My Life: Of Faith in God and Divine Interventions

By Dr. Anthony Ikechukwu Akubue

This book is the outcome of the persistent nudging of the Paraclete in the author to shine the light on God's handiwork in his like. It is in keeping with Dr. Anthony Akubue's belief in giving credit to whom credit is due and his conviction not to let the favors of God to him a well-kept secret. You do the right thing when you light a lamp by putting it on a lampstand, not under a bowl or bed, for people to see. The author finds himself breaking down and crying occasionally, being overwhelmed that the Lord God loves a puny sinner like him. What you read in this book about the experiences of divine interventions in the life of the author will leave you in awe and conviction that God truly exists and is omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent. For instance, who was the old woman walking with a staff in hand that warned the author on September 4, 1968, afternoon to leave the site of a market square immediately, after which the market was heavily bombed and many people were slaughtered?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889605454

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My Life: Of Faith in God and Divine Interventions

Dr. Anthony Ikechukwu Akubue

Copyright © 2023 Dr. Anthony Ikechukwu Akubue

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88960-536-2 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88960-545-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

About the Author

As a professor of environmental and technological studies, Dr. Anthony Ikechukwu Akubue writes with passion on interdisciplinary issues. He has written numerous local, national, and international articles on speaking truth to power, human-centered economics, growth doesn't assist the poor if it does not reach the poor, matters of faith, north-south technology transfer, appropriate technology, environmental degradation, environmental stewardship and sustainability, human diversity and the imperative of peaceful coexistence, and gender-related issues. He is also a critic of north-south technology transfer. A textbook he authored, Technological and Socioeconomic Development: A Third World Challenge, is a required text for the course Technology and Third World Development at St. Cloud State University. He has written chapters in books and won an award for the best article on gender disparity in the Journal of Technology Studies, volume XXVII, 2001.

Catholic priest Father Johnpaul of the Diocese of St. Cloud, Minnesota, wrote:

Dr. Anthony Akubue, I must confess that you are specially created by God. You are so unique in life. You are an embodiment of knowledge, an epitome of wisdom, a prolific writer, am so happy to have you as my role model, a mentor.

Dr. William J. Lacroix, a past chairman of environmental and technological studies department, St. Cloud State University, in recommending him for promotion to the rank of professor in 1996, wrote:

Dr. Akubue is the quintessential professional. Dr. Akubue speaks out on behalf of his discipline, his heritage, his university, his community. He writes, he speaks, he teaches. His foci are local, regional, and national, Dr. Akubue is in fact, a professor. It is only appropriate that he be honored with the right to carry the title of the rank he so proudly and graciously portrays even in its absence.

Like a former president of the United States of America, I believe that whether I am a good man is, of course, for God to judge. I know that I am not as good as my staunch friends believe or as I hope to become, nor as bad as those who resent me assert. I am trying, though, to live and be worthy of the name Christian that we all bear as disciples of Christ. A priest whom I told about the mysterious woman I encountered at Afor Umunya on Wednesday, September 4, 1968, said I was a special human being and, God willing, that he would like to meet me in the future. When I responded that I was only a sinner, he told me that even saints were repentant sinners. There is also the statement that every saint has a past, while every sinner has a future. As long as I am alive, I will keep trying to be a better person with the help of the Lord my God.

I am reminded of Luke 15:8–10, which says, There is joy in Heaven over One Sinner who repents. This statement is reassuring, empowering, and energizing to me as I seek to be saved and not to be praised.

Before I proceed any further, I wish to acknowledge and salute our incumbent king of Ogidi Kingdom, His Royal Majesty (HRM) Igwe Alex Uzo Onyido, Ezechuamagha I of Ogidi and the First Lady, the gracious and elegant Queen Iyom Patricia Nneka Onyido (Ugegbe Eze). There is so much to say about the exemplary leadership of the present monarch of Ogidi. Space, however, restrains me to keep it to a minimum. I believe that at any age, it is not how much you have; it is what you do with what you have that counts. HRM Alex Uzo Onyido, more than anyone I know of similar status, exudes compassion and benevolence in his administration and service to his loyal citizens of Ogidi. What he does in reaching down and lifting his people up is legendary, from his gifts to throngs of citizens of Ogidi of the basic needs of clothes, food, and financial assistance on Christmas Eve, ceremonies in recognition and honor of octogenarians, to the provision of shelter for widows in dire straits. He employs hundreds of citizens in his pharmaceutical company, Alben Healthcare Industries Ltd., in Ogidi, Anambra State, Nigeria. HRM Igwe Alex Uzo Onyido, PharmD, is the chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. He took the name Ezechuamagha I for his title after the founding father of Ogidi.

