now Dr Mrs Sogbetun), Jadesola Oni, Yinyinola Ijaduola, Asake Adeyinka (Asaks darling, now Chief Mrs Lasaki), Dr Modele Jadesimi (now Mrs Akindolie), Stella Solanke, Araba Graham, Nguba Agolia (Mrs Aspinnal) Grace Olusanya (now Lady Banjoko).
Funmi Osoba the great university students union politician, Dr Tokunbo Awolowo Dosumu and other girls of their generation at St Annes, Ibadan, and Labo Ogunsan, Professor Dupe Onabamiro (now Professor Mrs Onadeko), Betty Okotie easily the best actress in her days in UI, Stella Onyemenam, Victoria Ehanire (now Chief Mrs Falope), Victoria Ebigwe, Olubnumi Onadipe (now Chief Mrs Onabolu), Sade Osiberu (now Chief Mrs Ogunbiyi), Ronke Adenubi (now Mrs Fetuga), Pharmacist Osibodu, Professor Morayo Akande (now Professor Atinmo), Yinka Ologbenla (now Professor Mrs Falusi), Kike Durotoye, Ms Pepple (became Head of Service in Federal Government), Victoria Unuigbe (now Mrs Ihonde).
Funke Olaborede (now Dr Mrs Alegbeleye), Iyabo Akinkoye (now Dr Mrs Osinaike), Doja Banjoko later Dr Mrs Badejoko, Princess Bisi Gbadebo, Princess Taiwo Ojaronke, the Lijadu sisters, Toun Adeyemi, Hotelier Toma Ibrahim, Olubunmi Oguntola (now Chief Mrs Adeniyi) and many more.
These were girls who represented the best of the best in their generation. And looking back on their morning, no one is surprised that they attained the glorious heights that became their lot.
Morality and sense of decorum of the girls who are now grandmothers was incomparable.
Though young and free in the university atmosphere or as young ladies who had left their parents to work, these promising young women demonstrated very keen sense of duty and socially acceptable comportment and decorum.
Of great interest is the fact that the girls in our generation eventually ended up marrying the same guys they dated as young 20-something year-olds. This is remarkable and a feat the girls of nowadays should copy and emulate.
Among these leaders we are celebrating today were those who stayed glued to the same boyfriends since they were 18 years old (some 50 years ago or longer) and went on to marry them and they have lived happily ever since. This speaks volumes to the moral discipline of the generation of the ladies who are now grand mothers.
The university culture of those good old days or the educational culture in general did not condone recklessness and moral laxity.
The girls growing old gracefully have one advantage over their male counterparts. Apart from a few of my male friends who wear girdle to conceal their bulging tummies, the ageing girls have several gadgets of concealment in their make-up kits. And to boot, they have excellent packaging techniques.
But by and large the girls of the sixties have beaten Ghanaians to their game. It used to be ko si arugbo n’Ghana’l, meaning Ghanaian women are ageless! Nowadays, the phrase is more fitting to Nigerian women in their late sixties and early seventies.
I will like to conclude this piece on ageing, with reference to some of the boys who have grown old but whose names I left out on The Boys Are Getting Old piece I wrote a few weeks back.
I am talking of the Leading Leader of Ogun State politics, Senator (Dr) Jubril Martins Kuye, who has refused to age or is perhaps afraid of ageing. He remains ever so young and agile. I remember he had elaborate house-warming cum turbanning celebrations in April 1984 and had a screaming story in Punch newspaper captioned ‘the story of my success at 40’. That would have put his birth at 1944! But my Egbon is 70 or thereabout, and I am sure he was not born on ‘an Owu market day’ like Obasanjo!
King of Boys Otunba Kolawole Abdul, veteran Labour unionist and consummate politician, was one of the big boys in Ibadan and Lagos in the 60s. He clocked 70 three years ago and he is still kicking.
Omo-Oba Laide Oropo, the one and only one of Board Members fame remains his youthful self. Businessman of high repute and leading socialite, Oropo still looks 40, even though he has joined the Septuagenarian club.
Surgeon Bayo Yusuff, Chief Odunusi of Adraoh fame, and Pa Endy Adenusi who has always been called Pa even as a young man of 40 are now inching towards 70, having passed age 65. These men and most of their colleagues in the Elites Club made the 60s a memorable time. But now they are old. Their bones are old!
Post Script:
Interestingly, while over 50 per cent of the ‘boys’ I profiled in my 2012 article had joined their ancestors, only one of the ‘girls’ profiled had passed on. Sadly, Tayo Agunbiade who initiated this article passed on last year. The rest are still alive, healthy and kicking.
The likes of Bola Alo and Chief Mrs Osoba who are in their 80s are still rocking. I bet most of these ‘girls’ are likely to beat my mother’s record. My mother, bless her soul, was ‘killed’ at age 96 by the witches of Ago-Iwoye who denied her a centenary birthday. Wicked witches!
Do not submit your happiness to the whims and caprices of others.
