They gave me 2 weeks
to vacate the home
•Travails of wife of the late Chief Judge of Benue State
By Rose Ejembi
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
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•Evangelist
Lydia Idoko
Photo by Sun News Publishing |
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For the first time after the death of her husband seven years
ago, Evangelist (Mrs.) Lydia Idoko, wife of the late Chief
Judge of Benue State, Justice Alhassan Idoko, spoke about
the life of her husband.
In this interview with Daily Sun, the woman evangelist and
founder of Faith Women Fellowship Ministry tearfully narrated
what she passed through after the demise of her beloved husband.
She also encouraged widows to hold unto God who is able to
see them through in whatever circumstances they are going
through.
And to those who derive pleasure in maltreating widows, Mummy
Idoko as she is called said, "Death is a cap that everyone
is bound to wear. Whatever a man sows he shall surely reap."
Background
I am Evangelist Lydia Idoko, the wife of the late Chief Judge
of Benue State, Justice Alhassan Idoko. I am one time Executive
Secretary of Christian Pilgrims Welfare Board. I hail from
Kogi State. I am born to the family of Adamu Amuunebi, a predominantly
Muslim family. Later, God called me and I got converted to
Christianity. My father was a man who loved God and was committed
to charitable activities in the society before God called
him home in 1974. My husband was also called home on March
31, 1999. He was the Chief Judge of Benue State for over 16
years. And by the grace of God, he authored the first Nigerian
commentary on the four gospels, volumes I and 2. He also authored
several books.
Marriage
We were married in February 1975 and God blessed us with children.
We lived and laboured together, shared the gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ together for over thirty-years before God called
him home.
Fondest memory of my husband
He was not just a husband but bit of a father, brother, lover
and one who would always whisper to my ears that I should
never be discouraged. He always assured me that God has deposited
something in me. He always said to me that he was proud to
have me as a wife and that apart from God and myself, he had
no other person because he had always appreciated the role
I play as a wife and as a mother despite my busy schedule
at the ministry level.
He was such a person that didn’t like rancour, quarelling
or anything that has do with distort of mind. He was always
concerned about my welfare and that of the family. He gave
me security and protection from outside interference. In a
nutshell, he was a very rare gem. So, each time I remember
him, I am proud of him. Even though we were two different
people from different background, we have our imperfection
but as we lived together, God helped us to brush up each other.
He gave me all the support I need in the work of the ministry.
He told me nothing should make me deviate from serving God.
He could go to any level to ensure that my work in the ministry
is not hindered at all.
Life without him
The truth of it is that God has created a vacuum and that
vacuum is really too difficult to fill. But God Himself is
the only one that can fill the vacuum that his death has created
in my life. One of the things that have always given me the
courage is that two days before his death, he talked to me
and tried to make me understand the need to stay focussed,
bare the children and to be very careful in my relationship
with people.
After his death, I must confess to you that I found it very
difficult because of the area of counselling, encouragement
and meeting my needs. When he was alive, I never struggled
for anything, all I needed to do was to ask. I never one day
imagined what to eat, drink, how my car would be fuelled or
serviced or how to pay electricity bill and all that. He was
always doing all that without lamenting or complaining.
Just after his death
Immediately after his death, I didn’t even realise the
challenges ahead until one morning as I was praying, the Holy
Spirit said to me, "The journey ahead is very far,"
and that I have a lot of responsibilities now, therefore,
I must guard the way I take my expenditure. And from that
moment, I started learning how to save. I kept on until now,
but one thing God has done for me is that immediately after
his death, He spoke to me one morning that He is with me and
my children and I need not bother.
God spoke to me from Isaiah 54:5-7 and within that same day,
God brought a lady who shared the same scripture with me.
I then prayed and told God that I don’t want my life
to be a window. I told Him, He has created a vacuum and that
I never envisaged to be among widows because my deepest expectation
was that I would go before him. But God didn’t make
it that way. So, I held unto God and as a result of that,
He now began to choose His own instrument to encourage me
in the work of the ministry.
His last word
My husband’s last word to me was that I should not be
discouraged. He woke me up at about 5 a.m because he was very
restless throughout the night. He now said, "I want you
to take care of the children." He said the enemies have
been fighting our family but that they would not succeed.
And that I should not lose sight of the responsibility that
has been committed into my hands but that I should continue.
I said, "Daddy, what are you saying?" And he said
he was just advising me. He told me never to joke with family
devotion. Then he said that God would not allow him to die
and that the prophecies of people upon his life (she said,
weeping) would be fulfilled. Only thirty minutes later he
had gone to be with the Lord.
