ContraCostaTimes.com | 11/24/2005 | Mother’s legacy inspires Raider
ALAMEDA - Raiders first-year linebacker Isaiah Ekejiuba was cruising around the campus at the University of Virginia one day three years ago. He spotted an ad in the school paper, the Daily Cavalier: Football players wanted. Open tryouts.
Ekejiuba responded to the ad, made the team and soon found himself a foreign player, in a foreign land, playing a foreign game. He was fast, big, strong and aggressive, but, lacking experience, he landed on special teams….Isaiah Ekejiuba was born in Benin, Nigeria, 24 years ago, the fourth of five children. He has been on the move ever since. Africa, China, England, those are but a few of the many places he traveled to before his family settled in upstate New York a decade ago.
It was there that he harnessed his athletic talent. He excelled in soccer, basketball and track in high school. Then he heard about this thing called football…
and who was this man’s mother, that he traveled the world?
Felicia Ekejiuba grew up in a country surrounded by women far less fortunate than she. War, hunger, poverty, rape, oppression, she witnessed it all too often. The plight of African women in particular and Third World women in general instilled in her a desire to bring about change.
Her learned ways became her greatest weapon. She graduated with honors from the University of London and later added advanced degrees from Harvard and Cambridge. She was the head of the sociology and anthropology departments at the University of Nsukka in Nigeria before landing at Colgate in New York.
She died at 65 in 2003 but not before leaving a worldwide legacy as a champion for women’s rights. Her role as the head of the African division on the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) took her to the far reaches of the world in search of equality and justice for women.
“We want women and men to walk side by side as equal partners in the development into the 21st century,” Felicia Ekejiuba said at a news conference in 2000.
How does this man Honor is Mother? by continuing her work.
She was Isaiah’s mother, role model, provider and friend. Schoolwork came before television and other things. Your mind is your greatest asset, she told him.
“She played a huge role in our lives,” Isaiah Ekejiuba said. “She taught us a lot about her work ethic. … She was all about academics before everything else.”
He has his mother’s picture on his cell phone. That way, he is sure to see her several times a day.
He also honors her by continuing his studies toward an electrical engineering degree and being conscious of ways to advance women’s rights.
A real Momma’s Boy. A True Alpha Male.
