Mama, oh dear mother, beacon of our inspiration. Nurture of our visions and virtues. My vessel of courage and tower of strength. Mother, glow of passion and flame of compassion. Our great mother, so full of life, and now so quiet. Mama, why are you motionless and our songs of praise mournful.

I stand here before those you suckled and those you cuddled. I behold the faces of my brothers and sisters, and none is smiling. I see our wives and I feel no comfort. Besides and around are your relations and great family friends from far and near, and none is cheerful. The laughter of your grandchildren appear suspended, and their restless vitality around you rudely withdrawn. The finality of death is here, cold but apparent, and now I know the hour has come to say goodbye.

Mama, we never knew it will be this soon. Intuition failed us and medical science gave up. When God showed mercy in your therapy in South Africa, we rejoiced and celebrated. You adjusted to the home away from home and it was marvelous in our eyes. In our joy, we did not reckon the grace period will be this brief. When we spoke two days before your passing, your natural warmth was fresh and at its best.

You demanded  ingredients to make my favourite meal on arrival, and we quickly settled for the weekend. You told me that my boxer shorts which you had always shopped for me was there and waiting. I was truly expectant and could hardly wait. That excitement was never consummated, because, by midweek, you kept a superior date with your creator. And today, we bow in submission to the authority of your divine recall.

My sweet mother of fifty years, and acting father for thirty-two years, when our father took the path you do now, you were young and vulnerable. We were all kids and fragile. Options were several and tempting, but you gave us the grace and bore the cross. Armed with nothing except your faith in God and belief in hardwork, you weaned us through labour and sacrifice. With patience and denial, you won the race without casualty.

Today we are what you laboured for because you gave us counsel and ideas. We are what others appreciate because you made our ears to hear and nursed our hearts to understand. Our wives are our pillars, because your patience taught them endurance. We are standing even in grief, because you taught us strength in weakness. What else could we have asked for in a mother, that you did not give us in double portion. Mama, nothing.

When you consented under pressure from your daughters to accept, any honour by title, youchose NMACHINECHENDO - which means God's beauty that comes with cover and shade. You practically became a human umbrella to those in search of rest and succour. As a shield to those under pursuits, you maintained equal resistance to indiscipline, laziness, betrayal and injustice. As an advocate for peace in family and community, your works of charity and philanthropy assumed proportions that we are scared to match, nor hope to equal.

NMACHINECHENDO,I salute you. I salute you in the name of my family and children. I honour you in the names of your very special ones, Jude and Cordelia. I celebrate you in the names of your gentleboy Tony and precious queen, Ann. And I praise you in the name of your true prince, Donatus, and his family.

Together, we gratefully join this rich assembly of patient faithfuls to say goodbye to our matriarch and doyen of Okonkwo homestead. An assembly of leaders of men and workers in the vineyard. Friends and associates of immense goodwill who have come to see you off in colours. Though your voice have remained silent, we are certain this harvest of love from far and near are proceeds from your foundation of care and free giving. We are proud and re-assured that even quiet in death, your walls of support and protection remain potent and undiminished.

In that wall Mama, I will find reason to persuade your Chy, my wife, that her schedule just got bigger twenty five years into our matrimony. I will find grace to make excuses to your grand children for the promise of holidays with you this summer that will not be. I will try to make them accommodate your sudden departure without parting words. They will agonize but hopefully will understand. Understand that, in this slippery terrain of mere mortals, wishes are hardly horses, and death never friendly. Yes, we hope to adjust and pray that the void in our hearts and tears in our eyes evaporate with the wind of glory that lifted you on high.

Mother, what else shall I say that I have not. I bid you farewell our special mother Teresa.

We  say goodbye to a great devotee of Holy Mother Mary in name and worship.  Goodbye, colourful garland of the Okonkwo family.  Goodbye, amazing inspiration to our wives and pearl of our children.  Goodbye, caregiver to Church and Community. Goodbye, Teacher of family values and work ethics. Goodbye, counselor of peace  Most importantly, goodbye, worthy candidate for heave in -transit.

As you sail on wings of unseen eagle, may you rest in peace through forgiveness. And may your banquet with the good Lord be celebrated by Angels.

Adieu Mama, Good  Night our Angel.

Fare thee well, Nmachinechendo.

Senator Okonkwo writes from

Ojoto, Anambra State

It was not how long one lives but how well one lives," wrote a mourner on the condolence register. Abubakar Abba Umar, had his life gruesomely terminated at the age of 42.  Not only was the way he died unique but his entire life had taken a unique pattern. He was murdered on  November 11, 2009 at Utako District in Abuja. His killers were not content with fracturing his skull with a bullet, they also used a special incendiary material to burn him inside his car. What remained was barely ashes and pieces of crumbling bones.

