Chief AYO ADEBANJO Reveals His Love Story
Chief Mrs. Christiana Adebanjo is the adorable wife of Afenifere Chieftain, Chief Ayo Adebanjo who turned 90 this week. Shes one virtuous woman who has stayed out of the limelight to enable her husband to enjoy the popularity he enjoys today on the political scene. She is homely and has been very supportive of his activism. But not many people know about this pretty woman who is over 80. In his autobiography which has just been launched in Lagos, Chief Ayo Adebanjo revealed how his dream of having an enduring union and a soulmate and confidant has been fulfilled in Christiana (Christie, as I called her). Right from the time we were in the UK, she has been a pillar of support.”, he revealed.
As the Secretary of the London Branch of the Action Group, my wife ensured that the report I wrote was rewritten by her, saying my handwriting was very poor and wondered how I could be struggling to read my own handwriting at a public gathering of the AG. So, because she couldn’t type, she would take the trouble to write my report all over again in her own beautiful handwriting which is very legible.
I cannot claim to be an ideal man, to talk about marriage philosophically, but what I can talk about positively is that the type of influence it had on Chief Awolowo’s life was what it had on me due to my early close association with that family. The way I held marriage was different. I was a divorcee.
I met my present wife in England; I had married in Nigeria before. My first daughter (Mrs. Ayotunde Atteh) is over 60 years old now. She attended the University of Ibadan and was from my first wife. We were legally married and legally divorced.
As a matter of fact, I didn’t take marriage so seriously in my early life, so that by the time I even met my present wife,
“Since Chief Awolowo described his wife Hannah as ‘A Jewel of Inestimable Value,’ it appears that a lot of people have misused that statement. I am in a position to say that my own wife Christie is ‘a jewel’ in her actions, behaviour and my treatment.”
“Upon her return to Nigeria, she came into the political troubles of the time. When I left her in London, it was with the hope of having her join me later after establishing at home. But contrary to our expectations, the political trouble of treasonable felony arose before her return.
By the time she returned, I was already in exile in Ghana, so, I had to go and meet her at Tema Port, to bring her to Accra where we were then living at Koko-mule-mule, opposite the house of the then Minister of Defence (under Nkrumah), Kofi Bako. She was shocked to meet me at the Port.
She told me it was no sooner they left Liverpool than they learnt that there had been a coup in Nigeria. So, I told her that after that coup, the Balewa government was after some of us.
Then from the little money I had in a bank in Ibadan, I wrote a cheque for her. The cheque almost exposed her because we didn’t know that she was going to be met by security agents.
While in Ghana, they had an affection for my wife.
She was distinctive, and I still cannot find another woman that thinks that way. In one of her letters, she told me, ‘Ayo, you can do what you like with women, but don’t produce a child!’ That statement shocked me! Among the correspondence we had while I was in exile, that one really stood out.
When she got back home after our meeting in Ghana, she was looking after the children solely on her income.
Again, I recall that while we were in London, I was regularly sending some allowance to my father. Unknown to me, she had taken note of this and continued to send the allowance to my father from her own income while I was in exile. She never knew my father then, but because of the condition that I was in, I often told her that I didn’t know who would be taking care of my father in my absence. She used her monthly scholarship allowance to continue sending this allowance to my father regularly, which I was not doing until I met her. In this way, she endeared herself to my father.
Before I married her, I had two other ladies I was interested in. I sent the names of the 3 of them to my father for prayers. My dad got back to me to say that the one I told him was not a Nigerian was the one endorsed. When my father came back with his report, it matched perfectly with my wife.
My wife is from the famous Lawson family of Togo. In fact, she is now the head of the family in Lagos, as a result of which I hosted the Togolese King and other members of the family in my house at Lekki, Lagos in December 2015. When we were getting married in London, Chief Ladoke Akintola, who was the Chairman of the occasion, joked that it was an international marriage, because my wife was from Togo.
The devotion of my wife to the marriage really came to play during the treasonable felony crisis. She was fully devoted to me during this period, and she was a great pillar of support to my parents. When my mother died in 1964, she stood in and played my role as if I was around. At this occasion, she also talked of the highly commendable role of my bosom friend, Alhaji Moshood Ola Owodunni, who placed his Chevrolet car at her disposal and this facilitated her movement during that period.
Before this time, since her arrival, she had been subjected to police harassment almost on a weekly basis. They would come to the house to search it thoroughly, thinking that I hid some incriminating things in the house. Her experience during the treasonable felony crisis was like a baptism of fire for her.
