41 years ago, Pa Uzoukwu married his heartthrob, Esther, in the traditional way. As a Christian of the Catholic faith, he had hoped to have the church wedding as soon as possible, especially since he had a gentleman’s agreement with his father-in-law.
Pa Uzoukwu, a native of Egbeoma in Oguta Local Government Area of Imo State, left the shores of the country before the Nigeria civil war.
He found a home in Cameroon and he stayed in that country till the war ended. At the end of the 30-month battle, the septuagenarian felt he had come of age and needed a wife.
As was the practice among the Igbo then, Uzoukwu, in choosing a wife, looked homewards and found his help mate in an Igbo girl whose parents equally resided in Cameroon.
Uzoukwu, now a father of 10, (three men and seven women, seven of them university graduates), then performed the traditional marriage rites. On August 17, 1970, he took Esther as a life partner.
Although it was a blissful day for both families, something was still missing. The father-in-law was not happy with the way his daughter was betrothed to Uzoukwu and he made this known in unequivocal terms. As a mark of prestige and in consonance with his Christian belief, the man had hoped that whoever would marry his daughter would take her to the altar for a church wedding.
So, when Uzoukwu indicated that he was not going to do the church wedding immediately, his father-in-law did not fail to show his disappointment over that decision, which was antithetical to his belief. Although he allowed his daughter to go with his son-in-law, it was not until he had given a condition to the young man that a church wedding must take place in the near future. Uzokwu accepted.
Determined to carry out the wish of his father-in-law, Uzoukwu did not only give the wedding issue a serious thought, he also made plans to get the dream realized as soon as possible. The plans were on when Uzoukwu’s business suffered a serious setback and the wedding was put on hold.
But on July 13, that deadlock was broken and the 41-year-old dream became a reality. Uzoukwu and his wife were joined in holy matrimony alongside 99 other couples in a mass wedding held at Christ the King Church (CKC), Aba.
In a chat with Daily Sun after the colourful ceremony, Pa Uzoukwu enthused: “Today is one of my happiest days on earth. It is a day my dream of 41 years became a reality.
“When I performed my wife’s traditional marriage rites and wanted to take her to live with me, my father-in-law objected, insisting that we must do the church wedding also. It was only upon my strong promise that his wish would be done that he allowed me to have my way.
“It took me 41 good years to get this task accomplished because as I was planning how to do the wedding, my business suffered a serious setback and there was no money to continue with the idea. I had to put it off but not without the issue remaining a recurring decimal in my mind.
“At the time my financial standing improved, our children had come of age. So, my wife and I decided that the money we would have spent for the wedding should be used to train our children. We decided to keep the wedding pending.”
Today, seven of Pa Uzoukwu’s children are university graduates while some are living abroad. One of his daughters, an accountant with one of the blue chip companies, died last year, however. But the Septuagenarian said the joy of the wedding had helped in cushioning the sad memory of the lady’s death.
Pa Uzoukwu wasn’t the only ecstatic one. His wife, Esther, and their 23-year-old ninth child, all expressed gratitude to God for making the dream of their breadwinner come through.
Pa Uzoukwu was even happier that he had been fully admitted into the Catholic Christian family, and that he could now partake of the Holy Communion.
In a sermon during the solemnization service, which holds at least once in three years, Revd. Fr. Joachim Anumba admonished all the couples to eschew bitterness and rancour, and to show love to one another.
Fr. Anumba stressed the need for the newly weds not to be quick in passing judgment on their partners but to exercise patience in whatever they do in order to sustain the marriage.
He urged the couples not to hide anything from their spouses so that joy would remain in their households.
“This life is humorous. If there is no humour in your life, you are heading for doom for this life is too short and precious.”
He said with the wedding, the celebrants had fully been admitted into the Catholic fold, stating that before now, they were regarded as sinners who did not enjoy full rights in the church as other members.
Perhaps what appeared to have motivated Pa Uzoukwu into insisting on having the wedding was the discrimination he said he had suffered in the hands of fellow Christians, who saw him as a sinner who was not worthy to be found within their fold.
To worsen things, he and others, who were not properly wedded in the church, were not allowed to take the Holy Communion while their marriages were regarded as illegal.
Fr. Anumba gave vent to Pa Uzoukwu’s assertion. “They (the new couples) have to receive the sacrament of holy matrimony without which they will not be allowed to participate in Wednesdays’ sacrament of Holy Communion and other related church activities.
“According to our doctrine, if a man and his wife are not wedded, they are not Christians and their children are not legitimate because they are born out of wedlock. And if any of them dies, no Catholic priest will attend or officiate at the burial ceremony,” he said.
An ardent member of the Catholic faith and a Christian father, Michael Obi, told our reporter: “This type of wedding comes up once in a while and it avails those who could not wed properly the opportunity of wedding the Christian way.
“Without this type of wedding, even if one’s marriage has produced 20 children, one will not be recognized as a Christian father or mother as the case may be and such a person has no right whatsoever in the Catholic Church.”
Obi further stated that once a man had walked down the aisle with his wife, he would be faced with some rules. One of them is that he must not marry another wife. And if he goes out of his way to circumvent that aspect of the Catholic doctrine, he would go back to square one.
Pa Uzoukwu’s wedding was unique in so many ways. It had the trappings of royalty. Aside the razzmatazz that went with it, the holy matrimony was performed by no fewer than 11 priests. The sun was very bright even though the wedding was held in the middle of the rainy season.
According to Obi, the clement weather was attributable to the sacrifice of prayers that had been made to God.
Sources
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