Twenty-one years after a plane crash took her life, the memory of the woman who taught a generation how to love, live and find their way home remains remarkably alive
By Lillian Okenwa
Some people’s deaths make the news. Then there are people whose deaths leave a silence that somehow becomes a part of the lives of those who knew them.
Pastor Bimbo Odukoya belonged to the second kind.
Today, on what would have been her 66th birthday, I find myself thinking less about the terrible December day that took her from us and more about the life she lived before it — the extraordinary energy, the laughter, the teaching, the counselling, the generosity, and that unmistakable voice that could make thousands of people feel that she was speaking directly to them.
For me, however, the memory of Pastor Bimbo will always begin with a telephone call.
It was December 2005.
I was in Abuja. My then editor at ThisDay, Eniola Bello, was in Lagos. His calls were not unusual. Although we were in different cities, he could call to ask me to follow a lead, clarify some information or chase a particular story.
So when my phone rang that evening, I answered expecting another newsroom assignment.
It was Eniola.
There was no greeting.
No introduction.
Just a sentence that changed everything.
“Lillian, I learnt Pastor was in that Sosoliso plane crash. Get the story and call me back.”
For a moment, my world went blank.
Pastor Bimbo?
No.
It could not be.
What many people would not have understood about that call was that Eniola did not contact me because there were no journalists in the Lagos newsroom who could follow the story. There were. There were also aviation correspondents already monitoring the crash.
He called me because this was Pastor Bimbo Odukoya.
She was huge news.
But there was another reason.
Eniola knew what she meant to me.
Anyone who knew me in those years knew that I was a staunch follower and disciple of Pastor Bimbo. Her ministry had become woven into my life in ways that were difficult to explain to somebody who knew her only from television or the newspapers.
I had listened to her.
I had learnt from her.
And I had spent years sharing her messages with other people.
In those days, there were no WhatsApp broadcasts, podcasts or social-media clips.
There were cassette tapes and later CDs (compact discs).
I had Pastor Bimbo’s tapes and gave them to many people to listen to. I also gave some to Eniola Bello for his wife to listen to.
That was simply one of the personal ways in which I shared a ministry that was already reaching a much wider audience through radio and television.
Pastor Bimbo did not become nationally and internationally known because people passed her cassette tapes from one person to another. By then, her voice was already travelling far beyond the walls of The Fountain of Life Church.
She had become a familiar presence on Nigerian radio and television, particularly through Single & Married, her counselling and teaching ministry. Her programmes took conversations about relationships, marriage, faith, character and everyday struggles into homes across the country and eventually beyond Nigeria.
That was how millions came to know her.
The tapes were personal.
The broadcast ministry was public.
And both tell something about the reach of the woman.
I had also invited Eniola and his wife to one of the special programmes for married people at The Fountain of Life Church in Ilupeju, Lagos.
I still remember the day.
I had just come out of the church after the first service when I saw Eniola and his wife arriving in their Mercedes-Benz. I had invited them to the programme, which was to hold during the second service, and they had graciously come.
It was my first time meeting his wife, but she had heard about me because of the tapes I send her through her husband.
Those tapes seem almost quaint now, in an age when a sermon can be sent across the world in seconds. But they were important then. They allowed those of us who had been touched by her teaching to share it with people around us.
But Pastor Bimbo’s influence was already much bigger than that.
Her voice was on the radio.
Her face was on television.
Her programmes were watched by people who had never stepped inside The Fountain of Life Church.
Her conferences and speaking engagements took her across Nigeria and beyond.
And through those platforms, she became one of the most recognisable female Christian voices of her generation.
So when Eniola called that evening, this was not simply an editor assigning a reporter to cover a breaking story.
It was one person who knew that another person’s world had suddenly been shaken.
I began making calls to Lagos.
Eventually, I confirmed that Pastor Bimbo was indeed on that flight.
But the calls could not ascertain whether she had survived.
The information was incomplete. The tragedy was still unfolding. Names were being confirmed, families were desperately searching for information, and nobody seemed to have the answers that mattered most.
What I knew was that Pastor Bimbo had travelled from Abuja to Port Harcourt for a speaking engagement.
It was ministry that had taken her onto that aircraft.
She had been invited to speak in Abuja and was continuing to Port Harcourt for another engagement. Her husband, Pastor Taiwo Odukoya, later recalled that she had called him from Abuja Airport before the flight, as she routinely did when travelling, and told him she would call when they landed. That call never came.
Sosoliso Airlines Flight 1145 crashed while landing at Port Harcourt on December 10, 2005.
Pastor Bimbo was among those on board.
She survived the initial impact but died from her injuries on December 11.
The facts were devastating enough.
But facts cannot explain what it felt like for the people who knew her.
For the people of The Fountain of Life Church, Ilupeju, the woman who had died was not a name on a passenger manifest.
For the countless Nigerians who watched Single & Married on television or listened to her on radio, she was the familiar voice that spoke about love, marriage, character, rejection, self-worth and the complicated business of being human.
For young women, she was often more than a preacher.
She was a mentor.
For couples, she was a counsellor.
For people who were hurting, she was an encourager.