Abba, as he was called by friends and family members, was an example of an exceptionally gifted, honest and hard-working individual. Although he was the first law student to graduate with a first class in the faculty at the University of Maiduguri in 1992, he never attended primary or secondary school. He missed both but was able to educate himself at home.

His father who was an eminent Islamic scholar wanted Abba to become another Islamic scholar. He selected him for that purpose for the latter's  intellect. Even at tender age, Abba has memorised a lot of Arabic texts. When Abba was a teenager he decided on his own that he needed to have Western education. Family members remembered observing him buying elementary English and mathematics textbooks. He taught himself how to read and write in the Roman script. Later on, he enrolled at the Arabic Teachers College in Gombe and later in Maiduguri from where he proceeded to College of Legal Studies Yola where he emerged with a distinction.  Eventually he made it to the University of Maiduguri where he got a first class and won many prizes in 1992.

Abba's sojourn took him to Lagos for his National Youth Service Corps with the National Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) in 1994. He did so well as a corps member that he was retained. His former boss, Ahmed Almustapha remembered him as someone who will not close from work until his boss did so. He was so impressed with Abba's performance that when he was appointed Registrar-General at the then obscure and poorly-organised Corporate Affairs Commission, he took Abba along with him to be his Special Assistant in 2001. Not that Almustapha was related to Abba in any way. They were not even from the same state. He picked Abba from among many candidates solely out of merit. All his life, Abba never had to lobby for anything. He deserved every single appointment he got.

He was also a board member of Oil and Gas Free Zone Authority, Onne, Port Harcourt, representing the CAC. Before his death, he was also a member, Harmonisation and Coordination Sub-Committee of the Financial Services Regulating Coordination Committee (FSRCC) as well Member, Sub-Committee of the Joint Legal & Enforcement and Harmonisation and Coordination Sub-Committees of the FSRCC. In the course of carrying out his work, he attended professional courses in many countries across the world including Canada, USA, Egypt, South Africa, UAE, UK, Germany, Austria, Brazil, Ghana, New Zealand and India.

Abba and his boss Almustapha spear-headed the well-accomplished task of transforming the CAC from a corrupt enclave inhabited by touts, truant workers, forgery lawyers to a world-class organisation in terms of efficiency and organisation. He never collected bribe or succumbed to pressure to bend the rules. Indeed, he never tolerated anyone who engages in such. He had actually become an anti-corruption icon within and outside his organisation. That actually turned out to be Abba's undoing. When former president Obasanjo muted the idea of setting up the EFCC, Malam Nuhu Ribadu took Abba on board to draft what later became the EFCC law. He also became one of the board members of the EFCC. With his new role at the EFCC, life became more miserable for lawyers who forged a CAC certificates. He handed each that came his way to the EFCC for prosecution.

After the recent disclosure of bank debtors by the current CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, some of the big debtors who were equally rich and influential wanted the CAC to illegally amend the share value of their companies. They faced a stumbling block: as long as Abba remained in his position as Special Assistant to the Registrar General, that will be impossible. All he did was to forward the details of such companies to the EFCC for prosecution.

A friend did an assessment of his personal security and advised him to leave the CAC along with his former boss last June. The argument was that he will become an easy target of the opponents of his former boss. Moreover, if the new leadership turned out to be weak or corrupt, he will automatically become a target of elimination. His response then was that the new Registrar-General who he then described as a friend needed him to be part of the team that will stabilise the transition.

Few months after the take-over, things started becoming sour for him. He realised both his new boss and some of his fellow workers could no longer tolerate his presence.  Indeed, the relationship between him and the new Registrar General went so bad that at the time he was killed they were not on talking terms.  Few weeks before he was murdered in a well-orchestrated plot, similar to those used by highly organised crime syndicates, he confided to the family that all eyes were on him. He could actually sense that an intricate web was being formed that will see to his elimination. It was a powerful mob that he could not confront.

His plan was simply to beat a retreat by going to Harvard for a higher degree. He had the plan of applying for a study leave, which if not granted, he would have gladly resigned his appointment. But his killers believed he knew too much. It would be a mistake to let him go and join the likes of Ribadu and El Rufa’i in exposing the rot in the system. So they also hurried up and caught up with him on the night of 11/11/09. Even after shooting him, they were still so scared that he could somehow miraculously survive the bullets. They had to burn him in order to be sure that he was silenced forever.

