So Many Lessons Intending Couples Can Learn From The Ekwuribes As They Share The Secrets That Sustained Their 29 Years Union

Sir Robert Uzomba Ekwuribe, a journalist and former Secretary General, Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Abia State chapter, will, on May 18th, 2020 celebrate 29 years in marriage with his loving wife, Lady Helen Olejuru Ekwuribe, having wedded on May 18th 1991.

In this interview with SunNews, the Director of Information in the state’s Ministry of Lands, Survey and Urban Planning, President-General of Okauga Nkwoegwu Improvement Union and traditional Prime Minister of Egwuleke Autonomous Community, and his wife, mother of his three children, share their love story and the secrets that have sustained their union.

Enjoy below…

How did you meet each other?

Husband: I met my wife at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, in January 1983. She came to study English Language, while I was studying Mass Communication. She was in her first year while I was in my third year in the university.

When we came together, we did as friends. It was a boy-girl relationship and we never believed that we were going to get married. But midway into the relationship, we discovered that we had a lot of things in common. One thing led to the other, and we got married.

And, so far so good! She is like a sister to me because we do not have any girl in our family. We are four boys and because I was the first in the family, she came in as a sister and a daughter to my late parents. I want to believe that God has been merciful and very kind to us.

Wife: We met at a social party; we never planned to marry but coincidentally, we found interest in each other. We were in the same Faculty, but he was two years ahead of me. He read Mass Communication while I read English. He started questions like: ‘where are you from?’ ‘What is your name?’, etc. That first day, I refused to open up to him. After the party, we parted company.

How did you come together again to become husband and wife?

Wife: The first day, he came for a visit to my hostel, I brought out my album. He saw picture of me carrying my niece’s child and he asked me if I had a baby before coming to school. I said yes. That scared him and he ran away. I did not even know that was the reason why he did not come again.

It was much later, during one of the long vacations that he came around where we were staying and discovered that the baby he saw me carrying was really my niece and he revived his interest in me. In my third year, when he had left school, the relationship experienced a little lull. There was no phone then, so there was no means of communication. But after my youth service, we revived it and started talking about life-time relationship.

You said that there was a gap, how did you people close the gap?

Wife: We were all living in Owerri. When he told me where they were living, I would always want to visit. Once in while I would go around there to know whether they were really living there because I always wanted to be sure of what I was doing. After my youth service in 1988/89, we started talking seriously about marriage.

By this time, we had gotten a job as auxiliary teachers and it was during this time that we wedded. After the arrival of our first daughter and first son, he got a job with Abia Newspapers and I had to apply for inter-state transfer and join him.

Does it mean that you people married as two auxiliary teachers?

Husband: Yes, at Christ’s Church, Owerri. We wedded on May 18th 1991. And, lived there almost without anything you can call property but we had hope that it shall be well one day. With a salary of about N385 a month if I look back today I have all the reasons to thank God for his mercies and reasons to love my wife the more.

When she joined me at Umuafai area of Umuahia where I lived, she joined me in one room, not one room self-contain, but one room in a public yard. She did not abandon me for the rich that were everywhere then, but stuck with me through thick and thin.

What were the secrets that sustained your relationship?

Husband: The secret is that we are always together. Each time I want to go out, we go out together. Being together, not hiding anything from one another really helped to strengthen our relationship. Any day a man or woman discovers that there were things that are hidden, it becomes difficult to patch up and pick up the pieces.

Wife: The secret is that I have so studied him to the extent that I can tell you what he can do at a particular time and circumstance. When he is tensed up, you just have to give him time until he calms down. He is open and tells me everything.

Even if there are visitors, I don’t need to prod him to get details of their discussions, for anything that he wants me to know. And, if for any reason he forgets anything, he would always come back to give me details of it. So that plain truth is always there in his lips.

If you come to tell me what he has done, I will tell you whether it is true or not and at the end of the day, it will turn out to be the way I said it. There are things you say about him and I will stand to say that it is not true and at the end of the day, it will not be true. He is plain.

What makes him/her tick as a husband?

Wife: Physically, I like trim men, though he is sometimes cantankerous and troublesome, yet if I want anything from him, I know how to go about it. And I know when he is happy and when he is not.

Husband: Some of the outstanding qualities that attracted me to her are these. She is very humble and homely and straightforward. Whatever she doesn’t want to do, she will tell you, that she would not do it and pressing her to do it will be very difficult.

She is not psychedelic where you will be looking at one thing, and will be seeing another thing. She is natural. And because I am also a homeboy, one who likes things that are natural, having grown up in the village, she caught my fancy. I couldn’t see another replica of her in this whole wide world. God just made us for each other and it is great.

