We met in 1988 on the University of Ibadan campus as students counting results and chances. In 1995, we said “qabūl” and began counting mercy instead. Thirty one years of marriage later, Dr Bilkis Aduke Oladejo, your birthday gives me a reason to say aloud what our home already knows: you are submissive in the best sense—soft where Allah asks for softness, firm where truth needs spine; focused enough to turn lecture notes into expertise and house needs into order and hardworking without making it a performance. The Prophet ﷺ said the best of us are best to their families and I have lived that sunnah in your patience, in pre-dawn prayers that kept worry outside our door and in the way you cared for my parents as your own when they were alive.
UI gave us degrees; it also gave me sukūn (Qur’an 30:21), the quiet joy of coming home to you. May Allah write barakah around your new year: health that lasts, Qur’an on your tongue, patients helped through your hands, and grandchildren who are meeting and will still meet us as their favourite grandparents. Alhamdulillah for ’88, for ’95 and for this birthday. Happy birthday, Dr Mrs, wife, mother, grandma, my Bilkis.
Cheers to many more fulfilled years, MaashaAllah!
Tunji Oladejo, mnipr, JP
University of Ibadan
Thursday,12 March,, 2026