They thought they had the last laugh. But at the moment Abba is still laughing at them. After he was killed, some of his friends and family members had a dream where they met him. They asked him, "You were supposed to be dead, why are you still around smiling?" His response was, "I am not dead. They did not kill me. They only burnt my right hand." They were all puzzled with his response.

When one of them asked an eminent scholar on the interpretation of dreams what Abba meant, the scholar also laughed and said, "Do you know that in Islam we believed that the dead never tell a lie?" He replied, "Of course I know." He then replied, "Read the Quran chapter 2:155, "And say not of those who are killed in the cause of God that they are dead; nay, they are living; only you perceived not." It is true they only burnt his hand because the hand was no longer there to fight against corruption and strive for transparency and justice in society. Or even to help the poor and the weak he has been assisting.

In Islam the murderer automatically picks up all the sins of their victim. Those who killed Abba have taken away all his sins. In addition, the prophet of Islam said that anyone who was burnt to death automatically attains the status of a martyr. Abba was also lucky to get that additional bonus. The irony was that if he had died on his bed, he would not have merited such. Just like he was exceptionally lucky in his lifetime, so was he lucky at the time of his death. Philosophically speaking, his murderers have inadvertently done him a favour. With or without killing him, we all knew that when his time was up, death would have been inevitable anyway.

What many people do not know was that Abba was a devoted Muslim who never missed his prayers. He fasted every Monday and Thursday of the week. According to his neighbours, he was always on his way to the mosque at dawn when others are still enjoying their sleep. A Christian neighbour who wept at the news of his death remarked that, "He was a devoted family man who likes playing with his daughter and greeting his neighbours. The day he was killed, I met him at the car park in the morning and we had a chat with his usual beautiful smile."

Abba has completed constructing a beautiful mosque in Gembu powered by solar panels, the like of which has never been built in his native Taraba state. The inside was all first-grade marble. As if he had a premonition that he was about to leave this world, he hurried the project and expended a large chunk of his saving on it. His aim was to build a house for God. The Prophet of Islam was also reported saying that whoever built a house (mosque) for God in this world, God will build a befitting one for him in the hereafter. Actually Abba only succeeded in building a house for himself in the hereafter, just few months before he was killed!

Those who will feel the pain of Abba's departure include the many widows and orphans he has been assisting financially. Too many poor souls relied on his constant support. Many people described him as generous to a fault. He was always denying himself the life of luxury in an attempt to help others. He did not only feed hundreds among the poor and the weak, but he has also sheltered and educated many others. His family, particularly his two daughters  4 -years and six months old - will forever feel the void created but thousands who were not related to him wept bitterly over what befell this gentle soul.

Less than a year before he was killed, he also expended a good part of his saving on paying for a poor 14-year old to have a cochlear implant. The poor boy reacted to some antibiotic after a severe illness and lost his hearing as a result. He had to drop out of school for over five years. He was taken to the school for the deaf but he was not making much progress. Abba, whose heart was always over-flowing with kindness, managed to save sufficient amount to pay for the surgery. Today, the boy could hold a conversation on the phone! The boy used to tell people that when he grew up he would build a house for Abba. On hearing that Abba told him he would not need one, the boy replied to his amazement, "I will build a mosque then as a sign of gratitude. Abba could not help but smile.

Another old man was robbed of all his retirement savings by some hoodlums. The man nearly developed mental problems as a result. When Abba heard of the story, he sent the man a gift of an amount greater what the old man lost. Another elderly man had his debtors harassing him. When the story reached Abba's ears he paid the loan on behalf of the man. There were many similar stories about Abba that only came to light when the mourners converged after his death. He had always insisted to the beneficiaries of his benevolence that they should not broadcast such, out of modesty. He was quite an exemplary character. May Allah have mercy on his soul and grant him eternal rest.  May He also expose his killers before the entire world. What many people were yet to know was that contrary to the propaganda being broadcast by his murderers, Abba left very little material wealth that could barely take care of his family.

Nigeria has lost some of its best in this young man. Nonetheless, the Nigerian government has a responsibility in fishing out his killers from their den. Otherwise, it will send the lesson to other honest, hardworking Nigerians that the wages of honesty, patriotism and hard work in Nigeria is simply death. It is 100 days since this brilliant young man was killed but his killers are still at large.

•Barr.Farouk Ibrahim writes from Asokoro, Abuja.

