BY FUNMI KOMOLAFE
I woke up in the early hours of December 8, 2010 to find five missed calls from our correspondent in Benin, Simon Ebegbulem, wondering why he would call at that hour. I called him at 5a.m. and he said, “ Your friend, Clara, passed on last night”. I screamed and called Mr. Oseni Elamah for confirmation.

So, we lost Clara; the honey of the stinging bee to the cold hands of death.

In his days as president of the NLC, the popular strikes Adams Oshiomhole led crippled activities many times. Aso Rock tenants shivered when the lion roared.

While Oshiomhole walked the streets of Abuja, Lagos, Maiduguri, Enugu, Kano and other state capitals protesting injustice and exploitation , Clara prayed at home. Not many knew that as Oshiomhole waged war against the Federal Government, particularly on the issue of the removal of fuel subsidy, Clara worked quietly with a branch of the Federal Ministry of Information , the same organization that was used to counter the NLC leadership.

She struck a balance between her role as the spouse of the fire-spitting comrade and and her role as a federal civil servant.

But Clara had her own share of Oshiomhole’s troubles.

As the husband told me, in the early days of their marriage, he had led other workers on a strike against the management of Arewa Textile and found himself and his comrades locked up in the cell.

Late Clara Oshiomhole

A heavily preganant Clara had the duty of preparing his meals. She brought it and asked her husband in her usual soft voice, “Adams, is this how we are going to spend our lives?” In his bravado style (apologies to President Olusegun Obasanjo), he told her to take the food away notwithstanding that he was indeed hungry but did not want her to break his spirit.

From then, Clara stood for what her spouse stood for . She was a radical in her own way. Of course, she met Oshiomhole when, as a young secretary, she helped him type his anti-management letters.

I witnessed another ‘bravado’ domestic action of Oshiomhole when we were returning from an NLC programme in Gusau, Zamfara State, and we stopped at their home in Kaduna. Adams had called his wife to prepare food but, by then, we were less than 30 minutes from home. On getting home, Clara said pounded yam was not ready and that we should manage rice. Whereas I accepted her kind offer, the husband declined. To him, it was pounded yam or nothing. So,we left for Abuja. On the way, he asked the driver to stop and we bought roasted corn and ate.

On getting to his Abuja residence, he said to me. “ Funmi, you know I am hungry. I should have eaten the rice Clara offered”.

Anyone who knew Clara would know that her faith in God was unshaken.

She was quite prayerful.

On May Day in 2008, workers carried Oshiomhole up at the Eagle Square. He was then battling to reclaim his mandate. Clara, who was watching at home , went on her knees to pray. When I met Clara in Kaduna, she said she was worried. “ When I saw how they carried him up, I ran to pray that, `God, please don’t let them kill this man”.

Clara welcomed to her family home anyone that her husband introduced as a friend, male or female.

She understood her husband and did fail to point out his shortcomings. Clara tolerated her husband’s limitations. She went beyond what a wife would ordinarily tolerate. She was confident and trusted him.

While Adams engaged in strikes, she made sure the home front did not fail. When a soft sell magazine published a photograph of Oshiomhole and Clara during a holiday, I remember my sister asked me, “So, this your comrade has such a beautiful wife and he engages in so many struggles.”. When I told Oshiomhole, he simply said “there was no connection between beauty and struggle”.

Once I overheard Oshiomhole saying to Clara, who was hosting her father in- law who was ill in Kaduna (now deceased), that she should not worry too much as their family would soon produce two doctors. That collective wish of theirs has been fulfilled. Now, Cyril and Winnie, their first son and first daughter respectively, are medical doctors.

Though Clara died at 54, she had become a mother of two medical doctors, an accountant and two undergraduates.

Clara and Adams had agreed that none of their children would be a trade unionist as Adams put it, “They will serve humanity in other ways”.

On his part, Adams appreciated Clara. Anytime he spoke of “my honey”, he was referring to Clara.

Known for her simplicity in language and style, Clara bore her pains of breast cancer quietly. Even as she went through it , she told me at the Government

House Benin City that she didn’t want other women to go through what she was going through, hence she decided to set up an NGO: Health Foundation for Maternal and Child Care. She wrote the name on a piece of paper and handed it over to me.

I could not meet Clara without talking about Edo politics. She believed strongly that Oshiomhole must transform Edo for the benefit of the people.

“Even if I die, Adams must change Edo for the benefit of the people. Edo has been held captive for too long”, she once said, but I replied, “You will not die”.

When I referred to the influence of the godfather, Clara simply said, “ Your know Anenih is my brother”. It was then I knew Clara was Esan though I had always known she was from a different local government from Adams.

She struggled with breast cancer for about three years but made sure that her pains did not distract her husband from his job.

Clara said she made sure that she cracked jokes with the husband whenever he called her in the United States so much that when Oshiomhole met her in America, he said, “ I never knew it was this serious”.

Clara is gone but she lives in the minds of all who knew her.

She was generous to a fault.

If the dead could reflect, Clara would be proud of her husband’s achievements and point out areas where he needs to work harder. She was very proud of her “workaholic husband” that she told a journalist, “ I have donated him to serve the people”.

As part of the anniversary to mark her first year remembrance, her NGO, Health Foundation For Maternal and Child Care (HEFMAC), organized free breast cancer screening in the three senatorial districts of Edo in addition to the distribution of self examination kits.

Were Clara to be alive to mark her birthday , this is the way she would have marked it.

She would not have been seen organizing a lavish birthday party even in Government House.

Adieu Clara, the jewel of the lion.

Adieu mother of Cyril, Winnie, Janet, Steve and Emmanuel.

Adieu, Edo State First Lady.