When American poet, Maya Angelou, said: “A great soul serves everyone all the time. A great soul never dies. It brings us together again and again.” Without a doubt, Angelou’s words on the marble aptly captures the life and times of Ibidunni Ighodalo, the beautiful and high-fliying event planner, who died in the early hours of Sunday, 14th of June, 2020 in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, a month to her 40th birthday. The ex-beauty queen breathed her last while on an assignment to set up a COVID-19 isolation centre for the Rivers State government. For a good reason, memories of her life and times on mother earth still lingers on in the heart of her loved ones, especially her husband, Pastor Ituah.
Since she passed on, the family, at the instance of her husband, has continued to organise memorial services in her honour at the popular Holy Trinity Church, Ikoyi Lagos. As usual, the event again held last week at the church, amidst an outpouring of emotions. While alive, Ighodalo, who ran Elizabeth R, an Upscale event planning company, was strikingly beautiful and blessed with graceful steps laced with a large heart. Her smile was also infectious that you would have thought she did not have any worries in life.
Indeed, she never wished to part, forever, with her loved ones when she died at the young age of 39. The late co-pastor of Trinity House Church in Lagos and founder of Ibidunni Ighodalo Foundation wished to live longer to see her dreams come true. And she had them aplenty, including marking her 40th birthday with the underprivileged by touching lives. All that she envisaged was cut short by the deadly grim reaper who took her on a sojourn of no return leaving behind two beautiful kids, mother sibling and a husband.