For those who had lost their way, she was a voice telling them that they could still find their way home.
The Fountain of Life Church’s own account of her legacy describes her as a pastor, mother, confidante, encourager, role model and mentor. She led the Single & Married ministry, whose television programme became one of the most recognisable parts of her public ministry.
But there was another side of Pastor Bimbo that television could never fully capture.
Her generosity was almost legendary among those who knew her.
Giving was not an occasional act for her.
It was a lifestyle.
It was not unusual to see a pair of shoes she had worn on the feet of someone who could not afford such shoes. Clothes she had worn could find their way to somebody who needed them more than she did.
She gave things away.
But she gave far more than things.
She gave time.
She gave attention.
She gave encouragement.
She gave opportunities.
She gave people the confidence to believe that they could become more than their circumstances suggested.
There was something almost instinctive about her generosity. She saw people. And when she saw a need, she responded. That spirit also found expression in the culture Pastor Bimbo and Pastor Taiwo built at The Fountain of Life.
Giving was not simply something the congregation was repeatedly asked to do for the institution.
The church developed a strong culture of giving to people, helping people and lifting people.
It was different from the experience many people had of churches where the emphasis seemed to be on what members were expected to bring.
At Fountain of Life, the pastors themselves modelled generosity.
Bimbo lived it.
She was not merely preaching compassion.
She was practising it.
That may explain something about the extraordinary reach of her ministry.
She had a gift for making serious things understandable.
She could talk about marriage without making it sound like a lecture. She could speak about faith without losing people who were struggling. She could confront difficult questions without stripping them of compassion.
And she had something else that cannot easily be taught: presence.
When Pastor Bimbo spoke, people listened.
Not merely because she was a pastor.
Not merely because she was famous.
They listened because somewhere in her words was the feeling that she understood the life they were living.
And she did not speak from some unreachable pedestal.
She and Pastor Taiwo built The Fountain of Life Church into a ministry whose influence extended far beyond its Ilupeju auditorium. Bimbo’s work through Single & Married, counselling, women’s ministry, conferences and writing gave her a distinct public voice, while the church’s broader outreach included practical support for communities and vulnerable people.
By the time she died, she was already one of Nigeria’s most recognisable female Christian voices.
But recognition was never the whole story.
The real measure of her life was found in the people who became better because they encountered her.
Some found courage.
Some found faith.
Some found a reason to leave destructive relationships.
Some learnt how to build healthier marriages.
Some recovered their confidence.
Some simply discovered, perhaps for the first time, that somebody believed they mattered.
My own family was among those touched by Pastor Bimbo and Pastor Taiwo in ways that are difficult to quantify and impossible to repay.
That is why, when the plane went down, I found myself unable to do what journalists are trained to do.
I could gather information.
I could make calls.
I could send facts to my editor.
But I could not write about her.
The journalist in me knew there was a story.
The disciple in me could not bring herself to write it.
I called Eniola back and gave him the information I had managed to confirm.
But beyond those pieces of information, I was unable to write any news story about Pastor Bimbo.
Not then.
Not in the days that followed.
Not in the years that followed.
Until now.
Perhaps that is why this birthday feels different.
December will bring back the memory of that terrible day again. On December 10, 2026, it will be 21 years since the Sosoliso aircraft went down at Port Harcourt. The following day will mark 21 years since Pastor Bimbo died from the injuries she suffered.
Time has done what time always does.
It has moved on.
The children have grown.
The church has changed.
Nigeria has changed.
The world has changed.
The cassette tapes that once carried Pastor Bimbo’s voice now belong to another era.
But her message somehow survived the technology that carried it.
More importantly, it survived because it had already found its way into people.
It lived in the homes that watched her programmes.
In the couples who came to her for counsel.
In the young people who sat through her teachings.
In the women she encouraged.
In the people she quietly helped.
In the congregation that learnt from her and Pastor Taiwo that giving was not simply something to be demanded from people, but something that could become a way of life.
It survived the crash.
It survived grief.
It survived the passage of time.
And it survived even the death, in 2023, of Pastor Taiwo, the man with whom she built that remarkable chapter of her life.
Perhaps that is the most fitting way to remember Pastor Bimbo today.
Not simply as the woman Nigeria lost in a plane crash.
Not as the famous pastor who once appeared on television.
Not even as the woman behind Single & Married.
But as a woman who spent the years given to her trying to make other people’s lives better.
A woman who gave away what she had.
A woman who made generosity look natural.
A woman who could speak to thousands and still notice one person.
A woman whose ministry was public but whose kindness was often private.
A woman who left behind people who still remember the shoes she gave them, the clothes she passed on, the words she spoke, the tapes they listened to and the help she offered when nobody was watching.
She was only 45 when she died.
Today, she would have been 66.
There are birthdays that are marked by candles.
Some are marked by photographs.
Others are marked by memories.
Pastor Bimbo’s birthday is marked by the people who still remember what it felt like to hear her voice and believe, even for a few minutes, that life could become better.
That is a different kind of birthday.
It is the birthday of a legacy.
Happy birthday, Pastor Bims.
Twenty-one years later, the voice is still here.
