GOODBYE TO ALL THAT
Ide F. Eguabor pays tribute to Emeka Enejere, a scholar, political scientist and an activist
As soon as words filtered and spread in Lagos that Dr. Emeka Enejere, scholar, teacher, political scientist and activist had passed on Friday, May 20, 2016, at a medical facility in Abuja, a medical doctor friend in Lagos sent me an SMS: “You mean he died with all that enormous knowledge and intelligence”? For the next several minutes or so, I became numb with some kind of helpless paralysis. For Dr. Emeka Enejere had become a friend, confidant, soul mate of an uncommon type that produced a friendship and fondness I thought would last forever.
A consummate intellectual and teacher, Emeka was a die-hard patriot whose penchant and desire to simply do things the right way made him at once suspicious and controversial. It all started way back in 1990, when on my return from a fellowship programme in the United Staes of America, I was invited on board to serve the National Chairman of the National Republican Convention (NRC) Chief Tom Ikimi, as Chief Press Secretary. Prince Nduka Obaigbena for a short while, Mr. Charles Iyizoba, Quenette Allaogoa, Alhaji Abdulrazak Danagundi, Dr. Emeka Enejere and late Dr. Ben Efoghe constituted the team.
Dr. Enejere in no time became the one to whom all of us gravitated especially when for days on end we would be hosting meetings, writing minutes, compiling guidelines for ward, local government and state congresses, travelling and criss-crossing Nigeria at dizzying speed. In no time Enejere, a workaholic had become the political party’s ‘brain box’, working tirelessly and endlessly for several days and weeks without a break. It is to his credit and masterful handling that tricky and knotty political issues in the party were resolved no matter how complicated.
My admiration for him was in part for the clarity of his political analysis and the influence he wielded as a perceptive thinker on political trends and developments. He had a special and very simplistic
NOT TOO LONG AGO, HE WOULD CALL ME INSISTING HE NEEDED THE FULL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE, INSISTING IT MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO BE COVERED BY DUST. THIS WAS IN THE FACE OF HIS HEALTH CHALLENGES
but compelling way of explaining intricate political situations to the satisfaction of his audience, so much so even if you disagreed, you still had to concede his point of view made sense.
It will be hard to quite easily place his role in contemporary Nigerian politics. His frustration at the nation’s squandering of opportunities to uplift Nigeria politically. His rejection of the document prepared and collated by Nigeria’s military hierarchy and called the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the fact that the National Conference of 2014 had presented a golden opportunity to restructure this nation into one strong and vibrant federating democracy but which was lost to the primordial considerations of partisanship.
Not too long ago, he would call me insisting he needed the full report of the National Conference, insisting it must not be allowed to be covered by dust. This was in the face of his health challenges. For the most part we kept at our early morning phone chats.
Dr. Enejere was a passionate patriot, a positively pragmatic bureaucrat who fought the right battles at the right time to make Nigeria assume the fullness of its greatness to no avail. His friend and ally, Dr. Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi and others who were in house, fellow travellers and close political associates will have to keep the struggle on without their “brain box and whiz kid”.
The great Doc, as we always say, it’s goodbye to all that until we meet again.
Too heavy hearted and devastated to continue, I call on our Almighty, merciful and benevolent Lord to grant his wife, Hon. Justice Pearl Enejere( rtd), the children and grandchildren, the fortitude to bear this loss.
May his soul find eternal rest in the bosom of The Lord. Amen. Eguabor, a Journalist, wrote from Lagos