For Ojo Maduekwe – A tribute

A few of my close friends know that, when it comes to assessing Nigerian politicians, my innermost conviction is that our country would be better off if the dead woods who recycle themselves in office are herded into a modern yet tragically sinkable Titanic, and sacrificed to the marine gods. Five percent or less might survive on their good works to tell the tale, but given a second chance, only one percent would do something better. After interacting with Chief Ojo Maduekwe for four years, I believe he would float effortlessly from that disaster on his own merit, work ethics, love for country and sense of patriotism.
Yet, last year when he clocked 70 and I was asked to write something to mark the occasion, I gently turned it down for the fact that for the last few years of his public life, he was my wife’s boss. It tantamount to what Prof. Pius Adesanmi calls intellectual incest to eulogies your wife’s boss. However, from deriding his idea of riding bicycles as a form of exercise and to ease our intractable transport woes, I became an apostle of his vision for a new Nigeria of better way of doing things.
Maduekwe, the son of a Presbyterian preacher from Ohafia, Abia State, practiced law before biting the succulent apple of politics. He worked for MKO Abiola and for the actualization of the June 12 mandate. He was trusted enough to be Abiola’s envoy to canvass foreign support for that mandate long before some people turned it into an ethnic war of sorts. He won election to represent his people at the National Assembly and from the ashes of that adventure, Maduekwe became a founding member of the PDP. He later became its chief scribe and when the party formed government, he served variously as its foreign minister, transport minister and lately ambassador to Canada. He was derided for ‘condescending’ to that level after calling the shots at the foreign ministry, but Maduekwe saw an opportunity to measure his own policies and to experience the trickle down effect of bureaucratic orders. He ran a different mission than the one he met and placed himself at the service of Nigerians in Canada.
Not many a politician could stand in the open and dare anyone to fault their professional or moral integrity, but Maduekwe issued the challenge several times but found no takers. Not even against a man who served under what is aptly described as the era of the locusts. In the register of sleaze, names have been bandied about, but Maduekwe kept his impeccable garment of integrity in the records of public service. From deriding him as Ojo Mai Keke, most became regulars at his ‘court’ of ideas at Minto Place. He was open to the young and the old, to the poor and accessible to the rich. The ideals he espoused are decades ahead of him. He was a detribalised Nigerian and not an apostle of parochial politics.
Maduekwe was a quintessential orator whose voice resonated with the ferocious conviction of the Ohafia head hunter’s dance; he was a consummate politician, a supererogatory ambassador and a no-nonsense public servant. Nobody gets to Ojo Maduekwe with their shell of doubt left uncracked. His devotion to duty, his ability to stoop to the level of those he served endeared him to many. Last year as he was leaving Ottawa as a lucky Nigerian to have served four presidents in tow in public service, the creme de la creme of African ambassadors that showed up at the executive lounge of the Macdonald-Cartier International Airport in Ottawa confessed that he imbued in them a sense of pride in the black race. He had become the arrowhead of Renaissance. It was the zenith of several encomiums and accolades that this tireless reader and researcher added to many recognitions.
When my wife broke the sad news on Thursday I knew I owed him, my conscience and humanity that honour which I might have withheld from him in life. Only weeks back, I had opined that if he had met my late father, whose life he celebrated, they would both have had much in common to cement a relationship. Little did I know it would be my last phone conversation with him.
Ojo Maduekwe is one of the few political office holders who came before his time. He never went where the path led but burrowed through insurmountable rocks to create a path where there was no road and invited others to walk through it. Only few saw his vision and even fewer wanted to walk with him. Nigeria has lost a worthy ambassador, a politician of uncommon stature and a statesman. Abia State has lost a citizen and Ohafia has lost a worthy son. This would be a tested moment for his loving wife whose 70th birthday would have been celebrated with pomp and fanfare today. It would be a trying time for his noble children. May his soul rest in perfect peace.