Death, Life And Legacies We elect government to improve our lives and to make the basic needs in life more affordable and accessible: good schools, functioning hospitals, roads to enable movement of goods, persons and services, and more secure neighborhoods. Politicians and public servants allegedly go into the vocation of public life to accomplish these. When they are retired and gone the way of all mortals, we count these as their legacies. In the period after Independence, for instance, Nigeria’s schools were the places where the best Nigerian students proved themselves. Those who went overseas in search of education were predominantly those who were unable to make it here. That was until the past decade and a half. Obafemi Awolowo’s life in public service is perhaps best remembered for the change he brought to access to education in south-west and mid-west Nigeria. In northern Nigeria, Ahmadu Bello and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa left great legacies in human development. In the south-east, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Michael Okpara left a legacy of investment in food security among other things. Simeon Adebo left what would have been a very lucrative career in law to build the most formidable public service south of the Sahara. For their work, these founders of post-colonial Nigeria lived with us and were happy to die in our midst, secure in the legacies they had contributed to. These days, the best things in Nigeria are obtained from beyond our shores where only very few Nigerians can access them. Nigerians spend over £300 million annually on school fees in the United Kingdom alone; another £250 million annual on the UK property market; and account for a reported 46.5 per cent of African shopping on the London high streets. Along with mindless consumerism on foreign high streets, the best our most celebrated public servants can afford is a lonesome death overseas from where we celebrate the return of their mortal remains in cargo-holds of foreign airlines. In the last few months, the circumstances of death and burial of several Nigerians have made it necessary to examine the legacies of our most celebrated public servants. Okhai Mike Akigbe was an officer and gentleman in the finest traditions of the martial professions. In one brief lifetime, tragically ended by ill health at the unripe age of 67, Akhigbe managed to excel in at least three different professions over a span of 46 years. As a soldier, he rose to become a three-star general in the Navy. In public service, he was governor of Ondo and Lagos States, two of the most economically viable States in Nigeria. From June 1998 to May 1999, he was the second-in-command in the military government that transitioned Nigeria to civilian rule. Quite apart from all these, he was also a lawyer. Most profiles on Chief Solomon Daushep Lar, who died recently at the age of 80, will point out that he spent his life in service of Nigeria, starting in 1959 when he was councillor of the Langtang Native Authority. In over 55 years in public life, chief Lar worked as a teacher, Parliamentarian, Lawyer, governor of Plateau state, party leader, federal cabinet minister, statesman, patriarch, community leader, and peace maker. Needless to say, this does not include the various boards and committees he chaired or was a member of. In the shadow of both resumes, two things stand out. First, after all these years of service governing and influencing the affairs of Nigeria, there was not a single hospital in Nigeria’s 923,768km2 that was capable of caring for these sons. They, along with their families, had to travel thousands of kilometres so they could receive medical care and eventually, die abroad. Over 5,000 Nigerians travel abroad for medical attention every month, resulting in the loss of N78 billion annually to Nigeria’s health sector. India earns about N40.94 billion of those fees. No one knows the number of Nigerians who are killed by this avoidable statistic. The second is that along with lack of hospitals to care for the living, it is glaring that even our mortuaries are not fit for the dead. Plateau State Governor, Jang,’s announcement that “the remains of the late Solomon Lar, former Plateau Governor, would be brought from the U.S. when the date for interment would have been fixed” leads one to the conclusion that there are also no mortuaries in Nigeria good enough for preserving human remains. As humans, we are typically powerless to determine the circumstances of death. Yet, we must admit that there is something ignoble about men with these profiles being ‘cargoed’ from a foreign land. Nothing about the circumstances are inevitable – instead deliberate choices have been made to bring the nation in whose service they spent their lives to this state. The tragically avoidable death of Festus Iyayi, a professor and former president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), in active pursuit of a cause he spent most of his life struggling for is also cause for reflection. Because, depending on the metaphorical frames though which people view life, the manner of Iyayi’s passing is symbolic. Symbolic of how tireless he was in pursuit of his beliefs about the value of education and indicative of Nigeria’s predicament: that after working tirelessly for over three decades, the university system he dedicated his life to had not improved by much and the values of public life which he campaigned for had deteriorated even more deeply as captured by the current impasse between ASUU and the federal government. Three lives, three fates, one country, what legacies? -------By: Chidi Odinkalu
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 05:34:36 +0000
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