Ten months after her husband died, wife of the immediate governor of Oyo State, Mrs Florence Ajimobi, on Monday night, broke her silence, saying she got the opposite of what she prepared for as part of her plans for the reality of life outside government.
Nigerian Tribune quoted Mrs. Ajimobi as speaking during the break of fast with the Comrade Demola Babalola-led executive of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the National Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ) in the state led by Mrs Jadesola Ajibola.
Mrs Ajimobi, who was reputed for her various pet projects including the Educate-a-Rural-Child and Ajumose Food Bank, said she chose to break her fast with the NUJ leadership because journalists were among the people that she and her late husband respected and admired the most.
She said as it was natural with people leaving government, she was prepared for betrayal and hostility, after eight years as wife of the late former Governor Abiola Ajimobi.
But rather than betrayal and hostility, she disclosed that she has been getting recognition and love from the people far and near.
“When you leave office, it is a mixed feeling. Like I tell people, I was really prepared (for life outside office). But I didn’t get what I prepared for. I got otherwise.
“I was prepared for a lot of betrayal and hostility. But I didn’t get it. I am saying this with all sense of sincerity. Every time I go out, I get recognition. I feel love from people. People are still standing by my side. I thank God for that.
“I was not a perfect person (while in government). There is no perfect person. I had my faults. We all have our faults. Whatever mine were, they were faults from the head and not from the heart,” she said.
Reminiscing about her late husband, Mrs Ajimobi, who had observed Ramadan fast with her husband for 40 years that they lived together, said she has come to love the former governor more in death.
“It is not easy. I tell people. I respect and love my husband even more in death. I didn’t know so many things he was doing. But now that I am the breadwinner, I just marvel and I wonder how he was coping without complaining.
“I still said it to my children that their daddy was a great man. It’s not one year (after his death) and I am complaining to my children, complaining in my house. This is somebody I lived with him for 40 years and I never for once heard him complain.
“He was carrying the burden with ease and I say it is not easy to be a man. If there is reincarnation, I don’t want to be a man. I would always want to be a woman and I would always be married to him for as many times as we come back together because he was one in a lifetime, an amazing man.
“He had a good heart. Yes, he was not perfect. He had his faults. But with all sense of sincerity, he was a good man. He will forever live in my heart. I would forever uphold anything he believed in.
“And NUJ is one of those institutions I know he believed in. So, in my own little way, you can always count on my support and also to NAWOJ,” she said.
While promising that the family would look into the request by the NUJ to have a project in immortalization of the late former governor at its secretariat, Mrs Ajimobi pledged to always support journalists in whatever way she could.
Earlier the NUJ chairman, Mr Babalola had requested a project for the memorialisation of Senator Ajimobi either at the NUJ press centre at Iyaganku or on the 30-acre Journalists Estate land recently acquired on Lagos-Ibadan highway.
