Sir Lawrence Amazu: My father, my friend

You were a pioneer, champion and courageous. I can’t thank you enough for instilling discipline in me to be self-independent and to be the very best. You believed in other people as much as you believed in us your children, served us, and pushed us all to be our very best.
For mummy, Lady Monica Amazu, to whom you were married for 56 years, it still feels like a dream. For her, you will always be the strong, descent and nice man; the giver and people lover she married. As mummy always said, ‘you did to her, what was expected of you as a husband and a father to your children’.
You trained your children in the best schools in Nigeria and abroad and also provided us with so many good things of life. Prudence you thought us but lack, you never allowed us to. The one thing that helps us pull through loosing you is your love for God and how unrelenting you were with His work.
It was a blessing for us all when we gathered last December to celebrate the Knighthood of my wife, Joy and I. We are most grateful to God for this opportunity to have been together one last time as a family.
Looking at you that day, Nkiruka noticed how frail you were but was quiet so that you wouldn’t notice. She, like all of us will deeply miss your consistent instructions and strict character. Your immense kindness and self-deprivation because you were thinking about the comfort of others, first, is something that we learned from very young and carry forever.
Benjamin spoke to you on Friday before you passed on and was supposed to see you on Monday; but you left on Saturday. It still is a dream to him. He had hoped you would make it to a hundred years. But as you said to him two weeks before, ‘there is nothing left to achieve in this world because you had seen it all.’ It was like you knew you were going.
We had great moments with you; those moments I remember, were very value driven. I have applied those values to many parts of my life and those of my children.
From a very humble family, you carried on serving God with your all just as your missionary and catechist father, Josiah Amazu of the illustrious lineage of Ezeotubelu, Obiuno Otolo Nnewi did. Even though your father died when you were only seven and the family politics left you destitute, you pushed through. Although you came first in your final primary school exams and were denied scholarship, you were not deterred.
You took late uncle Zacchaeus Ojukwu’s offer and went to learn to become a driver and a mechanic in Jos. You had big dreams and many visions. This step was the beginning of your realising them. I am very privileged to have come through you and to have grown up knowing how rewarding it is to be unrelenting. Yours, was a life of ‘can do’ spirit.
Today, when pioneers for Nigeria’s transport industry are mentioned, your name is sure to top that list, Chi Di Ebere.
I remember you told me at age 18 that I was on my own. I didn’t quite understand how I could live in luxury around me and didn’t have the means to explore it. I had to go out of my way and make it. This has put me on my toes to prove myself. You hated suffering with a passion, just as much as you hated waste. The value of money and value of quality of life, which you exhibited, is a lesson for us, your children. We will guard all the legacies you left behind.
We remember you as a loving father who was not mean to us and with whom we enjoyed a great relationship. We appreciate the prayers you offered on our behalf and we will try to play our part and play it well. Daddy, your life was a gift from God. You came to this world and fulfilled God’s purpose for his life and left. The calm and consistent man, rest on in the bosom of the Lord. You accomplished your desire for yourself and for God; serving him and humanity.