This irredeemable debt: As my friend Onye-nkuzi, Anthony ‘Longjohn’ Maduka goes home!
My father, Ezeamaluchi WO Muo (KSM) transited seamlessly to the great beyond in March,1993. He didn’t have the luxury a “brief illness”; he just died after muttering “may your will be done”. However, before then, he “died” three years earlier, when his best friend, Ichie Julius Mmaduka died in 1990. He came home that day, sat on a wooden chair with his hands on the expansive centre table supporting his chin.
So, he went upstairs, sat there and sobbed “Julius; Julius, O Julius”. It was a long while before he tearfully announced to us that Julius had died. It was by God’s grace that he survived the death of Ichie Mmaduka. Now in this year of our Lord, 2019, I faced the same predicament. Onyenkuzi Antony Longjohn Mmaduka, the first son of that same Ichie Mmaduka and who had been my friend for the past 40 years+ and unarguably, my best friend, died on 30/9/19.
I received the shocking news from Felix Afuzi, an extended family member, married to Anthony’s younger sister, that Anthony is dead. When I asked “which Tony?” he responded “that Tony you know” and hung up. I was writing my Businessday weekly article for 2/10/19 when that call came through and I just wrote “I thank God for making it to October 2019. My friend of 40 years, Anthony Maduka, a jolly good fellow, who was so tall that I named him ‘Long-john’ and who distributed happiness, under all circumstances, to all around him, could not make it. He died on 30/9/19 after 48 hours of sickness. However bad things are, lets thank God for life because once there is life, there is still HOPE” (Cashless banking: So far how far and at 59, we are being gang-raped, Businessday, 2/10/19).
It was much later that the weight of the news hit me and I wailed uncontrollably. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was nobody around and so, nothing restrained me giving vent to my sorrow.
Tony did not become my friend because his father was my father’s friend. By an act of God, both of us were posted to Bauchi for our NYSC, where we were sent to the Azare axis for our primary assignment. Tony was always noticeable because of his height, cheerful disposition and his limitless armoury of jokes. He was a wholesale dealer in happiness, joy and laughter, which he received freely and distributed freely generously and effortlessly everywhere he went. If he had gone into comedy then, Ali-baba would have been a poor imitation.
How Longjohn combined this trait with being a disciplinarian-teacher is still one of the questions I will ask him whenever we meet on the other side of the divide. And because I also had a good dose of natural jocularity and given our similar backgrounds, we hit it off since then.
Tony joked about everything and anything and I gave it back to him in kind. I named him Longjohn because of his height and any of my relations and friends knew him as Longjohn (That was the name used in a local song by one of our minstrels called 7-7) and when I was in a hurry, I just called him Longus! For instance, I told him that given the laws of division of labour and comparative advantage (my first degree was in Economics), his parents should not have wasted time giving birth to the him and his brothers; they should have “manufactured” only ladies because his sisters were beautiful!
One day when he visited me at Enugu, the floor of the bed on which he slept caved in (there was no extracurricular activity) and I accused him of eating so much food to the extent that the weight of the food weighed down the bed. It was an accusation I always raised whenever I saw him eating including during my 60th birthday (1/1/18), my entrepreneurship book launch, where he was the MC (11/11/18) and our 30th wedding anniversary (11/8/19).
We were so close that if his parents wanted to tell him something, they would tell me directly or just made sure that I heard it. He also used me as his mailrunner with his parents. In our post NYSC days, we used our mothers’ “Honda50” motorcycle, then nicknamed Nwanyi Nnewi (The “Nnewi woman” because almost every Nnewi wife had one then) to scavenge our entire environment. I still remember how we rode from Igboukwu to Ukehe (across 4LGAS) to see the man who mysteriously took residence on top of a very “high-rise” tree.
There was a funeral song by our women folk that both of us enjoyed. The song was O di ka ono n’igwe na eziokwu It appears that he (the dead) is truly in heaven). So, we analysed and made a joke of that song, saying that probably somebody had told the women that the dead was in heaven and they were then saying that it appeared that she was truly in heaven. And we would ask ourselves: who gave then the initial information that the dead was in heaven?
Tony was born in 1954 and had a degree in English/education from Jos and lived his life as a disciplinarian teacher, hostel master, Vice Principal and Principal at several schools in Anambra state and Chief Examiner in English for WAEC and NECO. He was a professional and expected the virtues of commitment, hard-work and excellence from his teachers and students at all times. He was a community leader and served his kindred, the Catholic Church and the Igboukwu community in various capacities.
Well Onye-nkuzi (Teacher), LongJohn Anthony Maduka is gone. He will be buried at Igboukwu today, 7/11/19. I was not that fleshy but I know that I have lost some flesh in the past 5 weeks. As I say the irreversible goodbye to him, I would request the women folk to sing that our song (o di k o no nígwe néziokwu) but I will not make a joke of it this time. I will also charge him for a breach of contract. He was older than me but for whatever reason, I believed that he would outlive me. I therefore requested him to collate all my articles and publish them as he deemed fit anytime, I died. That was about 35 years ago. But I will ask the judge to have mercy on him because I now have somebody who will do that, even better, for me! He was a friendly friend, who stuck closer than a brother (Proverbs, 18:24).
When Jesus died, he said “it is finished”. But that did not absolve us of the irredeemable debt of death. Tony has paid his own debt. He was once like us. We shall one day be like him when we pay our own debt. His death, without even a brief illness, is a lesson for those of us on this side of the divide. I commiserate with Pat, the wife and children and siblings but most importantly with the old mother who in effect is burying her second “husband”. Thankfully, she has born her grief with philosophical calmness.
Other matters: Still on STD
My last outing on STD (Sexually Transmitted Degrees) and my fingercap attracted wide and divers’ reactions, even from those who do not usually react to my writings. I don’t know whether it was due to the title (STD), or the content and the currency of the topic. I just wish to share two of such reactions with my readers today. The first was from Stan Ukeje, teacher, economist, banker and a natural philosopher, who has been classmate and friend since 1987 (32years and still counting). He argues that there is a difference between harassment and outright EXTORTION! Behold his treatise. Ndi Muo,
You have fallen into the web of the ignorant who are unable to define terms properly. Anybody who has a duty to perform Any Service and who extorts customers, is not engaged in Harassment but a Malpractice of Extortion! Successfully awarding Fail to an Examination Candidate who should earn a Pass can only occur where the Service Provider’s employer is complacent or has included the receipts from extortion as part of employee benefits. Why do I say so? Examination candidates should be made to know they have a right to have their scripts checked if they are dissatisfied with the score awarded. Terms and conditions usually apply.
Examination candidates sign attendance on a sheet provided and submit answer sheets at the end of the examination. The Invigilator must report any candidate that failed to return answer sheet, after signing-in on the attendance sheet immediately. Situations where a candidate does not have a score for examination sat because the script is missing is administration failure. The Invigilator and Examiner should be held accountable.
A number of examiners take steps to stay ahead of the muddle in the system. So, it is wrong to declare that All Are Involved. You are however right that legislation cannot solve the problem. It can be checked by the concert of All Involved, especially, the business owners and managers.
The rest of this article continues in the online edition of Business Day @https://businessday.ng