EXCLUSIVE: WHAT LIFE HAS TAUGHT ME AT 50 SAYS MRS TOYIN ADEGBENRO, WIFE OF LATE ONDO COMMISSIONER FOR HEALTH
... As she speaks on her life, and how she had been coping for upward of 2 years.
Talk of one active and vibrant social media personnel and mathematics guru in Ondo state and Mrs. Oluwatoyin Adegenro's name will be mentioned. This woman of style and educationalist is the pretty wife of the late Ondo state commissioner for Health and Chairman / CEO of Crown Hospital, Akure, Dr. Wahab Adegbenro who during his lifetime was a frontline politician and philanthropist in the sunshine state. She is also the conveyer of Awesome Bevy, a social media platform that brings women together.
In this interview, with Princess Adeola Shittu, she opens up on her life at 50 and how she has been coping in the last 2 years of her late husband's demise. Enjoy it!!!.
Congratulation on your 50th birthday, briefly tell us who Mrs. Oluwatoyin Adegbenro is.
Thank you, I am Oluwatoyin Adegbenro, a trained Agricultural Engineer who found herself in the teaching line; I am a mathematics teacher and a businesswoman. Aside from that, I love writing, I like to write about times and put things right in society. I attended St. Beneadette private school, Abeokuta. My parents were teachers and this accounts for why I was enrolled in school at the very tender age of 2 years old, it was very rare then. I later attended Federal Government College, Wukari, Gongola state now Taraba state. I was there for a year due to the northern crisis and my parent felt it was not safe for me, so the following year I found myself at Federal Government Girls College, Sagamu. After my WAEC I proceeded to the Federal University of Technology Akure, {FUTA} where I studied Agricultural Engineer, I met and got married to my late husband in Akure and the union is blessed.
How do you feel clocking 50 years?
I feel elated, I feel happy and thankful to God for the Grace and opportunity to witness another year and above all I feel am still 16 years old.
In the last couple of months, when you realized you will be 50 years, what was running through your mind?
There is no much difference, that you are born, you are growing up and you do what you have to do and the day keeps going and within a twinkle of an eye, you close your eyes and you open it and you are 50. The question you will ask yourself is where has all the days and years gone, this is what I have been asking myself, it's like everything happened so fast and have not been able to wrap my head around it, to me it looks like I was 40 a few years ago and now am going to be fifty (50) and by the grace of God before I know what is happening, I will be celebrating 60, 70, 80 and many years on earth.
Looking back, any regret at 50?
I won’t want to say there are regrets, but then looking at the benefits of hindsight, there are some things if I was allowed to do them now, considering what I know now, I will do them differently but I won’t say I have regrets because every aspect of one's life is a learning stage and we all learn from our mistakes and I might have picked one or two lessons from every moment of my life and rather than regret, I will pass those lessons on to those younger than I am, so they can learn from it and they don’t make the mistakes I made.
At 50, I have learned to be good, I have learnt that life is not all about you alone rather we have people that have been placed in our life who we will meet along the way, that will help us in making and getting to our destination in life and also there are some people that we are also going to help by lifting them for them to also get to their destination in life. Also, I have learned that we are not going to be here forever and the impact we make on people’s lives is what will determine how much we will be remembered. So in all, I will say one should live his / her life well and we shouldn’t let a day pass without one putting a simile on the faces of people.
At 50, what legacy do you want to be remembered for?
It's very simple, I just want to be helping people. To always put smiles on the face of people in my little way, making them laugh more and helping people to improve their standard of living from the little corner of my world. And I want to make an impact on the life of those who are closer to me.
2 and half years without your husband, what do you miss in him?
Hmmm, I miss everything about him, he was everything to me and no day passes without missing him. He was a nice man and a caring husband to me and a good father to the children. But in all, I thank God for the life he lived and his impact on life.
How do you feel and how have you been coping since his death?
How do I feel, hmmm it’s not a good feeling and no one prays to lose his / her beloved ones, it’s like someone who has a pet that he/she loves so much and the pet has been part of one's life and you see it every day and suddenly the pet dies, you will feel bad, now imagine a husband you have been living together for 23 years, I didn’t feel good and I still don’t feel good, at a point I was almost running into a depression but thanks to my children, they were able to draw me out of the path of depression, as they noticed it quicker than I thought. And I will say, I've been coping because God has been faithful to me. I honestly will not have expected that I was going to cope this much because at the time I lost my husband, I believed all was gone, I couldn’t imagine living without him, I felt there was no way I would survive It, but here we are 2 ½ years down the line, I am living, I am coping because God has been good to me and the family he left behind. God has sent people to me and used people to be more of a family than friends and knowing that God is God, I will keep coping.
It is too early to ask but are you willing to give marriage a second chance?
