Polio Priesthood My Way: The Making of the Legend

By Abimbola Adewumi Solebo

Life has thrown some hard knocks at Rev. Dr. Abimbola Adewumi Solebo (Nee) Jekayinfa, she was smitten with infantile paralysis ‘polio, before she was two years of age, which resulted into a lifelong partial loss of the function of her right leg. According to her mother, it was a terrible time in the milestone of her life. And this was just the first in the series of positive and negative events of her personal journey in the first fifty years of her amazing life. Rejection, discrimination, adversity which came as a result of polio was one thing that she had to face.

This harrowing experience with polio redefined her life and made her the ‘wonderfully complex’ person that she is today. At a very young age, she found solace in the word of God, in Psalm 27: 1-14 she learnt that you are who God says you are, and disability is just a thing of the mind, she also learnt that God is able to pick her up even when others abandon her and that God is able to keep her safe, and set her high upon the rocks of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9780244522285

Book preview

Polio Priesthood My Way: The Making of the Legend

POLIO PRIESTHOOD MY WAY

The Making of the Legend

by

Rev. Dr. Abimbola Adewumi Solebo (Jekayinfa)

Copyright

Copyright Abimbola Solebo © 2019

eBook Design by Rossendale Books:

www.rossendalebooks.co.uk

eBook ISBN: 978-0-244-52228-5

All rights reserved, Copyright under the Berne Copyright Convention and Pan American Convention. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Oracle of God titles can be purchased in bulk for educational, personal, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use for more information, please contact www.stores.lulu.com/oracleofgod

Scriptures noted KJV is taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover design and typeset by Abimbola Adewumi Solebo (Nee) Jekayinfa.

www.wix.com/jekalix/oracleofgod

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED BOOK

Oracle of God unto Nations:

A call to Prophetic prayers for Nations

(Published September 2011)

DEDICATION

Dedicated to Jehovah El Elyon http://ldolphin.org/heb/hs357.gif http://ldolphin.org/heb/hs345.gif http://ldolphin.org/heb/hs351.gif http://ldolphin.org/heb/hs354.gif http://ldolphin.org/heb/hs362.gif http://ldolphin.org/heb/hs354.gif http://ldolphin.org/heb/hs340.gif God the 'Most High’ who has the whole world in His hand.

To my parents:

Late Pa Ruphus Adeyeye Oladokun Jekayinfa                                                 (March 21 1932 - March 21 2014). And Chief Mrs Comfort Abiola Jekayinfa (Nee) Adeleke.

To my Siblings:

Adebayo Jekayinfa,

Funlola Ojelade (Jekayinfa), Dolapo Dairo (Jekayinfa),

Yetunde Adebisi (Jekayinfa), Titilola Kuteyi (Jekayinfa).

To my children:

Matin Oluwaremilekun Solebo, Oluwatomisin Mathew Solebo, Michael Okikioluwa Solebo and Malachi Fadaka Solebo.

These were the ones that bore with me, the pain and shame of stigmatisation that goes along with my living with disability as a result of polio.

FOREWORD

Abimbola Solebo has written an exciting, even an emotional, account of her perseverance and living with disability to be the enviable achiever she is today. She contracted polio at a very early age, enduring the challenges that go with disability through courage, determination, and support of her ever caring parents.

Growing up in the Nigerian environment where the disabled is stigmatised, pitied rather than be associated with. Abimbola shares scary experiences of discrimination that can only be imagined by many.

Hers was one environment where the cause of disability can easily be attributed to the evil machinations of others, rather than some medical deficiencies and cure quite ignorantly sought through the intervention of some witch doctors or so-called religious miracle healer. Abimbola takes us through her experiences and how agonising they could be.

To have achieved in life as much as Abimbola has, acquiring degrees from prominent universities as well as having four healthy children of her own, can only be attributed to exceptional courage, daring, and determination.  That she is also the active and enterprising lady she is; is victory to the will of God the Father Almighty.