That said, it would be remiss of me to begin this narrative about my arrival and sojourn on this mortal earth with all the divine interventions and favors God has bestowed on me without starting with an introduction first, however short, of the bit I know about those that were before me who made my eventual arrival on earth possible. I am not a self-made man. It would be an affront to my ancestors created by God and preceded me. Here's my genealogy, however short.

Ezechuamagha (1550), the founding father of Ogidi, beget a son he named Inwelle (1580). Inwelle, in turn, beget a son named Ogidi (1611), literally meaning a pillar of strength, for he was a warrior of great repute. Uru, one of the many sons of Ogidi born in 1643, beget Anugwo. Starting with Anugwo, there are four generations of my ancestors of whom I am very proud.

My great-great-grandfather, Anugwo, had two sons, Edochie and Okocha. These two established Umuanugwo village, which eventually split into two related clans known as Owa and Ama in Uru Ogidi. Hence, Uruowa and Uruama, collectively known as Umuanugwo. Umuanugwo means the children of Anugwo, our great-great-grandfather. My great-grandfather Edochie was the head in Uruowa, Umuanugwo, and my great-granduncle Okocha was head in Uruama, both in Uru, Ogidi, which is the current seat of Idemili North Local Government in Anambra State, Southeastern Nigeria. Edochie had three sons—Onyekwena, Ekesiobi (Onyegbachiengba), and Onyedika. Of these three, only Onyedika retained our original family last name of Edochie. He was known as Onyedika Edochie, and Agbapuluonwu was his nickname. The three brothers were orphans because Edochie, their father, and their mother died prematurely, while they were still young boys. Sadly, Onyedika Edochie was sold into slavery by a group of foreign settlers and high priests in our village, collectively known as Umueze Idemili. They are the high priests of Idemili, a shrine whose name literally means the confluence of water, even though it is a physical temple in their care. It is the belief that Idemili, the shrine, serves to protect the people and wards off evil people and spirits.

Umueze Idemili allegedly sold Onyedika Edochie, a boy at the time, into slavery because he was said to have the behavior of positioning his palm below the curing meat over the fireplace belonging to Umueze Idemili and licking the drops of oil from the meat in his palm. This behavior, Umueze Idemili rationalized, was a sufficient sign that the boy possessed the potential of a thief and a bad person. Seeing their brother sold into slavery, Onyekwena and Ekesiobi ran off to their maternal village of Adazi, Ogidi, for protection and safety. They did return eventually to Umuanugwo as grown adults. According to oral tradition accounts, the ship and its cargo of human slaves, including Onyedika Edochie, that was en route to the New World, as intercepted at sea by a British gunboat and ordered back to Nigeria. On arrival, the slaves were dropped off as freed men at a different location in Nigeria. The narrative is that a man from Umuanugwo village, Ogidi, who was on a trip in Calabar in today's Cross River State of Nigeria, fortuitously ran into Onyedika Edochie there. When he called out his name, the two men, recognizing each other, rushed into each other's open arms in a warm and brotherly embrace. The excitement of the two men, one can imagine, was boundless and emotional. Happy and exuberant as one would be, having found a long-lost brother, the man wanted Onyedika Edochie to return home with him. Onyedika Edochie objected, afraid that the same people who sold him into slavery would be after him and do something horrendous to him. Onyedika also feared the possibility that this kinsman would come back to Calabar with Umueze Idemili to maim and leave him there to die.

The man returned home with the announcement that he had found Onyedika Edochie in Calabar. Plans were made to guarantee the safety and security of Onyedika for his eventual return to Umuanugwo. When a delegation of kinsmen, which included his brother Onyekwena, my grandfather, was dispatched to Calabar to assure Onyedika that his safety and security were guaranteed and to have no fear of any harm back in Umuanugwo, Onyedika had disappeared without a trace, and the neighbors had no idea of his whereabouts. Onyedika Edochie was never seen or heard from again.

I can only imagine how devastated my grandfather Onyekwena and his brother Ekesiobi must have been over the loss of their brother Onyedika Edochie. However, life must go on even after the thrill of living is gone for a long while! Of the two brothers, Onyegbachiengba Ekesiobi was not well-to-do. I met and knew Ekesiobi's wife as Nne (Mother) Siali, a woman who loved and pampered me as a toddler in the late 1950s. Ekesiobi had three girls with Nne Siali, namely Ekwefi, Udumelue, and Ekenma Ekesiobi, all of whom I met and know very well. Ekesiobi and Nne Siali had no male child, a very regrettable fate back then in the cultural setting.

