Wife
If I had married someone else, I would have sacrificed my career – Rev. (Mrs) Nwakaego Oyeniran.
Reverend (Mrs) Beatrice Nwakaego Oyeniran is the amiable wife of the General Overseer of the Glorious Liberty Assembly Inc., Bishop M.O. Oyeniran. A manager in one of the nation’s fastest growing banks, she lets KEHINDE OYETIMI into her world and that of her husband. Excerpts: WHAT kind of marriage did you anticipate and how was your interaction with your husband before you got married?
He was my senior in secondary school. He was an unbeliever then. It was not that we were both Christians. But we both got converted before we left secondary school. We were expected to be afraid of our seniors then but he had always been a big brother. We never had any reason to clash in school.
How was your growing up?
My father was an ex-policeman while my mother was a nurse. Father was always in Lagos while we were in Ibadan. My mother took real good care of us. My father would only come home at the weekend. As a policeman, he was harsh most times to us. We were eight as kids—four boys and four girls. My mother would write all our offences from Monday to Friday and report to my father the moment he returned from Lagos. My mother would not beat us since she knew who would deal with us on her behalf. Saturday mornings were not really palatable for us since it was the day we got the rewards for been naughty over the week. We had to submit our books for Daddy to review. Every exercise book that our Dad bought was numbered. Whoever loses a sheet was in trouble. If we did not do our corrections in school we were in trouble. If the corrections were done but were not marked, my father would assume that they were not submitted. That meant trouble. He was a disciplinarian. We were formally Catholics.
Didn’t you have criteria for whoever would fit in the slot of being your husband?
As part of the young ladies, we were never wanted to marry pastors. It is now that people want to marry pastors. Then they were seen as poor people and lazy. I could not imagine what a full time pastor’s wife meant. Until I got married, I viewed pastor’s wives as lazy. We thank God today.