YOU are the wife of the popular Reverend (Dr) Felix Omobude and your name ‘Abiola’ is obviously of Yoruba extraction. What is the story behind your background?
I would not say that I am purely Yoruba. My father is from Delta State, an Urhobo man. My mother is from Ikere-Ekiti. We all grew up in Lagos. My father was strict; he refused to tolerate anything that he never liked. Should you offend any of them, you go in for it. We cannot blame them because that was how best they knew how to train us. We had youthful exuberance. We wanted to do things our own way but to them it was disobedience. It was for them like an affront.

As a young lady, you must have had a set of criteria that you felt the man that would marry you must have. Did you find all these in your husband before you agreed to marry him?
Yes, I had. Most definitely! As a woman, one is expected to have. All my brothers were tall. So, I was forced to look for someone who was tall and big. I had always wanted to marry someone who was an engineer. He must of necessity be learned and loving. My father was very caring. He did everything to ensure that we were educated and properly taken care of. He made sure we were comfortable. One’s upbringing has a way of affecting one’s imagination on how one’s future would look like. My father had a car to take us around as children. We went to church in daddy’s car so I looked up to all those.

So when you met your husband, what then happened?
But when you become a Christian, something happens that alters your priorities. That is the dividing line. As a Christian, you begin to ask God on whom to marry and all that. When I became a Christian, I could not give God any criterion. I just wanted somebody who would love God and take care of me. At salvation, what would be driving you would be different. Your priorities would change. I wanted somebody who would be addicted to God. When my husband came to propose to me, the thought of someone being like my father or brothers was no longer there. When he came, we were already in the same church. I was in the choir and he was already pasturing. We usually saw each other and greeted one another. He would ask after my welfare and then one day, he said he wanted to see me. I said it was all right. He then told me the reason why he wanted to see me. He said he wanted me to be his life partner. I told him I had heard and I walked away.

I prayed along with a Christian sister who was my friend. I told her to pray for God’s guidance. One of the things that got me afraid was that my husband is from Benin. My parents, especially my daddy, did not like Benin men. I was thinking on the way to break the news to my dad. My elder brother was a student and a Christian studying at the University of Benin then. I told him and he asked us to pray that God would touch my father’s heart. We prayed and after some months, I told my dad.

He looked at me and told me that God had already showed it to him. He was not a Christian then but he insisted that God had shown him and that he would not be an obstruction on the way of my marriage to my husband.

When he told you that he was to go into full time ministry, didn’t feel like kicking against it considering the fact that he had a lucrative job?
I already knew that it was what God wanted him to do. Then, my husband had the opportunity of going out of the country on scholarship to study. He told me that this was what God was telling him. So I told him that he was not going anywhere. Perhaps God knew that if he had gone on that scholarship, he would not have been able to give himself to full time work. I told him to pursue whatever God had told him.

As the wife of a church founder of such magnitude, you have the huge responsibility of attending to women of varied capacities. What are the challenges that you are usually face?
There are women coming from the different strata of society. Some of them are more educated than you. Some are older than you; some have diverse experiences in life; some have passed through very painful experiences in life. God is then asking you to minister to them. There are those younger than you. God demands that you lead them and shepherd them. It would require the grace of God. How do you minister to somebody who is old enough to be your mother? Some of them are older than you in the faith. It will take God’s grace and hand upon your life for you to be able to counsel such a person.

The grace of God is important. He that brought you into the ministry will always give you an edge over them. He would give you a word of wisdom. It is not easy because some of them would want to discourage you but God will always give you a word that would cause them to submit.

About some years back, while your husband was outside the country and you were here, you were reported to have been kidnapped. What really happened?
For security reasons, I would not really want to go into that.

But how did God deliver you?
I was about celebrating my birthday when it happened. People were fasting and praying; I was equally in the mood of prayer and fasting. I was asking God for greater things in my life. I would not say that I did not have a feeling that something was about happening. But I could not understand. That day, I felt prepared but I did not know what was coming. It was as though God had prepared me. God energized me in the spirit man so that I would be able to absorb it. I was not taken off balance. He used that experience to strengthen my faith. About 10 p.m. before that incident occurred, God gave me a word. I was reading and reciting the verse of the Bible that God put into my spirit. It was that verse that I was reciting when I was taken. God had told me that on that day, I would praise his name. All I could do was to praise him. I had a programme already prepared for youths on Friday and I was telling God that I must be at that programme. God is always awesome in our trials. I never knew I was so elevated. People both within and outside the country prayed for me. I wondered who I was to have deserved such treatment as I was being prayed for all over the world. God said that He had to bring me out. He did it in his own way.

Are you saying God used it to elevate you?
Yes that was exactly what he did.
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