Emeka Duruigbo

I started school in uniben in November 1988. Earlier in the year, I had lost my elder brother, Tony. He was a young lawyer who succumbed to leukemia at 27. Coming to uniben, I was determined to keep a low academic profile. As is common in our part of the world, there must be some diabolical persons or forces behind the death of a young man, especially a professional and an academic super-achiever.

Excelling in school could be a way for me to open myself up to a similar fate. Throughout my stay in school, nobody in my house ever saw my result, because I did not want to scare them. My performance in the first semester examination was very good, but I realized I needed to allow down to avoid standing out academically. Malaria, or some other sickness, helped with that in the second semester.

In the first semester of my second year, one of my elder brother’s close friend, Mike, had stopped at Uniben on his way from Lagos to Port Harcourt, , where he lived. Mike was the family doctor and friend of another uniben student, back in Port Harcourt and head stopped to see her. Interestingly, those were the pre-GSM days, but people are still able to contact each other effectively. I did not know that Mike was coming but we ran into each other somewhere around Hall 3. He stayed with me for that night. Together, we want to see the other student, to take her out. She invited us to her cell meeting, nothing that we could go out afterwards so, the three of us went to the meeting, organized by the campus fellowship then know as word foundation and held in a members room in Hall 1. A female student preached. Roughly a year before that, in my first year in school, this same student -Maria- had come to my room to preach, saying that the Holy Spirit sent her because she doesn’t always go wherever to preach. I did not respond to the alter call than in Hall 2. But on that day April 5 1990, I did respond in Hall 1. Shortly after that meeting, I joined LCC.

The salvation experience was so real that I could literally feel some light chains dropping or of my body at the touch of my hands. I felt am indescribable peace at a time I had not even know that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy ghost.

I still recall vividly that one of the first prayer I made for myself, kneeling by my bedside, in the early period of becoming a Christian, was that God should give me that best result, but also that he should not if it would take me away from serving him. That semester I had that best result. Eventually, I graduated as the best overall graduating student from the faculty of law. That performance has opened unbelievable doors for me and taken me to places that I never even dreamed of. Yet, I am convinced that none this would have been possible if God had not freed me from the great of man, dear of the enemy, fear of success. And it all began with surrendering my life to him and allowing him pilot that affairs of my life.

Emake Duruigbo is an Associate professor of law at the Thurgood Marshall school of law, Texas southern University in Houston,TX,USA, where he also resides with his family.

‍