During Buhari’s military administration, I was employed in a private company as a non-Executive Director. The company had some contract with the Ogun State Government and the government had not even given them a kobo under that contract, but I was put in detention in Abeokuta simply because they found my name as one of the directors. My wife had to be bringing me food in Abeokuta.
For a woman who had lived too much of a Christian life with a minister of religion, one would understand why political activities were anathema to her; but my wife has accommodated me and my political vocation, till today, particularly after returning to Nigeria.
Each time we were engaged in Out usually long political meetings with Chief Awolowo, her friends often asked her, ‘are you sure your husband is really with Chief Awolowo and not in any other place?’ But she would reply, ‘I know where my husband is. I know about his programme.’
The period we spent at political meetings, we kept it strictly out of the home. When her friends doubted my whereabouts, my wife would say, ‘I trust my husband.’ Some of them would say, ‘Your husband is very handsome, don’t let him go to any function without you being there.’ But later on, doubting friends, came to realise that I was a loyal husband.
On the domestic front, I had no driver initially when I was practising. At the close of work, I would drive her to the market to buy some things for the house. She would never complain, because the income was very meagre. In fact, we pooled our individual incomes for the family’s upkeep.
The confidence we had in each other started in England when I made her a co-signatory to my account. When I was to buy my first piece of land in Surulere through my own friend and former Chairman of the Action Group in London, Chief Z.O.K. Adetula, I requested for two plots, one for me and the other for my wife. But by the time we were given the plan for my own plot, we found that the plan could not be accommodated in one plot. So my wife said, ‘Why don’t we just use the two plots for the building?’ I told her, ‘that’s your own land, I don’t want to combine it with mine, in order to accommodate her own plan.
Luckily, however, I had a friend who was in charge of lands, and I asked him, ‘Where can we get a substitute?’ He told me, ‘incidentally, the one adjacent to your land is also free.’ So, we had to buy that land.
Not only that, when we started to build the house, I asked her, ‘which one do we build first, is it the one on your plan or my own?’ I then offered to her, ‘let’s build the one on your own plan, so that if I can no longer finance it, you can raise money from the Civil Service to complete the house.’
She was shocked when I said this; and my prediction came true. By the time we got to a certain stage of the building, we had run out of funds, and she was to retire from service. So, she had to take a loan from the Civil Service to complete it, such that by the time she was going to retire, she had to use her retirement benefits to offset the loan.
I remember that some of my friends were mocking me by saying, ‘You have a joint account with your wife and you also bought a piece of land in her name.’ But to the glory of God, I must confess, I have no regret for everything that I did for her. And I bless the day I met her.
For what she has been to me, I will forever be grateful to the Ajayis. As I said earlier on, one of the good things that happened to me, when I was Organising Secretary for the Action Group in Remo Division was my meeting Olaniwun Ajayi in Sagamu and also registering him as a member of our party. To the glory of God, ours has been a match blessed through their own (Ajayis’) instrumentality.
Although my wife is a Togolese, all my family members admit that even if I had married an Ijebu woman, they may not have become as fond of her, as they have of Christie. That’s to show you how much she has acclimatised and wormed her way into the hearts of my people.
When I was practising as a lawyer, I did not know any eating house (canteen or restaurant) because my wife always prepared my food from home everyday.
During the Abacha regime, in the heat of the June 12 struggle, some of us were clamped in detention, but she was never worried. One incident that surprised my friends was when we (NADECO people) were holding a reception for former US Ambassador Walter Carrington in my house and soldiers stormed in, and broke my gate to disturb the event.
We initially fixed the reception for Chief Onasanya’s house but prepared another place as a decoy when we anticipated a security breach. But no sooner had we settled down at Onasanya’s house than they came to disperse us. We now went to my house, but they traced us there to disturb us again. At that point, Pa Abraham Adesanya dared them to shoot him.
On that occasion, the wives of our colleagues were all there for the reception.
A mild drama ensued while the police were there harassing us: my wife went up, packed all the things that I would take into detention, including my medicine. Then the policemen asked her, ‘Where are you going?’ She answered, ‘I know you will soon take him away.’ That showed her courage.
She always stood firm and was never a source of discouragement in my political activism in this country, although she believes now that I should pipe down on account of age. As for disposition to my friends and family, she is always welcoming, wears a permanent friendly look, and is a perfect hostess all the time.
With all sense of humility, not only is she beautiful, my wife has excellent sartorial taste. Up till today, even in her old age (I am only two years older), my wife ensures the cleanliness of my underwear … my singlets, pants, and even handkerchiefs. She supervises them up to the detergent and the water they will use for washing.
