By Amobi Ogum 

Lady Christie Nwamalubia Ogum was born on September 25, 1947. 

If she had stayed on, she would have been 75 years today. But God called her home early, on December 12, 2014, at the very young age of 67. Mummy left with a very big part of me, and my life has indeed not been the same since I received that bit of news and rushed home. 

It will never be. 

In my tribute to my mother during her funeral, I promised her I will celebrate her for the rest of my life because she deserves it. I have tried to do that, and will keep on trying. Through the Godwin & Christie Ogum Foundation, we shall continue with our efforts to touch the lives she would have loved to touch, especially the girl-child and widows. 

She was the quintessential mother you could have, and I still marvel at how she could switch so effortlessly between showing me love one minute, and delivering a brain-resetting knock on my head the next minute! Perhaps, if it had been showers of love all the way, I wonder how much useless I may have turned out, considering my level of what my people will call nti ike.

Mummy was as dutiful as she was industrious. A Fellow of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, FPSN, she attended almost all their annual conferences all over Nigeria. I remember our early visits to the Transcorp Hilton (then known as the Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel) Abuja, and other top-of-the-range hotels in Kano, Lagos, Enugu, Bauchi, etc. Upon her return, before the sweet scent of those lovely places wears off, Mummy will change gear and head to her farms! I hated that part. But that was who she was.

Mummy rose through the ranks to become the University Pharmacist, but once duty calls, she would remove the toga of office and dig into the trenches. As a very senior member of the University community – she was once a member of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Governing Council – my mother will travel to Onitsha to buy women wrappers (abada), which she retails to her friends and colleagues. She will process cassava and sell garri, then dress up for a meeting with the Governor’s wife. She will go to clean the church on Saturday morning and mount the pulpit as a Lay-reader on Sunday. 

She was just incredible! 

My mother was a strong support beam to my father, the late Professor Godwin Enwelum Onyemaeke Ogum, FNSA. As a professor who rose to become the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, and also a long-reigning Community Regent at some point, he needed a strong and stabilizing figure to take charge of the home-front. Mummy did it so effortlessly that I look back now and wonder how she coped. I still remember with nostalgia the big pots she used for cooking Sunday rice and the number of relatives (and non-relatives) that passed through their tutelage. She will host church councils, professors, traditional rulers and their cabinets, and always smile through it all. Little wonder eight traditional rulers came together and crowned her Omenyi, in recognition of her effusive hosting skills! 

•Ogum writes via [email protected]