My earliest memories of mum were of me being a very clingy child and never wanting to leave her side. This usually resulted in a two-year old me bolt… - Beatrice Aboyade

Mum was a disciplinarian though not in the physical sense – as to the latter at best she might use her slippers, but the truth was she was no dab hand and couldn’t beat anyone to save her life! We would usually just pretend to cry so she could let us go, whilst we ran off to have a good laugh.

Mum was extremely generous and would constantly beg us, despite our protestations, to let her know if we needed anything even till she breathed her last. She lived life on her own terms. She did it her way. Mum, it’s so long, but not goodbye. You now belong to the ages… Requiescat in pace.

Without consciously realising it my mum was my first female role model. Seeing her just get out there and doing it meant I never once thought of myself as a disadvantaged female. She gained her Ph.D in Literature in English after her first three children were born. She became a professor (one of the first five female professors in Nigeria) and reached lofty heights all of which I took for granted and thought was the norm; indeed, as I grew up and entered the world of employment it was a rude shock to realise that the reality was far different for many women. By then it was too late for me to think of myself as anything but able, unhampered by the little detail of being female. For that I am thankful.