Ibrahim Tahir. The name has a ring and conjures up some kind of resonance and rambunctiousness. Dr. Tahir had class, poise and presence. In a room, he had a way of filling up whatever little space was left by his huge frame with a voice that rang with an exuberant echo. He spoke with such measured elegance, chose his phrases and stitched his words with the precision of a Saville Row tailor. I loved the man, his words and the sheer breath and depth of his intellect. He had a flawless grasp of intricate issues of various sciences and fields of knowledge and had a way of pulling various threads from religion, sociology, economics, journalism or politics to weave and convey and idea, Dr. Tahir had the capacity to make every encounter engaging and exciting. He was a combative, incisive and an avuncular debater on almost any and every subject.

News of his death hit me while I was in a stupor following the death of my best friend, Charles Garba Ali Madaki. I do not remember precisely when Dr. Tahir and I first met formally in the mid 80s. I recall however, that the sentiments of appreciation and affection were mutual and we quickly hit it off. We all admitted a mutual longing for a meeting, an admiration for the intellectual capacity of one another and I was personally humbled to hear him speak about his appreciation of my interventions. I like to listen to you or to read you because your comments are always incisive, measured and balanced, I remember him saying to me. He was taken aback when I told him that I had read The Last Imam almost at one sitting and that his PhD thesis had held me bound in the library for the better part of a week. How did you get to read my thesis, he asked as if I had broken into his personal safe. Well, it was in the course of my research at the School of Oriental & African Studies, I said to him. Oh, he said rather fondly, you went to SOAS? Ah, that is a great school. Fantastic archives and Library, he repeated.

For some strange reason, from then on, we tended to share the same platform at Arewa House and a few other places where issues of the North and Nigerian politics were being debated. The last platform we shared was a memorial event organized by the family of the late Alhaji Abdurahaman Okene at Arewa House and chaired by Professor Jubril Aminu, another prominent star in the intellectual galaxy. Dr Tahir and I always tended to have similar diagnosis to the problems of our nation but would often disagree on the prescriptions and the conclusions. But whatever the issues were, you could hardly fault the soundness of Dr Tahir's position on almost every debate about Power, Religion, Justice, Equity the North and Nigeria.

I picked up the news purely by accident that Dr. Tahir had been at the National Hospital, Abuja for almost a year! Much later in the day, I decided to drive to the National Hospital in search of him. I was not sure where to find him but I knew I would find him. I had a rough idea of what part of the Hospital he might be in.

After asking around, I finally found the wing of the Hospital where he was staying. I met a very nice nurse who welcomed me but told me that Dr. Tahir was resting. I pleaded with her that I had to return to Kaduna early the next morning and that I might not be able to see him before my departure. She suggested I leave a note, but I persisted. To press my case further, I decided to draw from my account of clerical privileges. But Madam, I said to her, I am not aware of any hospital turning back a priest who wishes to visit a patient. What is more, every patient needs some prayers, I said, sensing that this would obviously qualify for spiritual blackmail. But the nurse did not relent. Dr Tahir is a Muslim, she said, and you are a Catholic priest. You are not an Imam. I saw from her face that some bone of kindness had shifted. Ok, I am a Catholic Imam, I said to her. She laughed and caved in.  Ok, let me see if he is awake. She returned with a huge smile to say that Dr. Tahir was ready to receive me. I give you five minutes, she said with medical kindness.

As soon as I entered his private hospital room, Dr. Tahir strenuously struggled to move the whole of his over two hundred pounds of flesh from the bed. Even the mattress seemed to smile at me in appreciation of being relieved of its burden. My goodness, he exclaimed. Fr. Matthew, my good friend, how did you find me here? Who told you I was here? You are a real brother and God will bless you, he said with his characteristic warmth. He gave me a warm Goliath and David embrace. We chatted about the usual problems of Nigeria.

I looked at Dr. Tahir with a sense of pity. For a man of his stature, I sensed that the system had not been fair to him. Was this not supposed to be one of the precious scions of the Northern ruling classes? Was this not the Talban Bauchi, supposedly a player in the first eleven of the North? I shook my head and concluded that indeed, there are Northern Princes and there are Northern Princes. I looked at his diabetic condition and personally feared that he would not make it or that in the end, he might have his legs amputated or so. Looking at him, a wave of despondency swept over me. I thought about Dr. Tahir the man, the one with the swagger who walked with the measured confidence and elegance of a prince.

