From his own account, Monday, the 26 of June, 2023
Childhood, birthplace, parents and early years.
On the 9th day of February, 1929, in the border town of Ogbese — where the waters of the River Ogbese trace a quiet line between Edo State and Ondo State, and the Ovia North-East Local Government Area cradles its people close — a child was given to the family of Chief Odevwo and Mrs. Uwowo Victoria Okotie. They named him Okotie Ajerore Emmanuel, and though no one could have known it then, the world was handing them a life that would be lived fully, faithfully, and well.
He arrived into a village still learning its own rhythm, and grace walked beside him from the start. The years that followed — 1936, 1937, 1946 — remain in him not as dates but as living rooms he can still walk into, so clearly does he remember them. And in 1947, a boy stood beneath a sky that dimmed at midday, watching his first solar eclipse, and understood, perhaps for the first time, that the world held more wonder and mystery than any one lifetime could exhaust, this all took place while young Papa Okotie was living with his aunty Omotekoba Odiete (Mama Eko) in Lagos. It is the kind of memory reserved for those who learn early to pay attention — and Papa Okotie has spent a hundred years paying attention.
He was not raised alone. Two sisters by his mother — Mama Grace Okorefe and Mama Martina Okotie — grew beside him, and he has never spoken their names without warmth, nor let an occasion pass without praising them. Two older stepbrothers and three older stepsisters filled out the household further, each one shaping the boy he was becoming, each one a gift he has never stopped being grateful for. Born into a polygamous home, in an age when such households could easily fracture into rivalry, he chose instead — or perhaps was taught to choose — love and unity as his watchwords. It was his first lesson in family, and it never left him: that a house with many rooms can still hold one heart.
His schooling began at the primary school in Ogbese, where letters and numbers first opened a window onto a world larger than his village. He would go on to earn his Standard 6 certificate with an "A Pass" from Uhen Primary School — and it was there, too, in those same formative years, that he was baptized into the Catholic faith, his godfather, Chief Idama, standing proudly at his side. It was a small ceremony by the measure of the world, but a beginning by every measure that mattered: the first thread of a faith he would carry, unbroken, into every chapter still to come.
He was fortunate, too, in the company he kept. His senior brother, George Amrhorighoye Okotie, was a steady hand and a living example; and he carried real pride in his kinship with the "Great Dr." Clement Okotie, whose accomplishments gave the family name something to rise to meet. From these men, early and lastingly, he absorbed a conviction that would become the architecture of his whole life — that hard work, persistence, resilience, and learning could carry a man as far as he dared to go.
Life with his brother George became its own education. George had already begun his working life as a primary school teacher — a proud first step for any young man eager to give back what he had been given — before moving on to the United African Company (UAC) as a bookkeeper, a post that sharpened his discipline, his eye for detail, and his understanding of trade. These were not lessons George kept to himself. Living together in Siluko, Benin City, he passed them, patiently, to his younger brother.
The journeys that followed were demanding but demanding in the way that shapes rather than breaks. Every trip taught the young Papa Okotie something further about resourcefulness, and about carrying responsibility as something to be proud of rather than merely endured. Slowly, without fanfare, the world was widening in front of him, and he was learning to meet it with open hands.
In 1948, his brother Clement moved on to Urhobo College and watching him reach for more schooling stirred something restless and hopeful in Papa Okotie — an ambition he could not quiet. That ambition found its moment in 1954, when he travelled to Benin City for an interview at Immaculate Conception College (ICC), one of the defining crossings of his youth.
He still remembers the company he kept that day — fine young men like Albert Iginedion, Festus Akinseyiwa, and Anthony Osayande, each of them hopeful, each eager to prove what he carried inside him. Papa Okotie was asked about his background, and he answered with the quiet confidence of a young man who already knew where he had come from and had already decided where he intended to go. But the doors of ICC asked five pounds of him, and he did not have it. Where a lesser resolve might have folded, his hardened into a vow: "I will be educated, and I will achieve this goal, and secure a college certificate." Fear did not get the final word. Determination did.
What followed became one of the achievements he holds proudest to this day. For the next nine months he worked without complaint in his father's rubber plantation, gathering what little his labor could yield, until he had saved twelve pounds and two shillings and six pence — a sum he recites, even now, the way other men recite scripture. His sight was fixed on a single goal: to leave Ogbese in pursuit of an education no one could take from him. Before he left, he set aside seven pounds and pressed it into his mother's hands, to strengthen her trading business — a son's gratitude paid forward before he had even gone. Then he made the journey himself: from Ogbese through Okada, through Igwobazuwa, across the River Ovia, down through Oluku, and at last to Oba Market in Benin City — a journey into the unknown, undertaken on faith and on the five pounds two shillings and six pence a nine-month season had bought him. It stands, even now, as early proof that determination can teach a man to master almost anything he sets his mind to.
Providence, or something very like it, met him there. A friend from Ogbese happened to be at Oba Market one day, and took him home to the family house on Airport Road, where the two of them lived and worked together, saving toward their college fees. In the evenings, when the day's labor was done, they found their rest at the Olowu Cinema, the way youths of that Benin City did — small joys stitched between long days, hope taking the shape of ordinary life.
