The year was 2008!
I had gone to visit Fr. Daniel Msugh Agber in his residence at Supreme Courts Quarters in Karu FHA, where good fate would later throw me for the second phase of my pastoral year. There I met Fr. Sam Tumba. Or he met me there?
When I was about to leave Karu at 8pm to head back home, Fr. Tumba was also leaving to his parish of Sacred Heart in Gwagwalada. He asked me to enter the car (I remember clearly: an ash-color Honda Accord 2007 model) so he could drop me off at the airport junction on his way to Gwagwalada. I probably was silent throughout the entire time we drove together. When we got to the airport junction, he said it was late and unsafe for me to leave. He drove me to Gwagwalada and asked the seminarian on pastoral year to give me a room for the night. The next morning he handed me some money as I prepared to leave.
This was the first time I came really so close to his space. In those days, many seminarians, including me, were frightened by the sight of Fr. Tumba. He hardly spoke much, often in monosyllables. “Uhm. Yes. Ok. What?” He always had a stern, no-nonsense mien around him. Given that he was then the chairman of the archdiocesan vocations committee, my fear was understandable.
Fast-forward to 2012. Providence would bring our paths to cross again in August of that year when I was posted, after my diaconate ordination, to serve in St. Donald’s FHA Karu where he was parish priest. The five months of my diaconate ministry under him have been some of the most memorable time of my clerical life. I cannot even begin to quantify all that I learned from him; he gave me many opportunities to preach, to baptize, to bring communion to the sick and homebound, and to catechize the faithful. Every Monday after morning Mass, he would ask me to celebrate a ‘mock Mass’ as I prepared for my priestly ordination. He would sit at the last pew in the church and tell me to raise my voice from the altar. “If you go to a parish where there is no microphone you should be able to project your voice,” he would say. If I made a mistake, he would stop me and ask me to repeat the action. I would see the effect of this practice much later when I became a priest!
After my priestly ordination in January 2013, he invited me to celebrate a thanksgiving Mass at Karu and I spent almost a month at the parish with him before my first official posting came out. The 620k he raised and gave me was what I used to start my priestly ministry: I got a laptop (we were not allowed to own personal computers in the seminary), a set of vestments, and other clerical equipment that I needed to set sail as a new priest.
Since that time, I have been to every parish that Fr. Sam has worked; I have lost count of the number of times he invited me to conduct parish retreats in the places he’s served. He is always the first to study every new papal magisterial document and to break it down for his parishioners through invited retreats and ongoing catechesis. An ardent ecologist, he has been in the vanguard of promoting care for creation and makes it a point to always mark the world day for the care of creation with several pastoral ecological initiatives. You can’t cut corners with Fr. Sam. He will catch you spot on!
My friendship with this reverend gentleman is one of the most fulfilling friendships I have ever cultivated. I have learned so much from him, and have found in him a most trusted and honest priest, father, friend, brother, teacher, mentor, confidante, confessor, and every good thing you can think of.
Today, Fr. Sam is 60!
For such an inimitable man of grace, finesse, poise, and impeccable goodness, I raise a toast in thanksgiving to God for giving us such a great and wonderful, generous and kind, disciplined and hardworking, admirable and simple soul.
Excellency: May your days be long, happy, and fruitful. Cheers to entering the age of the most senior citizens!
Fr. Emma Ojeifo.