A mother’s love is not a single act but a lifetime of daily choices to sacrifice, pray, nurture, and stay, and those choices become the foundation on which everything else is built.
There is a saying in Yoruba that goes, “Iya ni wura, baba ni gilasi” mother is gold, father is glass. I grew up hearing that phrase, and as a child I did not fully understand it. But life has a way of teaching you what words alone cannot. The older I get, the more I understand that a mother is not just a person. She is an institution. She is a shelter built with bare hands, a fire that stays lit even in the middle of a rainstorm.
This Mother’s Day, I want to go beyond the bouquets and the social media posts. I want to talk about what a mother actually does, the roles she carries every single day, often without applause, often without rest. From the markets of Ibadan to the farms of Benue, from the narrow streets of Onitsha to the wide avenues of Kaduna, every Nigerian family knows what it means to have a mother who held things together when everything else was falling apart. This article is a tribute to her and to every mother reading this who wonders if her work is seen. It is seen. Every single part of it.
WHAT A MOTHER TRULY IS
Before we talk about roles, we need to establish something important. A mother is not defined only by biology. In African culture and across the world, a mother is defined by presence, sacrifice, and love. She may be the woman who carried you for nine months. She may be the aunt who raised you when life dealt a hard blow. She may be the grandmother who became a mother all over again in her sixties because love demanded it. Whoever she is in your life, her roles are profound and they deserve to be named.
THE ROLE OF NURTURER AND FIRST TEACHER
The first classroom any of us ever entered was not a school building. It was a mother’s arms. Long before a child can speak, a mother is already teaching. She teaches through the warmth of her skin, the rhythm of her heartbeat, the sound of her voice humming in the dark. By the time a Nigerian child walks into primary school in their neatly pressed uniform, their mother has already taught them how to speak, how to behave, how to greet elders, how to pray, and how to respect themselves and others.
In many Nigerian homes, especially in areas where fathers travel for work or are absent, the mother is the sole educator of character. She teaches a daughter how to carry herself with dignity. She teaches a son how to be responsible. She does this not from a textbook but from the living curriculum of daily life. The lessons do not come with grades, but they last a lifetime.
THE ROLE OF THE PRAYING MOTHER
If there is one image that defines African motherhood in a spiritual sense, it is a mother on her knees. I have heard countless testimonies across churches, mosques, and family gatherings of how a mother’s prayers became a shield over her children’s lives. There is something about a praying mother that defies explanation. She prays before the sun rises. She prays when her children are asleep and do not know it. She prays when she is afraid and refuses to let fear become louder than her faith. All these are what I have witnessed from my mother.
In Nigeria, we talk about mothers who fasted for weeks when their children were sick. Mothers who bound and loosed and declared and decreed until the situation turned. These are not exaggerations. These are testimonies that flow freely in our communities. A mother’s prayer is not a religious formality. It is warfare. It is love in its most determined form. Many of us are alive, standing, and thriving today not only because of our own effort but because a praying mother refused to stop calling our names before God.
THE ROLE OF THE SACRIFICIAL MOTHER
Ask any Nigerian mother what she gave up to raise her children and watch the list grow long. She gave up sleep during the early years when babies cried through the night. She gave up career opportunities to be present during school age years. She gave up new clothes so the children could have uniforms. She gave up her own dreams, at least temporarily, to become the wind beneath someone else’s wings.
I think of mothers who wake up at four in the morning in Lagos to beat the traffic to work so they can pay school fees. I think of mothers in rural communities who walk kilometres to fetch water, cook over firewood, and still find the energy to sit with a child and help with homework by candlelight when NEPA takes the light. The scale of sacrifice Nigerian mothers carry is staggering. And yet most of them do not call it sacrifice. They call it love.
This is what the love of a mother looks like in practice. It is not soft or sentimental. It is strong and relentless. It absorbs pain so children do not have to. It goes without so others can have. It stretches beyond its limits and somehow keeps stretching.