Were there opposition from any quarters, either from your family or his and how did you manage it?

Wife: Of course there were. Naturally, when you want to do something or go into a relationship like marriage, people are bound to react and give their advice. The oppositions came mainly from his side. His people complained that I was too skinny and may not be able to give them what they want in terms of child-bearing.

But when the children started coming, it doused their fears about my ability or inability to bear children. The truth is that he does not hide anything from me, and I don’t hide anything from him. So if you don’t want me to hear anything you are going to tell him, don’t tell him because definitely he must tell me and it is the same thing with me. So we are like identical twins in our marriage.

On my own side, my senior sister whom I was living with complained that after training me, I should have waited to help others instead of rushing into marriage. But looking at it the other way, I know that there is time-lag for women, so I didn’t listen to my elder sister and her advice. He too did not listen to his parents. He said that he had made his choice and his choice is final.

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Husband: It is quite obvious, there were oppositions. Even when one brings in a beauty queen, some people are bound to oppose such relationships for reasons known to them. Sometimes it is part of the test for true love in a relationship.

The Bible says that if you fall in the day of trouble, your strength is small. Satan can use some close relations to oppose your marriage, when he sees that the future of such marriage is bright. When you bring in a beauty queen into a family of four men and their parents, there may be one thing that may not strike for one or two of them.

In her case, she was quite slim. She has added weight now. Thirty years ago, she was slimmer and my mum’s female friends were coming to ask about her stature or physique, asking whether she would be able to bear children.

But because my mum knew me and that whatever I stand for is final, she did not confront me with such complaint. As a person, they accepted her the way she was because they saw in her a level of humility.

What has sustained your marriage all these years?

Wife: The point is that I like socializing, it may not be for what to eat or drink, but I like sightseeing. Whenever he wants to go out, he would inform me ahead of time and before he comes back I would be waiting for us to go out. Being together is like oil that lubricates the wheel of our relationship. If I am very busy at home and he is unable to ask me to come, he would call me to say that I should not worry that he would be coming back.

This thing that made your relationship what it is, is it still there or have you left some parts of it behind as a result of age and time?

Wife: No! It is stronger now particularly now the children are about to leave us, having graduated from the university.

Husband: It is stronger because it is one of the marriage vows we took, to love each other for better or for worse. To me, the marriage is getting sweeter and stronger, particularly now that we take out time to do certain things for each other’s benefit.

The children are watching and since there is no school where marriage is taught, we have to be life examples to them. What they learn from us is what they will practise in their own family; so we have to be good husband and wife because it is to their own benefit.

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What pet names do you call your wife or husband when you are in good mood?

Husband: I call her Lyn, a name I carved out from her name, Helen, or when I am extremely happy and want to tickle her, I call her ‘Baby’, and to make a joke out of it, just to tell me that she is grown, she will in turn call me ‘Bomboy’, and we will all laugh about it. But when I am not in good mood, I call her “Helen!, Helen!” and she would realize that all is not well.

Wife: I call him Uzo, the short form of Uzomba, his native name. Uzo means “Road”, and because through him, I have seen a good road ahead of us, having come this far in marriage, I like to call him “Uzo.”

Is marriage a bed of roses?

Husband: No never, When I listen to men who say that they don’t exchange words with their wives, I begin to ask: is this possible with two different persons coming from different backgrounds? It may not be possible for them not to quarrel.

The issue is, if the understanding is there, when you quarrel, you make up. Even Christ while He was here on earth, was not pleased with all that He saw and then He voiced out His displeasure. That is the way I look at it. If you resolve issues, marriage is going to be a bed of roses for you. The most important part of marriage is that there has to be humility and understanding.

What advice will you want to give to those that want to marry for their marriage to work?

Husband: They will need to look up to God first for their marriage to work, because without God, it cannot just work. In those days when we got married, there was nothing like going to test for genotype, blood group etc, God guided us.

With God, somebody can say, ‘this is my wife’ and, it will come to bear. If there is no love, there is no marriage. Couples will need to accept each other the way they are, not saying that they are emulating this marriage or this couple. They should not.

Wife: In those days, we were not close to the Bible as we are today. I will ask the spinster to keep praying to God and if it is His will, something will snap and the man will be there for her. And then, if you want to marry and the man is a smoker and you don’t like smoking, don’t go in, because the man would say; ‘for your sake, I am going to quit smoking.’ It is a lie; it does not work.

Whatever you don’t like in a person, don’t think that you are going there to change it. Whatever you want is what you look out for, whatever you find in there, you take it because marriage is not a bed of roses as my husband had said earlier. But, first try to find somebody with whom you are compatible. If you like truth, find someone who will always tell you the truth, not somebody who would tell you otherwise.