By Rev. John Odey
Dele, many Nigerians would have wanted to know why God allowed them to kill you. But that is not possible. We have no right to query God. Even when we question God, he is under no obligation to answer our question. God is not our subordinate. He is our Creator. The story of Job in the Bible has a lot to tell us about what it means to believe in God. First of all, the Bible describes Job as “a sound and honest man who feared God and shunned evil.” (Job 1:1). In view of this, the question that keeps popping up in our heads is, if this man was so good, why should God allow him to suffer so much? When the chain of Job’s misfortune started and ended and he had nothing left on earth of all his wealth and children, he declared: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return. God gave, God has taken back. Blessed be the name of God.” (1:21).
But Job’s misfortune did not stop there. When this blameless Job was “struck down with malignant ulcers from the sole of his foot to the top of his head”, though he maintained his faith and refused to offer any insult to God, he placed a curse on the day he was born: “May the day perish when I was born, and the night that told of a boy conceived. May that day be darkness, may God on high have no thought for it, may no light shine on it…May that night be dismal. No shout of joy come near it…Why did I not die new born, not perish as I left the womb?” (3:2-11). In spite of what we can humanly speaking call Job’s justifiable agonizing lamentation he ultimately did not end in despair. With the following words, he surrendered and confessed that no man has the right to question God’s justice: “Indeed, I know it is as you say; how can man be in the right against God? If any were so rash as to challenge him for reason, one in a thousand would be more than they could answer. His heart is wise, and his strength is great: who then can successfully defy him?” (9:1-4). “I know that you (God) are all-powerful: what you conceive, you can perform. I am the man who obscured your designs with my empty-headed words. I have been holding forth on matters I cannot understand, on marvels beyond me and my knowledge…I retreat all I have said, and in dust and ashes I repent.” (42:2-6).
Dele, your little daughter, Funmi, who was 5 years old when they killed you and is now 37 years and a lawyer, did not understand the language of the problem of evil which rankled Job, W.E.B. Du Bois, Nathaniel Paul, C. S. Lewis, Dan Agbese and many others. But she knew even at that age that we have no right to question God. Consequently, she seemed to have found a solution to this problem by simply refusing to believe that God was fully aware of the tragedy that befell you and the entire family. Above all, she did not believe that God, in the fullness of his omnipotence and boundless love, could have allowed that tragedy to take place or to remain unrevised after it had happened.
For this reason, in her childlike innocence, she told those who came to mourn your death that God travelled when the assassin struck and that you would come back to life when God returned from his journey. These are her very words as reported by the Newswatch magazine of November 24, 1986: “God travelled that is why my father was killed. When God returns, my daddy will return.” Similarly, as reported by the Newswatch magazine of October 23, 1986, twenty years later, to keep her alive here on earth until God calls her to her eternal home, your gracious mother, Madam Elekia Giwa, said something similar when she declared: “God has been in control. God has been taking care of me. I have been surviving by the grace of God…I still believe Dele is not dead. For me, Dele travelled and will come back as he usually does. He usually travels and comes back to me after sometime. He will come back.”
You can see how painful and difficult it was for those who love you to accept the reality of your death. Your daughter believed that you were dead but sustained herself with the idea that God would bring you back to life when he returned from his sojourn somewhere. At that tender age, one can understand her simplistic solution to the problem posed by your tragic death as being guileless and devoid of an escapist posture. Your mother who cried her eyes out and refused to be consoled at your death said, twenty years after, that you did not die, that you travelled and that you would eventually return as you usually did. How does one reconcile that?
May I suggest that the answer to this question is that there is hardly anything that can be as devastating to the living as the violent death of a beloved one. It is very painful for someone to hit a stone wall of silence in the person whom he places his ultimate hope in times of tragedy. At your death, those who love you went through all these terrible experiences. That is why some of them have been trying to hide under some delusive thoughts in order to avoid facing the reality of your death. But all said and done, there is the joy that goes with unmerited suffering. It makes a man. The violent death of a righteous man in the hands of evil men opens the gate that shuts out the vista of great opportunities for a better world. Unmerited suffering and death are redemptive. This brings so much consolation to those who love you. It keeps our optimism for a better Nigeria soaring higher and higher. I love you.
If those who killed you thought that by doing so, they had shut out your name and your ideas and ideals, they have wasted their energy. As one of your many admirers, Adebayo Williams, rightly put it, by cruelly shortening your life, they have turned you into a martyr for the truth and an eternal inspiration for future generations of Nigerians. In death, you appear to be more powerful than in life. For it will henceforth be said that it is not only soldiers who lay down their lives for the national ideal, journalists also do.
Now, let me tell you when and how I came to know there was a great man like you in Nigeria. I was born in a village where I lost the privilege of being exposed to reading newspapers in my early years. When I was in the secondary school, St. Augustine’s Seminary, Ezzangbo, in Ebonyi State, I learnt to read only one Catholic newspaper and one Catholic newsmagazine. They were occasionally brought to the school for us to buy and read. Apart from my lack of exposition, I thought that reading newspapers as a student was a waste of time. All that I needed to read were the text books so that I could pass my examinations. As I recalled in one of my books, it was when I entered St. Augustine’s Seminary, Jos, in Plateau State, that I learnt to read newspapers through the influence of now late Archbishop Gabriel Gonsun Ganaka. At that time the students of St. Augustine’s Seminary, Jos, fondly called him GGG. He was a great man in every respect. He was admired by all with the possible exception of those who do not cherish the goodness in humanity.