I took one look at him and felt a pang of personal pain. Dr Tahir looked quite ill, but I was also worried as to how a man of such panache had seemingly fallen into a state of nigh physical disrepair. Is it that no one could do anything earlier for Dr. Tahir? I had somehow sensed that Dr. Tahir's life had taken a downturn a few years earlier. I had noticed in the 90s that the swagger had slowed down and even in appearance; Dr. Tahir had begun to look like a cross between a Sufi mystique and his radical mullah. He seemed to have become overtly religious or at least externally sought to convey that appearance. Was he taking refuge in religion, I thought, given that in politics, he obviously had become sidelined by the same Northern ruling class that he had defended and served so fervently?

Mohammed Haruna's had rightly described Dr. Tahir as a radical conservative. The description was apt but it was also seemingly the root of his problems.

Although I had known of Dr.Tahir in the 80s, most of what one often heard from his critics were stories of a radical who had sold his ideological soul and crossed over for the pottage of power. My respect and admiration for Dr. Tahir grew when I read The Last Imam purely. I had actually read the book almost at a sitting. After I read the book, I remember telling my friend, the late Dr. Tajudeen Abduraheem about it. He found my obsession with Dr. Tapir's brilliance a bit disturbing, reminding me that the man was a renegade comrade. But, Tajudeen said, give it to him, that character (the word Taju loved to use for people he had reservations about) is brilliant. You should read his thesis on Sufism. Using the Inter University Library Lending facilities, I obtained a copy of the thesis from Cambridge University.  For five or so days, after it arrived, I was often one of the first to enter and leave the library. That thesis definitely will go down in history as one of the most thoroughly well researched pieces of work on the subject.

I kept encouraging Dr. Tahir to publish his thesis, but the subject did not interest him. He told me that actually, the Last Imam had been a much longer book and that the publishers had thrown away more than half of the manuscript.

He kept telling me he would do a sequel to the book. However, I sensed that he might have begun to see the intense critique of Sufism in his thesis as capable of costing him a seat at the table of power. For the better part of the last nine years, each time we met, he would often say to me, You and I must do something together, he always said to me. Exactly what the subject of his conspiracy was, he never really told me. Tahir is gone, but he will be remembered long after he has gone. Even in sheer size, they don't make them like Dr Tahir anymore. He will be missed but sadly, the North which pays lip service to its children, allowed this meteor to fly inexorably   into the sunset. Good night my friend and brother.

……And Professor Bashir Ikara:

Last week, I picked up an old copy of Daily Trust (January 1, 2010, to while away the time. I turned the next page and there was the shocking news of the    death Professor Bashir Ikara apparently on December 31, 2009.  The time last I had seen him was when I stopped in his office to say hello in 2006 or so.

I first met Professor Ikara over twenty five years ago. Clearly one of the most brilliant minds in this country, he did not have the presence of a Dr. Tahir. Although he had a doctorate in English, his academic forays had taken him into the areas of Culture and History. I found him a cerebral and provocative intellectual. When it came to talking about the North, his convictions almost showed him off as an arrogant intellectual. But as I got to know him, I realised he was, deep down a very gentle and spiritual individual. Like the Tahirs of his world, he was combative in defending the North and its culture.

Professor Ikara and I got a bit close when I came home for the research and had to make use of the Arewa House Library. He was then the Director. I had arrived the Centre quietly and merely wanted to go through the formalities so as to use the facilities. Somehow, Dr. Ikara got to hear that I was in the premises. He personally came out and met me. He invited me to his office but I told him to let me finish my registration.  But, Professsor Ikara would have none of that. Under his own supervision, he got his staff to prepare a place for me and made sure I was comfortable and given all the assistance I needed for my work. You are our friend and brother and we are most privileged to have you here. Please consider this a much your house as ours and please relax and feel at home. He then personally took me round the facility pointing out where the relevant materials were. We remained in touch even after my time.

When I returned home from England, we met a few times at Conferences. However, the most devastating encounter which shook me to my bone marrow happened one evening when I boarded a Chachangi flight from Lagos to Kaduna in the late 90s.  I had put away my brief case and tried to settle down on my seat in the plane.  I politely greeted the gentleman who looked like a bundle of bones near the window. He seemed lost in his thoughts and I did not wish to disturb him. I wondered how a man that looked so sick could be allowed to travel on his own. Later on, I heard a rather faint voice say to me: Ah! Father Kukah, kwana biyu. Yaya dai? I looked intensely and it was the smile that gave him away. Even as he managed the smile, the dry foam around his mouth gave him an even sicker look. In shock, I muttered, Professor Ikara, yaya dai? Are you ok? He told me he was ok, but I honestly felt more like bursting into tears than continuing a conversation with him. What had consumed this otherwise elegant and handsome gentleman, I wondered? Professor Ikara had not been a fat man, but what I saw of him was a man who had been wasted by the elements. We managed some conversation but I did not have the courage to ask him what had eaten him up. We finally arrived Kaduna and went our different ways, but the image of Professor Ikara did not leave me.