Having been privileged to have read and profited from this emotional account of coping with disability for close to fifty years, it is with great enthusiasm and humility that I commend this important book by Abimbola Solebo to all, not just those suffering from one disability or the other but also to those who care about humanity in its entirety. I decree that this book be on the shelf of every library in the world.

Anthony Akinola

Oxford, UK,

(7th August, 2019)

INTRODUCTION

My Story Matters

There is a story behind every glory, my experience in life therefore matters a lot, as I share it other people’s horizon is expanded. The story of my life matters, it is my signature and no one can tell it better than me, it is my identity thus it is uniquely mine. It is the story of my extraordinary life of living with disability as a result of Polio. It reflects on the remarkable interplay between the positive and negative events of my life, and the extraordinary mix between polio and priesthood that have characterized my life.

Mine is a story of victory over disability and adversity. It will provide comfort and encouragement for anyone with any form of disability or anyone going through any form of adversity in life.

I was an active, outgoing child doing the normal things children do, before I was diagnosed as having polio at the age of one or thereabout. Polio never strikes without leaving a scar; in my case it left me paralysed from my neck down to my toe, for a period of 9 months, resulting in a lifelong partial loss of the function of my right leg.  This prognosis was the first in the series of the positive and the negative events of the journey of my amazing life. 

This harrowing experience with polio had a major impact on my life. Living with polio or any form of disability came with its ups and downs. My life was redefined, and it brought into my life rejection, discrimination, abuse, bully and various forms of adversity because of the physical disability that came along with it.

Even though many other people also experience ups and downs, but many people still have the ability to do what they want, when they like, but living with polio or any form of disability can have its limitations. At times, I get very frustrated by not being able to do things other people take for granted, such as walking unaided. Sometimes I think to myself that I should be grateful for what I have and can do because I could be a lot worse off; at least I can still walk a little and can do some things for myself. Nevertheless, every disabled person likes their own independence (so do I), so you find it is quite frustrating when you have to depend on others. Living with polio affected my social life. It has reduced the number of friends I should have had. This is because not everyone is willing to associate with a disabled person. This gets me down at times, but over time I have come to deal with it and made the best out of things and count my blessings.

Life Is Unfair

Once upon a time, I questioned God wondering why life has being so unfair to me?

-   Why has Life thrown so much hard knocks at me?

-   Why did God not remind my mum to complete my polio vaccine as a child?

-   Why should I be smitten with infantile paralysis ‘polio’, at that early stage of my life? 

-   Why should I be the only one in my family living with polio?

-   Why should my life be redefined by polio at that early stage of my life?

-   Why should my wings be clipped by polio, so early in life?

-   Why can’t God just heal me once and for all from polio?

-   Why shoud my life be characterised with rejection, discrimination, abandonment and bully?

-   Why should second disability (Post Polio Syndrome), return into my life again, with all that I’ve already gone through with polio?

I wondered how I would survive, make it in life and achieve what able bodied people are achieving in life.

With Post Polio syndrome that has set in at a later stage in my life, how do I survive my old age?

With all these various questions thrown at God, he made me realise that you never succeed in life if you accept that life is not fair.  Even if life is unfair to you, you must persist in other to succeed.  You can't give up; you have to keep on fighting against that unfairness you’re facing.

Looking at the phrase; life is unfair for a moment.  The phrase in itself is self-contradictory.  The word life in the phrase is all inclusive.  It means life for everyone, ‘life in general’.  Then when you use the word unfair, you are speaking of an imbalance.  So, when you say life is unfair you are saying life is equally unfair to everyone.  Meaning that unfairness manifests itself in various forms, and in my case unfairness manifested in form of polio.

In reality life is one of these three things: Unfair, fair and better than fair. What you become in life depends on who you are, your circumstances, your birth, your skills and talent, your genetics, most of all, depending on that four letter word: ‘GRACE’.

Just because you have been unlucky in the past doesn't mean you will be unlucky in the future.  The one thing we can count