ASSISTANT Chaplain, Chapel of the Resurrection, University of Ibadan, Reverend Olufikayo Oyelade, has urged Nigerians to refrain from amassing wealth and struggling for positions unduly, remembering that death which is an inevitable end will come whenever it will come.
Stressing that nothing will be taken away by anybody whenever he dies, the cleric harped on the vanity of life and the need to invest positively in the lives of others while delivering a sermon, Friday, at the burial of the daughter of the Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, Iyetade, who died on December 28, 2013.
Iyetade died at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan at 48.
At the service attended by many sympathisers including the wife of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Chief Bola, Governor of Rivers State, Mr Rotimi Amechi, former governor of Cross River state Mr Donald Duke, wife of Ogun state governor, Olufunso Amosun, elder sister of the deceased, Moremi Onijala, among others, the cleric described Iyetade as a person who lived a fulfilled life and was taken away by her Creator, having completed her mission on earth.
Drawing from the the Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, Oyelade said that death was a reality as quoted that there was time for everything: “a time to plant and a time to uproot; a time to sow and a time to harvest”, stressing that God had planted a seed of life (soul) in Iyetade and had harvested it when it was due to Him.
“Death is real; it is therapeutic, and there is nothing anybody can do to stop it whenever it will come. This world is like a market where everybody comes to buy and sell at different times. Each will go at different times. If this is real, why do we continue to amass as if we would never go one day? Our sister left the market at 48 when she had concluded what she had come to accomplish”, he said.
While asking the sympathizers not to grieve over the death of Iyetade, the Chaplain drew from the Book of Revelation, Chapter 20, stressing that however long anybody lives on earth, he or she would have to live longer in the life hereafter. Whether it would be in heaven or in hell was however left for the congregation to choose, he said.
“Death is like a bus stop on the journey to a destination. For us to live is Christ; and to die, gain. Without Christ, whatever one acquires on earth will be left behind one day and the heaven would have been lost”, he sermonized.
He urged the family members, friends and acquaintances not to grieve over the demise of Iyetade, believing that her children: Elizabeth and Adeoto Omolaolu are veritable legacies she had left behind.
He prayed that God should preserve the lives of the two children left behind by the deceased, to lift the name and good deeds of their mother.
Apparently because of tradition of the Yoruba people, the parents of the deceased were not present at the burial service, ditto for many of the contemporaries of the Nobel Laureate, who must have seen themselves as the deceased’s father, who must not witness such an event.
The remains of the deceased were later interred at the Ultimate Gardens along Ibadan-Lagos Expessway in Ibadan, Oyo State capital.
