Sonnie Ekwowusi pays tribute to Obadiah Mailafia, columnist, social justice crusader and former deputy-governor of the central bank
Like most of his contemporaries, he would have remained in his comfortable cocoon massaging his ego or basking in what he had achieved in life. Amid the moral and political crises of our times, he would have sought alibi in sentimental falsifications or taken refuge in caricature religiosity. Like many cowardly high-profile men and women of our times, he would have become a hypocritical praise-singer of the powers that be in order to be in their good books. But he refrained from doing any of the aforesaid. Instead he decided to confront evil with his bare hands in order to bear witness to the truth and justice. He was not afraid of death. He said he was ready to lay down his life to save Nigeria. Citizenship, for him, was not something to toy with: it was to speak truth to power no matter whose ox is gored.
The shrouded circumstances surrounding his demise four months ago at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, Gwagwalada, Abuja might suggest that he is a political martyr, or, as some would like us to believe, a victim of state murder. Prior to his death, he had complained that he was being hunted for elimination. “I have received serious warnings that my revelations have angered some members of the political class to the extent that they want me physically eliminated. I have been warned to beware of polonium poisoning and sharp objects concealed in chairs. I know that killer squads have been paid undisclosed sums to hunt me down and to have me dispatched to Elysium. I have been told that some dark forces want me in their net so that I would be poisoned by gas administered through an air conditioner. When I am getting weak and delirious, a fake doctor would be brought in to administer an injection. That injection would be my death sentence,” he wrote. Some alleged that truly to his prediction he was murdered through food poisoning.
His first name means “man of peace”. His surname means “servant of the most powerful God”. He was eloquent as much as he was unabashedly vociferous. He was a consummate advocate of social justice. He feared no man. He feared only God. Like the Biblical Moses, his commitment to the deliverance of his people from the slavery and oppression of a tyrannical government was phenomenal. In the fashion of prophet Obadiah, one of the prophets of the Old Testament, his voice rang out like a lone voice in the wilderness in denouncement of the sponsored genocide against the Southern Kaduna Christians. He exhorted the people to trust in the power of God and justice of God, and not in the fleeting and precarious power of tyrannical rulers. Southern Kaduna is the kingdom of God not the kingdom of the devil. Justice is coming, nemesis is coming, he boldly announced. Unlike the cowardly men and women of our generation, our man of the year fearlessly spoke truth to power. Hear him, “…they told us that one of the Northern governors was the commander of Boko Haram in Nigeria. Boko Haram and the bandits are one and the same. They have a sophisticated network. During this lockdown their planes were moving up and down as if there was no lockdown. They were moving ammunition, moving money, and distributing them across different parts of the country. They are already in the South, in the rain forests of the South. They are everywhere. They told us that when they finish these rural killings, they will move to phase two. Phase two is that they will go into urban cities, going from house to house killing prominent people.”
No man, no woman of good conscience could have kept quiet in the face of genocide which overtook Southern Kaduna. No Street, no Broadway could have remained silent amid the stillness of death lying everywhere in Southern Kaduna and other parts of Nigeria. What do the living gain by keeping quiet in times of religious persecution and genocide? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! If at all they do gain anything it is the hottest places in hell as Dante would make us believe in his Inferno. Our man of the year 2021 never kept quiet until he was allegedly murdered. But what do murderers gain by spilling the blood of the innocent? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!! Since civilization is not an attribute of religious fanaticism or religious killing, curling of hair or human accent we should re-scrutinize our heritage with sharper eyes than before in order to win our civilization. The killing of our fellow human beings ought to stir in us the revulsion to hate our existence. Our generation has gone down in history as the generation in which wielders of power who know what to do to stop the killing of our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters and members of the same human family, but, who, out of their wickedness, decide to sit back and refrain from doing anything at all. In his last literary work entitled, “There Was a Country,” Chinua Achebe regretted this wicked attitude in the following words, “My feeling towards Nigeria was of profound disappointment. Not because mobs were hunting down and killing in the most savage manner innocent civilians in many parts of Nigeria, but because the Federal Government sat back and let it happen…”
Like Chinua Achebe, it pained our man of the year that the government which ought to protect the citizens from religious massacres had been sitting back and allowing the massacres to take place. Consequently, he spoke out loudly, “I am not making this up. I have a PhD from Oxford. I am not a sensationalist, I am an economist and a central banker; by nature we are not given to sensation. Let me make it clear: I am a humanist; I am a man of peace. From the bottom of my heart, I love our country dearly and I abhor all the killings and violence which the innocent people of this country have been subjected to. I pray that Nigeria will never experience another civil war. The most elementary duty of the government is to protect its citizens. When a government fails to protect its citizens, to protect little children that is a serious matter. Any innocent boy or girl that is killed is my own child. I love Nigeria. Like Mandela, let me say if need be, I am prepared to give my life for Nigeria.”
In his classic blueprint entitled: “The Law,” Frederic Bastiat writes that the purpose of government is precisely to secure individual rights to life, liberty and property. This, for him, is the only way peace can reign and men and women can go about working to improve their well-being. But unfortunately the State which ought to protect the citizens has constituted itself into a legal plunder, plundering the citizens. Our man of the year was very sad about the killings in Nigeria especially the sponsored killings against the Southern Kaduna Christians. Day by day murderers forcefully gain entrance into your peoples’ houses, seizing parents, sibling, uncles, and family relatives including babies under three and hacking them to death with little or no response from our State security machinery. Who will not weep in the face of these atrocities? Who will not worry seeing these injustices? Our man of the year did. That is why this column has chosen him among many competitors as the man of the year 2021. For defending the rights of man, he will be remembered by succeeding generations.
In case the reader is still wondering who is being applauded, he is no other personality than Dr. Obadiah Mailafia, former Deputy-Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, writer, columnist, humanist, public intellectual and social justice crusader. He left this world four months ago aged 64. This posthumous award is a testament to his crusade for social justice. We will miss his voice of reason in the public square. We will miss his courage. Our only consolation however is that he has left an enduring legacy that will stand the test of time.