To save the Ekesiobi name from extinction, the tradition allowed a woman to be married as the posthumous wife of Granduncle Ekesiobi. A man with reputable qualities was then chosen from within the village to stand in for Granduncle Ekesiobi with the understanding to father children with the new wife. The name of the new wife was Nwinya Ekesiobi, whom I also knew. The man that was chosen to have offspring with Nne Nwinya, as she became known, was Chief Fidelis Ukonze from our village. I knew him well. He was a good man. Nne Nwinya had Patrick Obiora Ekesiobi, Caroline Udeoku Ekesiobi, Benedeth Oduagu Ekesiobi, Franca Nwugo Ekesiobi, and last birth of a set of twins, Joseph and Josephine Ekesiobi. We referred to them invariably as our cousins. Regardless that they were not really Granduncle Ekesiobi's children, tradition required splitting all the family-owned land in half between all the male children of the four Akubue families and the two Ekesiobi male children. I saw that as unfair, but that is the cultural tradition.

By an interesting twist of fate, this father of Patrick Ekesiobi, Fidelis Ukonze, had a brother whose name was Obizoba Onyiorah. Obizoba married an exceptionally beautiful lady, Mrs. Josephine Onyiorah (née Ezepue). Mrs. Josephine Onyiorah is the eldest sister in the Ezepue family of Ntukwulu, Ogidi, Anambra State, Nigeria. One of the Ezepue brothers, Dr. Julius C. Ezepue, who is a pharmacist in Florida, United States of America, married my baby sister, Patricia Ebelechukwu Ezepue (née Akubue). That marriage was granted a divorce later in the United States after more than three decades of marriage. The interesting twist of fate I mentioned earlier is that Patrick Ekesiobi and his siblings are the real blood cousins of Nwokoye Onyiorah and Ogechukwu Onyiorah, the two surviving sons/children of Chief Obizoba and Josephine Onyiorah.

My granduncle Ekesiobi was not hardworking and always sought the easy way out. He was unruly, reckless, and always running afoul of the law. He was known for his criminal ways and cannibalism. Once, security agents raided his home and found fresh and cooked human body parts. He was arrested and taken into custody, awaiting a court hearing. His brother Onyekwena Akubue, my grandfather, was well-to-do, influential, and used his influence and wealth to win his freedom. Until his mysterious disappearance, Ekesiobi led a life lacking in responsibility and accountability. My grandfather, Onyekwena, was left alone to mourn and grieve over the loss of his two dear brothers and to move on into the future without them.

As I have mentioned already, my grandfather was very influential and wealthy. And from what I know now, he was a member of the council of chiefs who advised the king of Ogidi Kingdom on matters of political, economic, and social affairs of the town. Like his brother Ekesiobi, my grandfather took the name Onyekwena for his last name, abandoning the family name of Edochie. He had a chieftaincy title name of Akuebue (wealth abound) and a social nom de plume of Ochanwu (having charisma). Down the road, his chieftaincy title name became so popular that it even eclipsed the Onyekwena last name, leading eventually to the adoption of Akubue, a variant of the chieftaincy title name, as the family name. Even with this change, I heard my father call out the names Onyekwena Akubue or Onyekwena Ochanwu in what I could tell were moments of reminiscence about his father, my grandfather.

My grandfather had four sons and a daughter. My father, Jerome Chiejina Akubue, the eldest son, Gregory Anyaigwe Akubue, Boniface Nweke Akubue, and John Nwobu Nwafor Akubue. Jerome Chiejina Akubue was born about 1912. The story was that he was so exceptionally good-looking that the guests who came to see him wished for endless daylight to afford them uninterrupted admiring gaze at the baby. It was this sentiment that led to his given middle name of Chiejina, which literally means may it never be nightfall. When his immediate younger brother, Anyaigwe, was born, the Igwe or the traditional ruler or king of Ogidi was visiting the family. To memorialize the birth of the baby boy in the presence of the monarch, he was given the name of Anyaigwe, meaning that the Igwe was an eyewitness to the birth of the child. The other uncles, Boniface and Nwobu, were born much later.

The brothers grew up together in Uruowa, Umuanugwo, in Ogidi. My father did not go very far in his education, but he could read and write in Igbo and English. Education then was characterized with such thoroughness and excellence that pupils who left school after second or third grade were adequately versed in their spoken and written English. He left the village in search of the White man's job in the cities in colonial Nigeria. Due mostly to his education, he was able to secure a meaningful job with the Federal Prisons Department in Lagos, Nigeria, as a prison warden. Until he became familiar with his new environment and