Tobiloba Ajayi a lawyer and author living with cerebral palsy gives an insight into her life and her new book – INSPIRATION in a chat with Adetorera Idowu .
The word INSPIRATION may make a generic meaning until you meet this lady, who redefines that word in every sense. Those with forlorn hopes may draw strength to forge ahead and those who think they have seen adversity may rekindle hope.
It would have been an irony for a person born with a disability that has no cure to talk about inspiration, but Ajayi is indeed a different breed and has jumped every hurdle and overcome every limitation that her body and societal stigmatization have placed on her. Today, she has become inspiration to people around her.
Sitting across the table with Ajayi, one is instantly warmed by her charm, wit and grace as she tells her story in the most articulate way; stringing them so meticulously and exuding intense passion as she talks about her new book and how she hopes to influence the world one person at a time.
Born at a time when there wasn’t much information available to Nigerians about cerebral palsy, she was treated as an outcast. “It was a big taboo to take your child out if your child had cerebral palsy” she said, “they were going to look at you like you were cursed from your village or something”
But that didn’t deter her as she today armed with a resume that many able bodied women do not have. Ajayi, the fourth child out of five children is a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria with a Master’s degree in International Law from the United Kingdom. She has also worked consistently in a Non Governmental Organisation for over four years.
She is devoted to giving enough information that would change people’s perception about cerebral palsy and other physical deformities.
“When the society begins to change, the government will follow the trend of the society. If the government doesn’t follow the societal trend, they will have nobody to govern,” she said.
It was this passion for change that influenced her inclusion in team of Nigeria vision 2020 on disability matters and the drafting of the Nigeria disability law that had been with the senate for years. The Lagos State disability law was also drafted by Ajayi and a few colleagues. The availability of this law is a major victory for her.
“I remember the day I went to the governor’s office to pick up the first copy before the final passage,” she said with a wide grin, “I sat there looking at it, saying to myself I can’t believe we actually have this thing and it’s actually done. When it was finally passed it was as if I won a lottery.”
She sees herself not as disabled but differently-abled and is making changes in her world. As someone who abhors injustice, she decided to pick one area of injustice which is disability law and deal with it. “You can say I’m partial to disability law because obviously I have a disability, so yes
I’m emotionally attached to people living with disabilities in Nigeria because life can be extremely difficult for them. So I’ve decided that one thing that I will always talk about is disability law and the injustice of not just the system but of man’s inhumanity to man”.
She supports the cerebral palsy centre with some of the proceeds from her book.
Though the study and practice of law came naturally for her because of her deep hatred for injustice, a burning desire to do more, led her into writing. “I asked myself, is this what I want to be doing for the rest of my life? And the honest resounding answer was NO! So I went back to God and I said, I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life, so what would you want me do? And I guess writing is the answer.”
Thus, she began her journey into the world of writing, starting with a collection of inspiring poems that were stirred by her everyday life and with INSPIRATIONS she hopes to not just motivate, but break away from the long-held notion that sees poetry as an elitist genre. With writing she believes she has finally found her passion and her legal profession is now something she does on the side.
“When something’s a passion it no longer feels like work,” she added with a bigger grin on her face.
Drawing the title of her book from “Job 32:8, it says there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty gives him understanding.” She believes the book will cater for the need of both young and old.
Despite the struggles she faced growing up; she displays such abiding faith in her country and sees Nigeria as inspiration. In her words, the country inspired her writing. “I wrote this book while I was working full time in Lagos, Nigeria. I didn’t publish it until I left the country. I wrote bits of it in traffic and bits of it on the move, at my desk at work.
Nigeria can be inspiring, especially when you look at the things that we have to put up with, day in day out and somehow you keep going. It can be as frustrating as it is inspiring.”
Even though she was originally born in an orthodox church, this lawyer-turned publisher wasn’t always a firm believer in God. She found Jesus during a crisis period where she almost took her own life because she didn’t see “light at the end of the very dark tunnel.”
For her, Christianity was about having the right buzz words and memorizing scripture by heart. An epiphany brought her closer to God and helped her to make sense of the words she had memorized. Her walk with God thus begun.
She believes that her major flaw is her mind. “My mind can be a weakness because if I go down the negative spiral I can become very defeatist. On the positive side, I can do anything and this is why I have been able to jump all the hurdles that have been put in front of me throughout my entire life.”
She is an advocate of making the most of what you have and joyfully recounts the story of her friend who was on a wheel chair after suffering a spinal cord injury and whose major fear was that she would never get employed. Ajayi advised her “Go create a job” and two years later, the lady became an employer of labour.
Speaking to a group of visually impaired students who complained about the lack of Braille textbooks, she also told them of a classmate she had. A blind student who despite the dearth of Braille textbooks, would put his siblings on rotation to dictate to him and he would Braille his textbooks all on his own. Ajayi believes that disabled people should rise above their disability and stop throwing pity parties. “That’s what I always say to people with disabilities, you need to look beyond what you can’t do and look at what you can do. There’s always something you can do. Leverage on it.
“Yes you are stuck with this disability but can you move it on? When you rise above your disabilities, people stop seeing it and I’m a living example of that. I have friends today that if you tell them I have cerebral palsy, their reply would be “oh that’s true” it’s a forgotten fact because they’ve stopped seeing the disability and they’ve started seeing me.
“The me who will rival them in class, they’ve started seeing the me who’s the published author, they’ve started seeing me who gave them a run for their money in law school because I did not allow the disability to stop me.”
Ajayi is making continuous effort to reach people and inspire them. She currently speaks to parents who have children with disabilities and she is making progress. Some of her friends would now rather take the ramp than the stairs because it is more accessible. She concludes that she doesn’t need a million people audience to make a difference, but would inspire her world, one person at a time.
Ajayi’s life is a confirmation of the quote by Walt Disney that “The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all”.