I recalled the beginning of his woes way back in 1992 or 1993 when he courageously staged a very ambitious launching of Arewa House Fund to rebuild the place. I recall that it was perhaps the only event in fund raising history where the organisers overshot their target by many millions! I had not attended the event, but the newspapers were generous in their reports. Rather strangely, after the launching, Professor Ikara rather than rise higher was thrown down the Olympian heights. When I asked the then Chairman of Arewa House, the late Liman Ciroma said something to the effect that Professor Ikara had worked so hard that the Board decided to give him a break or so! As with the mafia, they had simply told the man to take a long walk! The poor man was given a most mortal stab in the back. Wounded and enfeebled, the system sent him into the sunset, thus marking the beginning of the end for him. From then on, Professor Ikara became literally a shadow of himself and went downhill.

Later on in 2000, the Centre for Black and African Culture in Lagos offered him an award of some sort. To my greatest surprise, the Director sent someone to my Lagos office to say that Professor Ikara had requested that I should personally be requested to do him the honour of reading his citation at the event. The message came with an almost 40 page CV of the man. I was taken aback because I had not seen him for a while. I did honour the invitation. Sadly, these stories are the stories of two prophets who seemingly had no honour in their own homes or so it did seem.

One of the tragedies of these two intellectual giants lies in the fact that although they went to the best schools (Cambridge and Leeds), they did not manage to occupy their rightful places in both the national and international circuits as their contemporaries in other parts of Nigeria. For example, both Bashir Ikara and Wole Soyinka read English in Leeds and while Ikara had a PhD, Wole Soyinka did not do a doctorate. Professor Ikara may definitely have been one of the first Africans to do a PhD in the prestigious University of Leeds. Although not in competition, but look at how things turned for the great WS. . Another gentleman who was also at Cambridge at about the same time as Ibrahim Tahir was and got a doctorate is, Ambassador Dele Cole. Both men made forays into national politics, but at the national level, Ambassador Cole's name perhaps has greater resonance than Dr.Tahir's. I am not implying that these men needed to have traveled the same routes, nor that they were in competition.  But there is a lesson.

Whereas both Cole and Soyinka have excelled due to the open and liberal environment in which they operated, both Ikara and Tahir were caught in the suffocating mesh of feudal intrigues, a system whose patronage system placed higher premium in invisible and serpentine layers of a stratified ruling classes. Thus, because they committed so much of their energies fighting and defending so called Northern interests, they did not have enough energy to assert themselves into national politics. In the end, a less academically endowed crust of the Northern ruling classes (averse to dogon turanci ) opted to cut them down to size by removing them from the loop of power. By the time they realized the damage that this narrowness had done to them, it was too late. Sadly, weighed down by the exigencies of feudal politics, both men did not mange to assert themselves even within the region, nor did the use their exposure and intellectual pedigree to rally their counterparts to national politics. This is one reason why Nigeria remains a rudderless ship in the hands of people with limited exposure and capacity.

Both men had defended a system on its throes of asphyxiation. Today, that system with its lack of openness has proved to be a counterfoil to its own development or growth. Looking back, we must concede that these are tough times for the North or what is left of it. This reality must dawn especially on  those for whom this notion has provided the oxygen for survival. Today, the North cuts a sorry sight in all material respects: it lacks the capacity for self renewal, has lost its military and bureaucratic backbones. Despite its monopoly of the instruments of power for so many years since independence, the region has no economic backbone. This is why it is vulnerable to the accusation of being a liability to the nation. Now, its best intellectuals have almost all died away. The circumstances of utter neglect, near penury under which their great sons have died is the best statement that the fig leaf covering the North has dried up. Perhaps a courageous admission of the death of this hegemon might mark the beginning of the new alignments.  This could enable a new generation of young people across the divide to weave a strong future together. If this happens, future generations will appreciate the fact that intellectuals must dream of higher ideals above the immediate and narrow interests of their environments. If we achieve this, then the sacrifices of these great sons would not have been in vain. May they rest in perfect peace. Amen.

• Fr. Kukah is the Parish Priest of St. Andrew's Catholic Church, Kakuri, Kaduna