BY OMIKO AWA
‘I think age is in the number… I don’t feel any
difference; I feel the same way I have been feeling.’
‘If everyone of us can just add a little effort to
help the less-privileged or needy in our society, the world will be a better
place for all.’
TODAY
marks another circle in the life of Bishop Peace Okonkwo, a woman whose life, ministry and soft heart have not only
imparted on her generation, but also put smiles on the faces of many; giving
hope of living to destitutes and raising women across the globe to be their
best.
For someone who has joined the Club of
60-years-olds, the drums would have massively been rolled out and the city
painted red. However, for the sake of those who lost their lives in the
ill-fated DANA plane last Sunday, the celebration will be of low key, as a mark
of honour to the departed souls.
Born in Obosi, Idemili
North Local Council of
Anambra State, Peace, the first child
of her parents’ eight children, has only a faint idea of whom her father was, as
he died while she was still a child, making the care of the family to rest
solely on her mother.
Going through such
childhood experience, where they had to struggle to survive, the now wife of
Bishop Mike Okonkwo, the founder of The Redeemed Evangelical Mission (TREM),
Lagos, vowed to make the society a better place for the less-privileged. This
mission, she pursued through her various programmes for women, children and the
youths.
Despite being 60, Peace could easily be
taken for a lady in her 40s; she looks young and exhibits qualities that
attract people to her.
Still thinking of
her radiant appeal, you ask how does she feel being 60?
“I
think age is in the number,”she says, amidst smile. “I don’t feel any
difference; I feel the same way I have been feeling.”
But you
are not looking your age what’s the secret?
“It’s God,” she says.
“A lot of people have asked me to go back to
my mother, to find out my actual birthday. I think it is the grace of God that
has made me look young because I have been travelling ‘back-to-back’ from place
to place. It’s that grace that has sustained me, though I eat healthy and do a
little exercise like walking, for I can’t do weightlifting.”
Looking back at 60, what are those things
you regret in life?
Sounding depressed, almost in a low voice,
the lady says, “I regret my not
knowing the Lord early in life. But on the other hand, I still thank God that I
married Bishop Okonkwo, because he has been the one urging me on, telling me, I
can do it. He brought me up in the things of the spirit.”
Being the wife of a Bishop and the founder
of TREM, a church that has over 160 parishes in 10 countries across the globe, Peace
admits it is not a bread and butter affair, as there are prices to pay.
“Some of the prices I have to pay is being alone. You
can’t share your personal challenges with anybody else, but God and the Bishop.
People see you as someone without a challenge and look up to you to proffer
solutions to theirs, yet yours are there unattended to. If not for God, I would
say it’s quite a lonely road because there are things you can’t share with
anybody,” she informs.
… Meeting the Bishop
WE met in the Scripture
Union Youth Fellowship. After the Nigerian Civil War, everyone, especially
those from the eastern part of the country, began to seek for the face God and
praying for direction on the next step to take. So, I joined the SU fellowship,
especially because of their music. I love music so much; therefore, it was a
natural choice for me.
Though he was a chorister in the
fellowship, the Bishop was very shy to talk to me about marriage; he confided
in his elder sister, Reverend (Mrs.)
Ilo. Before now, his elder sister had shown some likeness towards me and I do
go to their house, which was a stone throw to the church, to greet her when
going to church.
The first day I set my eyes on him, I took
him for an arrogant person because of the way he carried himself and talked. I
felt he was showing off, having come from a fairly-well-to-do family. So, I
developed some repulsive feeling towards him. But with time, we got over it. When
he made his intention known, I said, ‘if it's the will of God, it will surely
come to pass." And that was where we left it while I travelled abroad for
further studies.
While
she was in England, young Okonkwo did not give Peace any peace, as he bombarded
her with love letters.
“He
was always writing to encourage me in the Lord and to keep our affair burning.
The rest is now history, as I became the wife of Pastor Okonkwo on July 5,
1980,” she recalls with a smile.
How did you feel marrying a pastor then?
“People, including my cousin that financed my
education, were shock to hear me say I was going to marry a Pastor. In fact, my
cousin asked me many times if I was sure of what I was saying; but my answer
remained yes. She said, ‘I hope you would not come to me for sustenance after
marriage.’ But two years after our marriage, she came to say; ‘truly I was sure
of what I was saying and thanked God for it.’ In fact, it is now that I am
convinced that I was hearing from the Holy Spirit then,” she quips.
