THE STORY OF MY LIFE: Episode 1

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My name is Abdulrahman Muhammed Mustopha, Am from Offa the second largest commercial city in Kwara State; this is how i ended my career and everything that matters to me at the age of 31.

Like i said earlier, my name is Abdulrahman, i was born some 31 years ago in Offa, Kwara state. Growing up was just like every normal child. We are just 3 with my parent, am in the middle and i have an elder sister who is 3 years above while am four years above my junior sister. I learnt from my parent that the distance between me and our last born was a bit much just because they were not ready for another baby because of financial difficulties, they even contemplated at a time not to have another baby after me due to their financial incapability then but since the pregnancy came in a mysterious way (The pregnancy was already four month before my mum realized she was pregnant and they had no other option than to leave it as abortion is totally against our faith).

The question that begged for answer was how were they doing it during that four years of no pregnancy before they gave birth to Nimat is what i don’t know because i know my father will never support family planning because of his religious believe and he will never use condom. I guess he used to eject his deek whenever he is having sex with my mum because i couldn’t explain it but who am I to ask how they did it way back. All in all, we assume Nimat was born by mistake but there was no regret.

My family was just an average family, we are not rich neither are we poor. My father who was a state civil servant make sure we lack nothing and my mother who was a trader in Owode market make sure she support my dad whenever we need anything or lack something in the house. It was a happy and homely family envious of everyone in our community.

We grew up in a staunch Islamic house, in fact my mum used hijab likewise my sisters while we were growing up. My father makes sure we all combine our western education with Islamic education as part of our growing up. After coming back from school in the afternoon by 2pm, the next point of call is our madrasa (Arabic school) from 4pm till 7pm every day. This means that we only have two hours of rest everyday from 2pm till 4pm before going to Madrasa.

Even our weekend that is supposed to be a form of a break for us is always tight, madrasa is between 8am-2pm on Saturday and Sunday but the other hours of the weekend that suppose to be free for us is not always free as such as my dad always make sure we stay indoors, either reading our book or reading the holy quran.

All i can say is that our house is like a military barrack as there was no absolute freedom, the fear of my father is the beginning of comportment. You will never want my father to meet you engaging in unwanted behaviour as you will be done for. We all fear our dad like something else but irrespective of that, we still love him as most times he was our confidant even to me that is a guy. We prefer our dad who is so hard on us than our mum that is soft hearten.

We were provided with basic necessary things as our parent prefers to go on with hunger for our optimum satisfaction. Our education (Both western and Islamic) is total priority to our parent and combination of both shaped our humble beginning as we grew in our community.