Posted by By Godwin Ifijeh on
It was a very tearful Minister of Education, Mrs. Chinwe Nora Obaji, who spoke to newsmen yesterday at the Lake Chad residence of Mrs. Bridget Braimah, Director Education Support Services in the Federal Ministry of Education, who was returning from the 33rd General Conference UNESCO in Paris.
It was a very tearful Minister of Education, Mrs. Chinwe Nora Obaji, who spoke to newsmen yesterday at the Lake Chad residence of Mrs. Bridget Braimah, Director Education Support Services in the Federal Ministry of Education, who was returning from the 33rd General Conference UNESCO in Paris.
Incidentally, both Mrs. Obaji and Braimah were classmates at Queen's School Enugu. They were also admitted to the University of Nigeria Nsukka, where Braimah read French and Obaji, Animal Science. They did their Youth Service the same year, but never saw each other again until this year when Mrs. Obaji was appointed Minister of Education.
"I met her in the office and initially we did not recognise each other until we started talking", the Minister said.
"She was not just a staff to me, she was like a sister and I was happy she was the Director of Education Support Services and the only female Director we had in the Ministry. When it was time for us to go to Paris for the 33rd General Conference of UNESCO, she had to go because it (National Commission of UNESCO) is under her own department. After talking about the various roles she played at the conference, where Nigeria was re elected into the Executive Board of UNESCO, the Minister said, when other African countries "ganged up against Nigeria and I went fighting to get Nigeria back on board she (Braimah) was there to give me some advise and help me through that campaign. So I just don't know what to say. I couldn't believe it when I learnt that she died. I left her in Paris and asked her to come back with all the documents, photographs, everything about the general conference. The whole reports she was carrying them on that flight", said a shattered Mrs. Obaji.
To the family, the Minister said Mrs. Braimah died at God's appointed time and urged the family to thank God for the successful life she led. I think God knows it all.
Visitors to the Braimahs' home were more mournful than the immediate family, who received their visitors with such impressive strength and courage.
Mr. Moses Braimah, husband of the deceased, had worn a new dress to welcome his wife of 29 years home. She had been home sick, so everyone at home was as eager as she was to have her back home. While acknowledging that his wife is irreplaceable, Braimah added that she was destined to die that way.
His words: "Well it has happened. What will be will be. It is tragic for us, traumatic for us, unexpected for us but what do we do? We have to gather ourselves together again, start our lives anew and forge ahead. She was many things in one. First of all she was a mother, a housewife, a civil servant par excellence and to cap it all, she was a Christian. A Catholic to the core.
One of her daughters, Anne, said her mother was a go-getter, a recreational person, and an educationist to the core who was just beginning to rise to the peak of her career.
Her eldest child, Gloria sensed her mother had died when the news of the aircraft's disappearance was broken midnight on Saturday. "When I got the information around midnight, my Bible fell open miraculously and it opened to Isaiah 57:1-2. It says the righteous are taken away to be preserved from the evil that is to come. I wept but I had this peace in my heart that God has comforted me and I am holding unto it with everything I have got. I just want to say for me and my family and for every one that is going through a tough time right now that the Lord is the one who is sovereign. Sometimes we may not understand what he does, what, how or when He does what He does. But the ultimate is that He knows all things and He gives and takes for his pleasure no matter the circumstances. The bottomline is that all flesh is dust. It doesn't matter if anybody can't find what they want to find. My assurance is that we will get through this. The Lord Himself is giving grace, comfort and strength to make it through. I am confident of the fact that we will get through this.
"I want to say thank you to everyone that have, one way or the other given us some information, the media. It was quite traumatic to hear conflicting information from everywhere but we resign ourselves to God's will", she said.