Obook.ng Weekend Story – The Expressway Couple

About fifteen years ago, I and my family had to make an important journey from Ibadan to Ilesa. We planned returning on the same day.

We left Ilesa while it had started getting dark. Ordinarily, that should make anyone apprehensive because we drove a car that was very newly bought. It was a brand new Honda Accord, the one we call ‘tear rubber’ in Nigeria. We bought it a few days earlier. A sleek gleaming, wine colored beauty, some of the plastic wraps were still on some parts of the car. So, safety was a natural concern for that trip. However the younger me was a daring risk taker!

Before we got to Ife, it had become very dark and very few vehicles were left on the road. A short distance after Ife – Ode Omu junction, we saw a group of people standing by a vehicle which had broken down by the road side. Among them was a lady dressed in a flowing white wedding dress, complete with her bridal veil/head gear. She stood barefooted on the roadside, holding her golden wedding shoes in her hands. They frantically waved us down, begging for a ride to ibadan.

I asked my wife if she saw what I saw, she confirmed it. My heart sank! How would this happen to a person on her wedding day?! I shot a rapid prayer heavenward – ‘dear God’, I prayed, ‘I can’t afford to leave a stranded bride by the roadside at this time of the day. Please help me, what should I do?’

After quickly scanning my spirit and finding no apprehension, I asked for my wife’s concurrence to let’s help them, she agreed.

So I made a U-turn close to the toll gate and headed back towards Ilesa on the other lane, then made a U-turn again towards the stranded wedding party. My mind was made up to help them, the worst that could happen would be for them to be armed robbers.

Well, we picked the couple and one of the ladies and took them to their home in Ibadan. They were coming from Ekiti.

From pickup to the time we dropped them, the groom’s attitude indicated that he was utterly overwhelmed, almost confused. The guy kept looking sneakily at me as if he wanted to steal my facial identity without mistake. We exchanged numbers after dropping them, and we departed.

The following day, they called, it was in the evening. When I picked, I could hear a near commotion on the other side followed by a pin drop silence. I heard ‘he has picked it o! He has picked it!’

To my amazement and much amusement, they had concluded that were were angels, not human beings! The brand new car, completely dark night on a highway known for criminal activities, then determination to take them to their home when we got to Ibadan: they concluded that no human being would be silly enough to attempt such risk.

That was the beginning of friendship between us and Ayodele and Oluwatoyin Akinrinde. To this day, I still have ‘expreway couple’ appended to their names on my phone.

Now, for Ayo and Toyin, that was classic miracle. That’s the way of God. Some people may interprete that experience as coincidence or happenstance. There’s no need to argue about that. There was a very desperate need, an improbable solution emerged.

They told us that they prayed to God for help when their car broke down but never expected that answer would come in form of a brand new car in that precarious location. Though I knew God inserted us into the solution to their desperate need, we feel honored to be witnesses to that unlikely intervention.

Miracle, in my view, is God’s intervention in the affair of man. It may, or may not entail alteration of the course of nature. Miraculous status of an intervention does not become invalid simply because humans can find an explanation for it. I’ve been amused since yesterday while reading several people’s comments on Baba Adeboye’s testimony. Some frantically searched the weatherman’s records to confirm if Baba’s story was true

I simply laughed.

Copy and paste philosophy sometimes ridicule its purveyors.