THE ROLE OF EMOTIONAL ANCHOR
A mother is often the emotional center of a family. She is the one people come to when things fall apart. When a father is strict and unapproachable, the children go to their mother. When siblings quarrel, the mother is the one who brokers peace. When a family faces financial crisis, she is the one who quietly figures out how to stretch ten thousand naira into a month of feeding.
Her emotional intelligence is not something she learned in a workshop. It was developed through years of paying attention to everyone around her. She knows when her child is troubled before the child can find words for it. She knows when her husband is overwhelmed and she adjusts the atmosphere of the home accordingly. This invisible emotional labor is exhausting and largely unrecognized, but it holds families together in ways that nothing else can.
THE ROLE OF CULTURAL CUSTODIAN
In many African societies, it is the mother who keeps culture alive. She is the one who teaches children their mother tongue when the world wants them to speak only English. She is the one who cooks the traditional foods, tells the old stories, and keeps the children connected to their roots. She insists that a child greets every elder who enters the house. She teaches the values that grandparents passed down to her. Through her, identity survives.
In a world that is moving fast and pulling young people away from their heritage, the mother remains the thread that connects generations. She is both modern and ancient. She adapts to the present while carrying the past carefully in her hands.
THE ROLE OF FINANCIAL PILLAR
More and more Nigerian mothers are also primary breadwinners or significant contributors to household income. From petty trading in markets to running businesses worth millions of naira, from working in corporate offices to farming family land, Nigerian mothers do not wait to be provided for. They provide. They hustle. They build. The informal economy of Nigeria runs in large part on the backs of mothers who carry trays on their heads, run stalls in the market, and negotiate deals with suppliers at six in the morning.
We must not romanticize struggle, but we must acknowledge the extraordinary economic contribution of mothers who receive very little recognition for it.
WAYS TO HONOR A MOTHER EVERY DAY, NOT JUST ON MOTHER’S DAY
1. Say it out loud. Many Nigerian families express love through action but rarely through words. This Mother’s Day and beyond, tell your mother what she means to you. Use your actual voice. Write it down if speaking is hard. Let her hear it.
2. Take something off her plate. Look at what your mother does every day and remove one thing from that list. Cook the meal. Clean the kitchen. Handle the errand. Give her an hour where nothing is expected of her.
3. Celebrate her in front of others. Post about her on social media. Talk about her sacrifice at family gatherings. Let the world know the kind of woman she is. Public honor matters.
4. Support her dreams. Many mothers deferred their own goals for their children. If your mother has something she always wanted to do, help her do it now. Fund the small business idea. Buy the course. Encourage her.
5. Pray for her the way she prayed for you. A praying mother deserves to be prayed for in return. Cover her in prayer. Ask God to replenish what she poured out.
6. Create new memories with her. Do not wait for illness or loss to activate gratitude. Plan time together. Take her somewhere she has never been. Sit with her and listen to her stories. She will not be here forever.
7. Teach your children to honor their mother or grandmother. Motherhood is passed down. When children watch how adults treat mothers, they learn how to treat the mothers in their own lives one day.
This Mother’s Day, I want every mother reading this to know something that the noise of everyday life often drowns out. You are not just doing a job. You are building human beings. You are shaping the future of a nation. Every meal you cooked, every school fee you scraped together, every prayer you prayed in the quiet before dawn, every tear you held back so your children would not be afraid, none of it was wasted. None of it was invisible. It planted seeds that are still growing in ways you may not even see yet.
The love of a mother is the most powerful force in a family, and perhaps in a nation. Nigeria is shaped as much by her mothers as by any policy or president. So to every sacrificial mother, every praying mother, every mother who is tired but still showing up, we honour you not just today but in every story we tell, every life we live, and every generation that rises because you refused to give up.
My name is Samuel Obayemi, and am wishing my mother, Victoria F. Obayemi, a happy mother’s day.
Share this article with the mother who shaped your life and tell her in the comments what role she played that you are most grateful for.
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