Ayomide Gives Birth to the Family’s Grand Child, June 9, 2019

Mrs. Ayomide Adepeju Balogun (nee Adekanye) was delivered of her first child at a private hospital in Abeokuta, Ogun State of Nigeria, on Sunday June 9, 2019. The news about this addition to the family, which soon spread like wild fire, was greeted with expressions of great joy and happiness by all. It also attracted an outpouring of messages and congratulations from the larger family members, friends, colleagues, and well-wishers from far and near. It would be recalled that Ayomide had been married some three and half years back. The ostensibly-long period of waiting for “the first-fruit” of the womb, the challenges which Ayomide and her heart-throb Paul Olayemi had had to surmount after their wedding (and beginning right from a few days into their honeymoon, which could not have been known to other than the immediate family members); and the fact that, for the nuclear Adekanye family at least, this baby was a grandchild and bouncing boy for that matter – all these added to the great sense of exhilaration and joy felt by all the members.

The baby’s maternal grandparents and big uncle at the nuclear level – namely, Emeritus Professor J. ‘Bayo and Professor Tomilayo Adekanye as well as Dr. J. ‘Bayo Adekanye, Jnr – respectively - left no one in doubt about their joy on this addition to the family. “It’s A Bouncing Baby Boy” was the inscription posted by the baby’s maternal grandparents on the WhatsApp Status page of their iPhones some thirty minutes of the baby’s arrival; while the photo to be commonly found displayed and carried by the medium for the next 24 hours was the same as the group picture they had taken with their daughter Ayomide on her Wedding Day. It was as if the family was saying, “Thank God for Taking the Family to the Next Level of Celebrations”. The photo of Baby Akanji, the latter name being the Yoruba Oriki given to the boy by the maternal grandparents immediately on seeing their baby grandson and with the three other names of Olaniyi Adebayo Opemipo to be supplied and added to the maternal grandparents’ list of names later at the baby’s Christening on the Eighth Day, was to be posted after the naming ceremony. Picture of the maternal grandparents with the baby taken after the Christening was also widely circulated.