A Birthday Tribute To My Eternal Mother: Princess Christiana Monisola Ajulo, The Iya Ijo Of Christ Anglican Church, Ifira Akoko

Mama mi,

Today the calendar dares to mark another revolution of the sun around your life, yet time itself bows in humble recognition that some souls are not measured by years but by the eternity they etch into mortal hearts.

You, Princess Christiana Monisola Ajulo, are that rare flame which neither age dims nor mortality quenches. At ninety-one, and still counting in divine grace; you remain the living paradox: fragile in form, yet forged in native intelligence, unyieldingly in the furnace of faith, sacrifice, and sovereign love.

You are not merely “my mother” in the borrowed tongue; you are Ma’ami: the matripotent force, senior to all, the living Orisa whose procreative power and ceaseless intercession transcend gender and mortality. “Orisa bi Iya ko si,” our ancestors declared, “there is no deity like Mother” and you have proven it at every dawn.

In the sanctuary of Christ Anglican Church, your knees carved altars from wooden pews, your voice turned hymns into ase-filled thunder, your prayers became the spiritual architecture that shielded an entire congregation. You did not lead by command; you led by Ìwàp?l?; the gentle, perfect character that the Yoruba hold as the highest goal of existence.

“Ìwà l’?wà,” they say “Character is beauty”. In you, that beauty was gold: “Iya ni wura, Baba ni digi.” You carried me nine months in the womb, three years at the breast, and a lifetime in prayer, all while trading, minding the bookshop (TI OLUWA NI ILE!), and raising eight children into Omolúàbí.

Philosophically, you are my living Ifa. Before birth, we choose our Orí—the inner head that determines destiny. Yet a Yoruba mother’s prayer can realign stars. Yours did.

Every midnight vigil you kept, every tear you poured at the altar, every sacrifice that fed us when hunger whispered lies, was an invocation: “Ori inu mi, má ba t’ode mi je.”

You shaped my Orí not with words alone but with lived Omolúàbí—integrity, humility, hard work, communal service and supplications to the Almighty God.

You taught me that true existence is participation: in suffering, in redemption, in the quiet miracle of another day granted. Your only lament was that you could not give more.

Because of you, I understand that motherhood is the first school of Ìwà. You were my first teacher of character, Rabi of law, tutor of values, my unmoved mover of conscience.

Every stand I take for justice in courtrooms and corridors of power, every burden shouldered for the voiceless, carries your signature: the sacred geometry of service you first inscribed in my spirit.

Your prayers remain my armour; your Ìwàp?l?, my compass; your love, my immortality.

I love you, Maami, with a love fiercer than Akoko hills, tenderer than your lullabies, eternal as the covenant between Ìyá and Orí.

You are not merely my mother.
You are the living proof that one woman’s consecrated Ìwà can redeem a lineage, a church, a town, a nation.

Today, as candles burn and anthems rise, gratitude collides with awe. No tribute can repay Ma’Ami, who made me Omolúàbí, yet silence would be ingratitude.

Happy Birthday, my Prophetess of the Pew, my undying Ma’ami.

May Olodumare, who has preserved you through ninety-nine years of storm and testimony, grant you many more—each richer in joy, deeper in peace, brighter in the harvest of souls your prayers have won.

The world rises in salute.
The Church kneels in thanksgiving.
And I—your grateful son—weep tears of joy that only a true Ìyá can understand.

Happy Birthday, my miracle.

*Olukayode Ajulo*
…for the People, because you first taught me the sacred path of Omolúàbí.