Widowhood and the Ministry
Actually, in life, the two are incompatible. But I try to
remove my memory from that word ‘widow’. And the
reason I try to do that is, if I am to say I am a widow it
would make me a weakling and I would be robbed of my dream.
I would also be incapacitated by self-pity. So, I try to wipe
it off. To say the fact, single-parenting is not an easy task.
The only way I try to overcome it is that apart from my involvement
in the work of the ministry, I don’t go into any relationship
that would give me embarrassment or cause regrets.
Combining widowhood with the ministry is cumbersome but for
the grace of God. You could get somebody beside you to wake
you up at the middle of the night, but that privilege is no
longer there. You could run into some impromptu challenges
and you have someone to share your mind with but that opportunity
is no longer there. But in all, I believe God who permitted
it to happen is the one that has been helping me to cope.
Few weeks after his demise
Ah, immediately after his death it’s just like the whole
world was collapsing. It was an opportunity for the enemies
of Faith Women Fellowship Ministry to fabricate stories, slanders
and malicious words that they could convince the outside world
that I am a devil, so that the ministry could collapse. But
God gave me a heart to forgive everyone.
I was not seeing the people, because I looked at the corpse
of my husband and I said, Jesus paid a price and whatever
I go through because of his death is a price to be paid. He
really proved to be not just a husband but a father to me.
Immediately after his death, everybody had one thing or the
other to say. There was no name they didn’t call me.
But I made up my mind and made a three-goal agenda which were;
a befitting burial for him, my relocation from government
quarters and lastly, my commitment to the ministry ever than
before. So, just like Paul said in the book of Acts, non of
these things moved me. All that they were saying, my focus
was how to give my husband a befitting burial.
Believers and even men of God were not left out in slandering
me. The worst aspect of it is that the men of God who are
supposed to speak out the truth and defend the cause of the
gospel were collaborating. It was a great challenge. The family
aspect, inheritance aspect and outside interference and to
crown it all, my husband had an affair with a lady who has
five children for three men. This created an opportunity for
the world to say that my husband was married to two wives
and that I am the second wife. Until a document proved it
that he was never married to the lady.
They separated the relationship in 1979 with a written document.
That was what cooled the tempo of trying to stain my name
that I was a second wife.
Maltreatment of widows in Nigeria
Actually, I had a personal experience during my husband’s
burial. They wanted me to perform the traditional aspect of
it by scraping my hair and doing a kind of second burial after
he was buried on May 5, 1999. I then said to them that I am
a Christian leader and that apart from that, I am a woman
leader and a believer who has a ministry. I told them that
whatever I do has a great effect on others, so, I would not
be able to participate in the traditional aspect. And my in-laws
were not happy. Even at the graveyard they were so harsh throughout.
There was nothing they didn’t do, there was no insult
they didn’t pass.
At the end, they even aired it. The Governor then, Col. Dominic
Oneya, had to intervene because the tempo was so charged and
I was not ready to stay in the village because if I stayed
I would be overpowered and forced to do it. And so, the security
told Col. Oneya that it was not ideal for me to be in the
village because what they were going to do was not good. So,
it was a great dispute, conflict here and there. God used
the governor and our Daddy in the Ministry with some members
of the Trustees who now stood and said "No, we have to
take her." And the Governor had to instruct that they
should let me come back to Makurdi.
And when I came back to Makurdi, the judiciary, where my husband
worked for over 16 years wanted me to vacate the house within
two weeks so, this is how heartless human beings can be, forgetting
that death is a cap that everyone must wear. It’s just
a question of time. So, the moment a woman loses her husband
in Nigeria, that person is forgotten. Only very few leaders
have the heart for widows, to feel their pains and circumstances.
Just like I said, the best moment of my life was when someone
whispered into my ears that I should not be discouraged. Widows
go through a lot as a result of tradition.
Advice to widows
I just want to encourage widows not to be discouraged. The
worst important thing for every widow is what Jeremiah 49:11
says. "Leave your fatherless children to me and I will
preserve them alive and let your widows twist in me."
We should not look at the experience they have had when our
husbands were called to glory. Every widow has a story to
tell. But they don’t do the men like that. If a man’s
wife dies, he doesn’t go through rancour. In fact, in
some cultures, if a man’s wife dies, that same day,
another woman lies beside him so that according to them, the
spirit of the wife does not come to disturb him. But that
is not the case of the woman.
It is a lot of torture, embarrassment, widows sometimes are
stripped naked at their husbands burial. Sometimes, if a man
dies, it is generality enormously believed that it is the
wife that killed him. But the good thing about it is that
the same people saying it, God hears them and would definitely
judge everyone. So, widows should not be depressed by that.
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