He remembers, with real fondness, his season working on the construction of the Holy Cross Catholic Church in Benin City — and remembers, more vividly still, the day Bishop Kelly stood among the workers and asked whether any there held a Standard 6 certificate and were willing to take up teaching. Papa Okotie stepped forward and presented his, and sat for the employment examination that followed. On the Monday after, the names of twelve successful candidates were posted outside the church, and he was among them — with an "A pass" beside it that filled him with an excitement he has never fully put into words. It remains, to this day, one of the proudest moments of his life. He was engaged as a teacher and transferred to Aduwawa town to begin his career in earnest, and he has never forgotten the particular joy of the journey home to Ogbese, to tell his mother and the rest of his family the good news himself.
Education, in those days, came at a real cost — he remembers the figure precisely: twelve pounds, two shillings, and six pence. But what he remembers more clearly than the cost is the generosity that met it. When the moment came for him to take his place in school, his mother's younger brothers stepped forward without a moment's hesitation and paid his fees in full. It was an act of love he has carried in his heart across every year since — a standing reminder that he never once walked his road alone.
He continued his teaching career in Benin City before securing his place at teacher's training college in 1958. Through those college years, his mother and his uncles — Papa Ikuku Odiete, Papa Okpavwiowho Odiete, and Papa Akpomie Odiete — stood behind him. After earning his Grade 3, he was posted to Okpara Inland, then to Okpara Waterside, where the school's then-principal, Mr. Ikpasa, recognized something in him worth recommending further — a push toward the Grade 2 certificate he would go on to earn at Assumption College in Uzairue (Uzaru), an experience that shaped him into a still more capable and confident teacher. He served faithfully as a pupil teacher, his sights, as ever, set higher.
Even amid the discipline of those years, Papa Okotie carried the swagger of a young, ambitious man — upstanding, forward-looking, unafraid to be seen reaching for more. It was in Okpara Inland that this showed itself plainly: he was among the very first in the village to don the popular Danshiki, wearing it with the quiet confidence of a man who understood that style, too, could announce a life headed somewhere. The village took notice and gave him a name to match the bearing — "Emperor" — a nickname earned in cloth and carried in character, one that stayed with him fondly all the way into his later days.
He later moved to Sapele, teaching and becoming a principal wat Eziafa Grammar School and Okpe Grammar School, and sometime in the 1970s, Papa Okotie resolved to further himself once more — this time a bachelor’s degree in political science, at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) which he achieved in 1979. Through those university years he leaned on family in ways he speaks of with real gratitude: his wife's sister and her husband, Mr. Johnson Esharevwigho and Mrs. Agnes Omotewhere Anuyah (née Okosesi), and his brother-in-law, Papa Stephen Okosesi, all offered him support he has never forgotten. And at the center of those stories stands his beloved wife, Mrs. Queen Okotie — "Queenie," as she was fondly known — who would travel from Okpara Waterside in Delta State to bring him food and provisions at UNILAG, a quiet devotion he would later echo for his own children when their turn at university came. He pursued this path with the same determination that had carried him through college, holding fast to the belief that every certificate earned was simply one more door swinging open.
He remembers, too, setting out for school once with seven pounds carefully saved, two of them set aside just for the motor fare. A modest sum, by any measure — and yet it carried within it the full weight of family sacrifice, personal resolve, and the promise of everything an education would go on to give him.
Papa Okotie went on to build a lasting career with Delta Steel Company at Ovwian/Aladja, where he served with distinction and retired as Assistant Manager in the Logistics and Commercial Department in 1995. In 2001, he returned home to his ancestral home, Okurekpo village, to live out his years in love and peace among his kinsmen — a circle completed, a man come home.
It was during his years teaching at Okpara Waterside that he met his wife, Queen, in church, and in 1962 they were married. God blessed their union with beautiful children. Then, in the space of one unbearable week in 1984 — his 2 years old son (Odeyovwin) on the 2nd of August, and his pregnant wife and unborn child on the 9th — grief came for his household all at once. In its wake, Papa Okotie made a quiet, resolute promise: to raise his six remaining children himself, and never to remarry. He kept that promise fully, and his children, and all who have watched his life since, bear witness to how well he kept it. Where sorrow might have hardened into bitterness, he chose peace; where loss might have ended a story, he chose to keep living one worth telling.
Looking back across the whole span of these years — from a boy in Ogbese watching an eclipse darken the sky at noon, to a young teacher holding his "A pass" with trembling pride, to a seasoned man retiring as assistant manager, to a father who raised six children alone and called it grace rather than burden — one sees a life built, deliberately, step by step, on faith, on family, on learning, and on a persistence that never once asked for applause. Even as a boy, he had a phrase he returned to, quietly, as both anchor and compass: "Know thy self."
In the quiet hour before the world stirs, a man aged in grace and seasoned in wisdom rises to greet the morning not with worry, but with worship. Papa Okotie has long made this his rite: to kneel where the night still lingers and lift his voice in the words of Psalm 16 — "Preserve me, O God… Thou wilt show me the path of life: in Thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." And so, each dawn begins not merely as another day granted, but as a covenant renewed — the same faith that carried him across nine decades now carrying him gently into God’s glory forevermore.
Papa Okotie Ajerore Emmanuel remains grateful — for every teacher who taught him, for every relative who believed in him before he had proven anything, and for every door that opened when he knocked with nothing but determination in his hands. His has been a journey of victories earned through patience, of doors opened through courage, and of a family whose love made every single part of it possible. A life well lived, indeed — and still being lived well in his children.