(Laugh) I am glad you said it’s too early to ask such a question. Hmmm, everybody deserves to be happy and if am depriving happiness in things that I do daily, then the idea of remarriage will not even come in. As we speak, it’s the least of my worries and it’s not something I've given a thought to, but then who knows what God has in stock; don’t forget we are like a pencil in the hands of our creator. God has a plan for everybody he created, he has a plan for us but who knows maybe in the next 10 years from now when am 60, I might give it a taught, but my philosophy is "never says never".
You are no doubt one of the most respected and influential teachers in the sunshine state, why did you choose to teach and not other professions?
I didn’t want to go into teaching, I graduated as an Agric Engineer; I had no plan for teaching because my parents were teachers. My late father retired as a school principal and my mother retired as a secondary school teacher. In those days, the salary of teachers was not something to write home about and this denied us access to some necessities of life as a child. And I didn’t want my children to go through that, so I decided I was not going to teach but somehow I found myself in the teaching line. All thanks to my late father-in-law of blessed memory, who inspired me and makes me give teaching a thought. On this fateful day, my father-in-law came to visit as usual, then I was into the Yoghurt Business as a major distributor but now I produce it. My shop was close to home then, the Old man loves me so much, each time he passes through my shop to see his son and he will stop by to say hello. So on this day, he was passing and he saw me busy with my yoghurt, they just delivered my goods and he just looked at me and said “I was told you went to school, that you are even a University graduate, I said yes, then while did you use your University certificate to sell water” Baba saw what I was selling as water and he believed, how can a graduate be using her certificate to sell water while you are supposed to be in an office working. He went further to say, supposing you have an event now, is it, this your bicycle boys that will go with you to your town, even if it’s just a teaching profession, go and do something with your certificate and with that, the idea of teaching was born. A few days after my encounter with my father-in-law, my late husband immediate elder brother, Surveyor Henry Adegbenro, the immediate past Surveyor General of Ondo state called me and after discussing with him for hours, he asked me if I will like to teach and I said yes and today the rest is history. That was how I ended up as a teacher and I must tell you that, there is no profession I will have love to do other than the teaching profession.
I teach mathematics just like my late father. It will interest you to know that in any school my Dad was being posted to, immediately after he resumed, the teachers taking mathematics in senior classes will be advised to take another class while my father takes over. Even when he retired, after 3 months of staying idle, he went back to the school and told them that he cannot do without teaching and that they should allow him to teach mathematics without collecting any money, he then volunteered to teach regular classes.
Why Mathematics?
Hmmm, it will interest you to know that Geography was my best subject but Mathematics was my favourite subject. In my WAEC, I had A1 in WAEC, I had a passion and natural talent for mathematics.
Is there any plan to go into politics?
Sure, there is no doubt I love politics and it is something I will love to go into fully in order to affect lives. Politics is all about service to humanity and you will agree with that to truly affect the lives of the people positively, the best way to go about it is by joining politics that way you can influence the laws that are made, you can influence how the government is run because you are an insider but here we are today. I will take the steps as they come and once the opportunity presents itself, I will make use of it and you will see me in active politics.
How do you compare your jobs as a teacher, politician and mother?
It's all about privatizing one time, you privatized what you want to do and you don’t let anything interfere in your home, you differentiate your time and multitask yourself and you are good to go. The time you are meant to be in class, the time you have to spend on your children you do so, the time you want to spend on your business, you keep it there and you keep it there and that you need for politics, you give it and you will observe that you are just busy 24 hours of the day.
If you are not teaching or engaging with your business, what do you do to relax?
I am on my phone, either on Facebook or am on WhatsApp with the awesome bevy.
You are the convener of a powerful WhatsApp group that's it across who is who in the state and across the globe, what brought about "Awesome Bevy"?
Awesome Bevy is a woman's social group on WhatsApp group but we meet physically sometimes but we function more online. In 2017/2018, I was medicating and reflecting on the activities of a woman daily, they take care of the family, the home front and their businesses and they hardly have time for themselves and these are one of the reasons many women go into depression. The men have enough time for themselves than the women. They socialized, and they have time to discuss with friends and network but 90% of the women don't even have time to do that. This was what gave birth to Awesome Bevy and it started with a hang-out on a Christmas day, I posted the invite on my Facebook page and a few women keyed to it and after the event, I felt we can't just depart like that till the following year, that why can't we have a platform that will give women an opportunity to share and express their innermost fear, what they are passing through without anyone judging or condemn them. We advise one another, we help in leading the women on the right path and we give support to each other. Those are the motivations behind the group, today we have over 200 professional women in the group. Awesomite Bevy is all about sisterhood and enjoying each other's company. We also give financial assistance to those in need.
Any plan to start an NGO?
No, but we are putting all efforts into the group to continue to reach out and help in solving issues among the women.