‘My Mother Was Married To Her First Husband For 20 Years Without A Child Before She Got Pregnant With Me’ -Ebenezer Obey

Evangelist Ebenezer Obey, who turned 75 on Sunday has revealed that before he and his sister were born, his mother, a hardworking cloth seller was married to her first husband for 20 years and never got pregnant.

In the exclusive interview published by The Guardian, titled “Ebenezer Obey marks 75th birthday with music, foundation and training Institute” he narrated the story of his birth, growing up in Idogo, a farming settlement in Ogun State, spoke glowingly about his mother, whom he love more than his father, among other issues.
So, the family of the man called my mother’s family and spoke to them.

 ‘Well, they have both tried for 20 years, no issue. While we love Iyawo, we want both of them to go their separate ways and try their luck’. They want their son to marry another woman and they want my mother to go. So for a woman who loves her husband, it was a shock, and that was too much for my mother to bear. And when my mother’s relations saw her situation, she was crying, all the time, they told her to go to Idogo and hide her head. Her two elders brothers were living in Idogo then. That was what took my mother to Idogo.

 “On getting to Idogo, my father proposed to marry my mother and God answered their prayers. The woman, who never got pregnant before became pregnant with my late sister, then myself. My father later left Idogo. He wanted my mother to go with him but my mother said, ‘no, Idogo is a place where God covered my nakedness, when they said I couldn’t have an issue.’ So, she stayed there. But the fact is that my mother was coming to Lagos for maternity care (while pregnant with me) because at the time, there was no hospital in Idogo. And that was why I was born in Lagos at Mercy Street Hospital. By birth I am a Lagosian and immediately, my mother took me back to Idogo. I grew up in Idogo, schooled in Idogo; my everything, music everything, career, started there. That is why I say that I am a Nigerian. God has given me the whole world as my territory. My parents are from Ogun State, both of them from Abeokuta. I was born in Lagos, taken back to Idogo and grew up in Idogo. That is my story.