Hers is one burial event an appreciative Nigeria, particularly activists of the 1980s ought to have attended en masse. Mama Beatrice Onyebuchi Chiemeke is not only an authentic Catholic, she gave the world a lawyer by name Onyeisi Chiemeke. Barrister Chiemeke is not only a documenter of radical politics in Nigeria, he is also a very good lawyer and a writer. They do not come in that combination nowadays.
It is thus not for nothing that different set of players showed face at the burial at Ubulu Uku in Delta State for the two days (December 27 and 28th) that the burial lasted. They could be said they were expressing gratitude to someone who deserved it. They made it there in spite of an atmosphere of unspeakable insecurity.
Trust Nigerians to weather every imaginable storm to fulfil all such communal obligations to participate on such rites of passage as shown in some of the pictures on this page.
One more category of celebrant mourners
The end of the beginning and the beginning of her next journey
At over 90 years, it was no more a case of bereavement but of celebration of a life well lived. She reinforced a message for all Nigerians: our parents in the hamlets and villages in the years gone past can live up to her age because they ate every meal straight from the pots rather than from stuff kept in the refrigerator; they ate less of fried stuff and they had plenty of fresh food that had not be deleted of natural elements by technology. So, only until recently we started hearing of cancer, kidney crisis or liver infections among that generation. The point is that even at death, she was sending a message to fellow Nigerians, message which fellow Nigerians may not listen to because a generation permanently in a rush have sold their souls to food that amount only to what Americans call ‘stuffing and starving’. People eat a lot nowadays but they are still starving!
