AKURE ,the Ondo State capital on Tuesday witnessed a serious gridlock as motorcycle riders Popularly known as Okada riders, took to the streets in their hundreds to welcome and felicitate with Chief Olusola Oke SAN in a motor cade to the International event and Cultural center, DOME, over the Thanksgiving ceremony in appreciating God for the ghastly auto crash involving the legal luminary.
The accident which nearly claimed his life along Ore -Okitipupa road few months ago left no one dead.
DOME ,the venue of the Thanksgiving was filled to its capacity leaving many guests standing when well wishers stormed the five thousand capacity hall.
However ,in his speech and appreciation to God for sparing his life in the ghastly accident, Chief Olusola Oke SAN appreciated God for the mercy he got to have been alive during the whole scenario that left him in the hospital bed for Months.
Party chieftains across boards stormed the venue to honour God in his life for the rear privilege and grace upon him.
Oke ,who used a section of the bible from the book of Lamentations :3 22-23 to open his speech.
The Auto-crash; My Testimony
Lamentations 3:22-23
22 It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. 23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
Life is garnished with both unexpected vicissitudes and unpredictable viciousness, and man exists within the labyrinth as an endangered specie. In the more than six decades of my existence, I have had harrowing experiences that challenged the whole essence of my being, and ruffled my feathers, until the last one that, once again, vigorously tried to shake my faith in God but rather ended up strengthening it, and put my family members and friends on the edge. In it all, God sustained me still.
The journey I embarked on to the southern part of Ondo State, on Friday August 25, 2023, was like any other ones I made in the past, but turned out to be a memorable watershed, as I had a very close shave with death. The Bible is clear that God presides over the dispensation of mercy, and the opinion of the Yoruba is plausible that it is only those God keeps that are free from hurts. Simply put, it was God that gifted me with life, a day death almost made itself an inevitable compulsive choice for me. Guy de Maupassant has effectively captured the fickleness of life when he opines that: “How strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed for one to be ruined or saved!
Due to the recklessness of a road user, a vehicle coming from the opposite direction, and dangerously overtook another vehicle at a sharp bend, needed to escape having head-on collision with the vehicle I was travelling in. In an attempt by my driver to avert running to it, he manoeuvred the vehicle, very swiftly but reasonably timely, but the dislocated vehicle that we were trying to escape, in an ordinarily inexplicable way, hit our vehicle from the rear, forcing it to somersault about three times.
In the process of this auto gymnastics, I was flung out of the vehicle, leaving my driver, personal assistant and the security detail trapped inside. By the time my driver and others managed to squeeze themselves out of the wreck of the vehicle, I was lying flat at the middle of the road. Mercifully, there were no vehicles driving pass the very busy road at that moment, and God saved me from being run over and crushed to death. The questions then are; how did I avoid being run over by another vehicle; why did I not hit my head on the tarred road; why did I not suffer spinal cord injury but for fractured bones and broken ribs, if not for the abundant mercy and divine invisible hand of God that was involved?
Just before my driver and others got out of the vehicle, it caught fire, and got razed down after their miraculous escape, while I was moved away from the middle of the high way to the road side. Our evacuation from the accident scene to the Trauma Centre in Ondo by good Samaritans was a major medical step to halt our drift from life to death, even though there were no noticeable life-threatening physical injuries sustained.
After the initial medical attention in Ondo, I was moved to Akure for observation and preparation to Abuja for concentrated clinical and family cares. The devil did not give up on the need to precipitate complications when my treatment lasted, but God summarily silenced him. By the good involvement of the God that cures, wonderful efforts of medical doctors that care, and committed family members as well as friends that provided needed emotional and physical supports, my bones were strengthened, my body was renewed, and my emotions were recalibrated, and I am sufficiently sound today.
No doubt, the transitional treatment periods were humbling, but my spirit was strong, reinforced by the prayers of my troubled family members, and best wishes of my teaming friends and associates. In most profoundly unique manner that signifies the partipation of God, my doctors acknowledged that my recovery protocol was far ahead of medical expectations, for which I am also very grateful to my Maker.
Consequently, for about four months, I was shut out of my delighting law practice and socio-political engagements, but God gave me a second chance of not only enriching the two opportunities for social-political and professional commitments, but an uncommon grace to continue to positively impact humanity.
Yes, I passed through the shadow of death, I feared no evil, for God was and still with me, and, continuously, my head shall not lack oil.
I use this opportunity to appreciate my dear wives and loving children, extended family members, friends and professional associates, political leaders that visited and supported financially, men and women of God, party members, gentlemen of the press, distinguished well-wishers, good people of Ondo State and other Nigerians, for their profuse ceaseless prayers and well wishes.
As you join me to thank God for His mercy over my life, I am trusting God for His continous manifold protection over us all, in Jesus name.
Ebiniseri mi maare o, ibi lo ranmi lowo de. E se ibi teti bere, e se ibi te bade, a dupe o Jesu, ibi tee n muwa lo!
May God be praised forever!
Olusola Oke, SAN