After the rewarding encounter with Archbishop GGG I became such a voracious reader of newspapers that I switched over to the other extreme. I devoted almost all my free time to reading newspapers that I hardly had enough time left for reading my textbooks. But I can assure you that it paid off in the end. Dele, as a distinguished journalist, you know that once a person has secured some versatile knowledge of many things happening in the society he stands a better chance of doing well in any chosen subject matter. It was while trying to read from A to Z (from Anthropology to Zoology) as Archbishop GGG used to tell us that I met you on the pages of newspapers such as the Daily Times, the Sunday Times, the Sunday Concord, and later the classic Newswatch magazine wherein you proved your journalistic mettle, bravado, intelligence, wisdom and commitment without bounds. Hereunder, I wish to recall a few of what you said in some of your charming columns. Those visionary statements constitute what I call the words on the marble.
On February 13, 1976, General Murtala Mohammed, who was then Nigeria’s Military Head of State, was ambushed and assassinated on his way to work in Lagos during a coup which was led by Lt. Col. B. S. Dimka of the Nigeria Army Physical Training Corps. The coup was later foiled. Lt. Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, who was then the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, became the military Head of State.
Dele, 10 years later, precisely in the February 17, 1986 edition of the Newswatch magazine, which came out with the cover story,*Remembering Mohammed,* you wrote a preface titled, *Death and Destiny.* In that preface you argued that it is unfair for humans to keep blaming death for the demise of our dear ones each time evil men decide to do death’s work for it. Rather, you said, we should learn to blame those who are responsible for the death. Your very words: “Thus, when a hero is felled, it is only proper to blame those and what may have killed him instead of resorting to the universal blaming of death for the hero’s passage.”
You spoke about Nigerian Heads of State who ruled and ended up leaving Nigeria in the political, social and economic mire. You settled for Murtala Mohammed as the man who had all that it takes to put Nigeria in order. But unfortunately, adverse fate hated him and sent those who plucked him in his prime. You said: “He did not seek the job, but once thrust on him, he accepted it and went at it like a phantom as though he knew that he did not have all the time that he needed to do all he wanted to do. Mohammed knew that the plans he had would annoy more than a few powerful Nigerians. He knew also that these characters would kill him in order to stop him. But he knew that the fear of fear was more paralyzing than the fear of death, knowing that it must come anyway. So he threw overboard the fear of death, and dared it.” Lastly, you warned your readers not to miss the point of the discourse, “that good men, men of purpose who are true heroes, do get cut down in mid-stream on their way to achieving greatness.”
If you did not know by the time you were writing this discourse that everything you said in it about Murtala Mohammed applied to you, by now, many years after you had had the same fate with him, it should be clear to you that you are also in the league of great men who know that the fear of fear is more deadly than the fear of death itself. Those of us who constantly read what you wrote on the pages of newspapers and newsmagazines know that, like Murtala Mohammed, you also jettisoned the fear of death in order to call your countrymen and women who grabbed power and used it recklessly to order. Had you some premonition of your own death when you proclaimed that the good men who clamour for a positive change in their societies get cut down in mid-stream? Did you see your death coming? Were you then writing your own epitaph – knowingly or unknowingly? Whatever the case, I wish to assure you that you are not dead in our minds, though your very physical absence pains us to the marrow. Good people do not die. Their good deeds live after them to speak for them and so keep them alive. You are alive in our memories.
I remember, on September 10, 1979, Dr. Agostinho Neto, the first President of Independent Angola (1975-1979), died at the age of 56 years in Moscow after surgery for cancer and other ailments. As the head of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) that fought and won independence for Angola, Neto was loved by his people. Consequently, his death caused momentous grief in and outside his country. In your piece, *Memorial to President Neto,* which was published in your column, *Parallax View,* with the Daily Times newspaper of September 21, 1979, you wrote: “It is probably a good thing to die; after all, what is here on this hellish earth that man really wants to hang around for. Nothing! What we have here on earth are pollution, corruption, inhumanity by man against man and all sorts of hatred.”
On that fateful October day of 1986, man’s inhumanity to man visited you on this hellish earth and violently plucked earthly life out of you. When a man lives a good life on earth by doing the right thing at the right time and in the right place he should have nothing to fear should any evil man decide to terminate his earthly life to ensure that he no longer hangs around to disturb his arrogance. You fought a good battle and died in the cause of a good battle. You are better than those who killed you. We have long accepted the reality of your death. May your soul rest in peace!
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) was an English novelist, dramatist and politician who, in his book of plays, *Richelieu,* which was published in 1839, declared: “Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.” On July 31, 1963, in your column, *Parallax Snaps,* under the title, Random Musings, you queried the wisdom of those who believe with Bulwer-Lytton that the pen is mightier than the sword when you wrote: “I do not subscribe to the pen being mightier than the bullet. I know that the conventional wisdom calls it the sword. That is not really applicable in this day and age when people do not have the gladiatorial patience to swing the sword. It is either the bullet or the bomb.”
*To Be Continued*
