Emmanuel Also Taught Me To Ride Bike

MY husband Emmanuel Obinyan believed all things are possible and so never doubted in his mind, his capacity or ability to change the world. He left his world better than he met it. Emmanuel came to emancipate those around him who were held bound by poverty and ignorance.

Despite the challenges and difficulties that attended his growing up, he excelled and taught his colleagues to excel also. He often told me about his life story, his determination to excel and his push for friends to also excel. He took up the management of Thomas Wyatt, a publicly quoted company experiencing serious operational challenges with a firm determination to make it work. And he did.

He taught me to aim for the sky and become the Sun, Moon or a shining star; never looking downwards. Every stumbling block was a stepping stone for him. He believed there is always room for improvement and his regular saying was a quote by Ernest Hemingway: “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” He said it as ‘True greatness is not in being superior to others, but in being superior to yourself of yesterday.’ I could always predict his reaction in any situation short of the best.

I had wanted to start writing this piece before now but had postponed it many times until this morning arising from my experience in the office. Shortly after settling down to work this morning, there was power outage. While we were waiting for its restoration, I asked the personal assistant to the business owner, if the outage was just in our office alone or a general thing in the neighborhood. She said it was the neighborhood as I would not have needed to ask had it been the office alone because he would not be calm seeing his office alone in darkness. He would have been restless calling the power officials for immediate restoration. Emmanuel would have done the same. He worked hard to achieve his dreams.

He taught those who associated with him to fish. At the last meeting with his colleagues in Thomas Wyatt Plc, he narrated to me what he told them. He virtually put the company’s success or failure in their hands. He told them the story of the bird in hand, not as it is popularly known as being worth more in the bush, but your power over the bird in your hand. You have the power to determine the fate of the bird in your hand. You could either crush it or tend it. He believed in his team and the youth of this country and that is why his work with youth in Talata Mafara, won him a national recognition by the then Head of State now President Muhammadu Buhari. He admired Buhari for his sincerity and discipline. Emmanuel was also a very disciplined young man. He hated to be late for any assignment or meeting. I learnt to get ready and on time in our outings. At the early stage of our marriage, tying my ‘gele’ made me late but I had to immediately find a solution by patronising commercial ‘gele’ tiers. I have never been a facial make-up person and so getting ready to meet appointments with Emman, became easy.

Emmanuel challenged me to be the best and do things I never could aspire to do or become. And so it was that my former place of work bought bikes for local delivery of newspapers but the bikes did not quite meet our expectations and had to be disposed of. I bought some for my household and I for local runs and exercise. There was a snag as I could not ride a bike. Emman could ride very well. He told me that the bikes reminded him of the elders in the village who rode their bikes to market places and farms and how they rang the bells of the bikes to signal their arrival and or departure and called their friends aloud from the streets as they rode by. Emman would then, after riding around the estate where we lived, ring the bell of the bike on his arrival home and call ‘Ebo’ I have come back. He called me ‘Ebo’ a name for the white skinned because of my fair complexion. His ‘Ebo’ did not know how to ride the bike and so he started to teach me. I was always scared but with the assurance that he was holding the bike behind me, I pedaled on. Gradually he stopped holding the bike but just ran after me to hold me in case I fell. With the confidence that he was behind me, I rode on. But on October 18, 2013, when I set out to ride my bike, I looked back only to find that my Emmanuel had stopped running after me to steady my rides and hold me in case I fall. He was kidnapped and killed by unknown gunmen on his way to mentor young men and women of Ishan, Edo State.

• Obinyan is the wife of the late Emmanuel Obinyan.