However, Mrs. Okonkwo reveals: “There were a
lot of suitors coming for me, but I picked him and I thank God for that. At
that time, it was not the vogue to marry a Pastor. People were worried why I
should marry him when there were lawyers and well-lettered men coming for me,
but I told them I needed peace in my life. I came from a very humble
background; my father died when we were quite young and the responsibility of
fending for the family fell upon my mother and aunty, who taught us to depend
on God for all things in life. So, I told them my choice of him, as a husband,
was good for me.”
How did your female friends then see you?
With a beam of satisfaction on her face, Peace
says, “they thought I was crazy;
they said something must have gone wrong with my head — for someone that
schooled in England to come home to marry a pauperised pastor. Then, pastors
were not on salary.”
Aside
from monetary gifts, what other things did he give you?
“Gifts! There was nothing like that, not even a
handkerchief. Imagine, when I was even going back to England on one of my
visits home, he couldn’t afford to give me N10.
Not that he was stingy, but he could not afford it and that’s why he
stops at nothing to shower me with gifts today. He feels there is nothing too
much to give to me now, because I was there when he had nothing.”
She adds, “however, during those teething days,
he kept on writing letters of encouragement, affirming that all would be well.
And on my birthdays, he would send letters that I would read over and over for
hours.”
If you were to relive your life, would you
still choose him?
“Yes, over and over, again and again, because
I don’t like trouble; I am a very peaceful person and he, too, does not like
trouble. I am not used to fighting, I am a very peaceful person.”
… Gathering women for prayers
BISHOP
Peace Okonkwo is the founder of International Women Prayer Conference (IWPC), a
platform she has used to mentor and direct women, especially those with burdens
they can’t share with others, to come out of their closet and lead a normal
life.
She says, “IWPC is a platform for women to pray. We started it with about 10 to 15
women, but the number has since increased to about 4,000 women, in each
meeting. This increase is as a result of women from different places across the
country, who, hearing of the good things God is doing in the gathering, have come
to be part of it. Our number in Abuja has made us to move from the Women Centre
to the Ecumenical Centre that has the capacity to take about 10,000 people at a
time.”
Held once a month, every last Thursday of
the month, from 9am to 12pm, the conference has extended its tentacles to other
African countries such as Cote d'Ivoire, Gabon, Congo Kinshasa as well as
countries in Europe, the Middle East and the US.
“Human
problems are the same everywhere and God has been wonderful. In fact, I have
Volumes 1 to 3 of what God has been doing in the conferences and Volume 4 would
be unveiled on my birthday,” she says.
And the results?
“Oh, it has been wonderful. If you go through our praise report, you'll see how
God has been solving our problems; how people referred to as barren women have
turned into mothers, some mothers of triplets. People have been healed of
different sicknesses and got different breakthroughs,” she enthuses.
Peace initiatives for better society
SEEING how her mother
laboured to provide for her eight children, Peace set up different initiatives
such as Widows Empowerment Initiative (WEI), Rehoboth Homes and Skills
Acquisition Centre (RHSAC), Children Education Support (CES), Orphanage Support
(OS) and others to alleviate the problems of the less-privileged in the
society.
“I know how we suffered while growing up; so,
I hate to see people suffer, especially widows. I embarked on building houses
for widows and street girls because I learnt of a lady who died in a rest room.
Though involved in streetwalking, she had no home to go to; she slept in the
guest room. And when she contacted a disease, she refused to be treated on the
ground that life was not worth living; she was left alone and she died. When I
heard of it, I was touched and decided to embark on providing a home for the
homeless,” she says.
“We constructed a four-storey building in
Ketu for some street girls. We furnished it and as well trained them in
different vocations, so that they can fend for themselves. But those willing to
go to school among them were sponsored by the Privileged Foundation. Right now,
we have about three or four graduates from that group, one of them is even in
our church; she works in a bank and has a car.”
Free Cervical Cancer Screening Exercise
LAST Sunday, the committee
responsible for organising Bishop Peace’s birthday ceremony unveiled its
programmes, which include a musical concert to create awareness and early
detection of Cervical Cancer, raise funds for the free Cervical Cancer Screening
for over 10,000 women, especially those living in the rural areas as well for
other charity projects.
Held at the Expo Hall of the Eko Hotel and
Suite, Lagos, the PEACE (Providing Early Attention for Cervical Cancer
Everywhere) Concert saw A-List
artistes such as songstress, Onyeka Onwenu, the Midnight Crew and an orchestral
group from the Archbishop Vining Memorial Church, Ikeja, thrill guests.
Why Cancer Screening during a birthday period
that calls for celebration?
