Tribute To My Husband By Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu, Widow of Late Dim Chukwuemka Odumegwu-Ojukwu.
How
do I sum up 23 years in one page? I don't know. How do I describe you? I
cannot. Not in any depth. Not for anybody else - you were my husband,
my brother, my friend, my child. I was your queen, and it was an honour
to have served you.
You were the lion of my history books, the leader of my nation when we
faced extinction, the larger-than-life history come to my life -
living, breathing legend. But unlike the history books, you defied all
preconceptions. You made me cry from laughter with your jokes, many
irreverent. You awed me with your wisdom. You melted my heart with your
kindness. Your impeccable manners made Prince Charming a living reality.
Your fearlessness made you the man I dreamt of all my life and your
total lack of seeking public approval before speaking your mind
separated you from mere mortals.
Every year that I spent with you
was an adventure - no two days were the same. With you, I was finally
able to soar on wings wider than the ocean. With you I was blessed with
the best children God in heaven had to give. With you, I learnt to face
the world without fear and learnt daily the things that matter most.
Your disdain for money was novel - sometimes funny, other times quite
alarming.
It mattered
not a whit to you. Your total dedication to your people - Ndi-Igbo -
was so absolute that really, very little else mattered. You never craved
anybody's praise as long as you believed that you were doing right and
even in the face of utmost danger, you never relented from speaking
truth to power - to you, what after all, was power? It was not that
conferred by the gun, nor that stolen from the ballot box. No. You
understood that power transcended all that. Power is the freedom to be
true to yourself and to God, no matter the cost.
It is freedom
from fear. It is freedom from bondage. It is freedom to seek the
wellbeing of your people just because you love them. It is the ability
to move a whole nation without a penny as inducement nor a gun to force
them. When an entire nation can rise up for one person for no other
reason than that they love him and know he is their leader - sans gun,
money, official title or any strange paraphernalia - that is power.
To
try to contain you in words is futile. You span the breadth of human
experience - full of laughter, joy, kindness and sometimes, almost
childlike in your ability to find something good in almost everyone and
every situation. You could flare up at any injustice and in the next
instant, sing military songs to the children. You could analyse a
situation with incredible swiftness and accuracy. In any generation,
there can only be one like you. You were that one star. You were a child
of destiny, born for no other time than the one you found yourself in.
Destined
to lead your people at the time total extinction was staring us in the
face. There was no one else. You gained nothing from it. You used all
the resources you had just to wage a war of survival. You fought to keep
us alive when we were being slaughtered like rams for no reason. Today,
we find ourselves in the same situation but you are not here. You
fought that we might live. The truth is finally coming out and even
those who fought you now acknowledge that you had no choice. For your
faithfulness, God kept you and brought you home to your people.
You
loved Nigeria. You spent so much of your waking moments devising ways
through which Nigeria could progress to Tai-Two!!! You were the eternal
optimist, always hoping that one day, God will touch His people and give
us one Vision and the diligence to work towards the dream. It never
came to pass in your lifetime. Instead, the disaster you predicted if we
continued on the same path has come home to roost. You always saw so
clearly. Your words are indelibly preserved for this generation to read
and learn and perhaps heed and turn. You always said the dry bones will
rise again. But you always hoped we would not become the dry bones by
our actions. Above all, you feared for your own people, crying out
against the relentless oppression that has not ceased since the end of
the war and saddened by the acceptance of this position by your own
people. In death, you have awakened the spirit that we thought had died.
Your people are finally waking up.
At home, you were the father
any child would dream of having. At no point did our children have to
wonder where you were. You were ever at their disposal, playing with
them, teaching them of a bygone era, teaching them of the world they
live in and giving them the total security of knowing you were always
present.
In mercy, God gave me a year to prepare for the
inevitable. I could never have survived an instant departure. In mercy,
God ensured that your final week on earth was spent only with me and
that on your last day, you were back to your old self. I cannot but
thank God for the joy of that final day - the jokes, the laughter, the
songs. It was a lifetime packed into a few hours, filled with hope that
many tomorrows would follow and that we would be home for Christmas. You
deceived me. You were so emphatic that we would be going home. I did
not know you meant a different home.
The swiftness of your
departure remains shocking to me. You left on the day I least expected.
But I cannot fight God. He owns your life and mine. I know that God
called you home because every other time it seemed you were at death's
door, you fought like the lion that God made you and always prevailed.
In my eyes, even death was no match for you. But who can say 'no' to the
Almighty God? You walked away with Him, going away with such peace that
I can only bow to God's sovereignty. Your people have remembered. The
warrior of our land has gone. The flags are lowered in your honour. Our
hearts are laden with grief.
But I will trust that the living God
who gave you to me will look after me and our children. Through my
sadness, the memories will always shine bright and beautiful.
Adieu, my love,
My husband,
My lion,
Ikemba,
Amuma na Egbe Igwe,
Odenigbo Ngwo.
Eze-Igbo Gburugburu,
Ibu dike.
Chukwu gozie gi,
Chukwu debe gi.
Anyi ga afu na omesia.