Peace, in an emotion-laden voice, retorts, “every thing I do is necessitated by
something. Two or three years ago, I went for a seminar and we were shown a
documentary where two or three women die every day of Cervical Cancer. After watching the documentary, I asked God
what I could do to save the situation and He said you can do something.”
Did He say it?
“Yes, in my spirit, not that I heard an
audible voice,” she says. “I later contacted an NGO that for the Pap smear and breast
test for each woman for N1, 000. I shared the vision with my women and they
keyed into it. But with that, I was able to have 500 women tested and those
with the disease treated in Bida, Akure and Ogbunike.
“Turning
60, some women said they do not know what to give me as a birthday gift, as I
would neither accept money nor any gift. So, they arranged to screen more women
for free beginning from the eve of my birthday at the TREM headquarters, Lagos.
After that, we will leave for the rural areas, where we are going with women
that are in dire need of it. They never wanted me to know about it at first,
but on a second thought, they came to me to pray for them so that it would be a
success.”
She continues: “The NGO team is made up of
medical experts. We are bringing them from abroad; we shall be responsible for
their flights, hotel accommodation and others. We have also set up a
train-the-trainer medical team from the church and the women outreach to join
in the campaign.”
Would this not be too much for the church to
bear?
“No, it is not the Church that is footing the
bills. It is IWPC. Even now, we are constructing a Rehoboth Skills Acquisition
Centre at Ogbunike.”
Working to stop kidnapping
and other vices in the rural areas and make people visit their villages without
fears of being kidnapped, Bishop Peace Okonkwo, through the IWPC, hopes to
establish skills acquisition centres across the country, to enable youths and
even the elderly to be trained in skills that would make them fend for
themselves and keep away from crime.
“If you
get the youths gainful employed, they won’t think of crime; so, we are planning
a free skills acquisition training for the youth and any able-bodied person.
This will enable them to be useful to themselves and contribute meaningfully to
the society,” she says.
Drawing
from the reservoir of her childhood experience, Peace is determined to make the
society a better place for all.
She notes, “If everyone of us can just add a
little effort to help the less privileged or needy in our midst, our society and
the world would be a better place for all. The problem is that most of us are
greedy; we want to have everything to ourselves, but the issue is, we are not
going to take anything with us when we die.”
… And a
Bishop
CONSECRATED a Bishop on April 22, 2006, the
proprietress of Word of Power Schools, Lagos, has been recognised with
different awards, which include the Nigerian
Woman Of The Year (2005), The Eastern
Nigeria Role Model Award (2005), SUMA
Humanitarian Support Award (2006), International
AIDS Candlelight Memorial Award (2007), Hope
Award (2010) and others.
With all these recognitions, the Bishop
says, “Be the best in any field you find yourself; work with passion and the
Lord will surely reward you. If anybody had told me some years ago that I would
be ordained a Bishop, I would had denounced it.
“I broke down and wept the day I was
announced a Bishop in the church. I was not expecting it, because my aim is to
do what God has called me to do. In fact, I believe in positively impacting on
lives and making the society a better place to live than in titles or the name
you bear. Though people jubilated on my behalf, I was there crying.”
Why the tears?
“The responsibilities and the knowledge
that I have not gone far with my projects; I’m still trying to make my various
projects better when this came. It was, indeed, a big surprise. I want to touch
more lives. I went to Italy and saw how our girls were streetwalking, dehumanising
themselves. I felt bad.
“Though I ministered to them and they gave
their lives, the fact remains that something must be done to correct the
situation because what these ladies are doing outside is from their parents …
and we need to carry a campaign to them to stop their children from travelling
abroad for this illicit trade. Those are some of the things I had wanted to
devote my life to and not necessarily the title,” she equips.
My love for
Chelsea and Arsenal
WITH tight schedules, one
thinks the Kirkby College, Liverpool, Secretariat Studies graduate would not
find time for leisure, but Bishop Peace has plans for each day.
“I plan my life and after a long session of
activities, I rest to regain strength. When I close from work each day, I
go straight home, sit on the floor and watch lawn tennis on TV. I love games. I
am also an ardent football fan. Though I
don’t know how to play the game, I love it. I’m a strong supporter of Chelsea
and Arsenal football clubs, especially Chelsea
and my favourite player is Didier Drogba,” she says.
And your clothes, any particular designer?
“No, I just try any woman that sews well and
whenever I see anybody with a nice design, I ask who made it and go for it.
However, I have tried somebody like Mafigy and she is good.”
Any
special food
“I no longer eat to grow; I take more of
vegetables and less carbohydrate. I eat healthy, because sometimes, I could
stand for three hours ministering to women. And with that I have to be light,”
she says, a smile lightly up her countenance.
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