Plagiarising Bongos Ikwue’s iteration that the Bible must be right is unavoidable here. It is, however, not in where the Bible assures those who knock of finding. Here, it is where the Bible says that there is a time to be born, time to live, time to die, time to be buried and time for just about every other thing.
And so is it time to bury Cecelia Abashi, the wife of Comrade Chris Abashi who himself died much earlier in 2004. Mrs Abashi passed on without new illness Monday February 19th, 2024 in Abuja.
Akwazi Abashi, one of Chris and Cece Abashi’s daughters with her own hubby
Many who came to know here in life were not there to witness her birth but were witnesses to her variegated, productive and, on the whole, fascinating life. She might have been an activist in her own right before she met Cde Abashi but it is not controversial to say it was Chris who brought her into the circle of radical student, gender and human rights activism in the 1980s. But she was to manifest vigour beyond her bringer. Chris Abashi was certainly a big-minded doer but, put on a scale, no one may contest that Cece was a more resilient combatant. While Chris was permanently in the midst of other comrades both at the University of Jos and at the politburo of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Cece was a self-sufficient lone fighter against cultural, patriarchal and social indignities. Furthermore, Chris had a can-do spirit but was more easily shattered than Cece. As the first SG of the Socialist Congress of Nigeria (SCON) and a former president of NANS when NANS was ‘fire for fire’ in ideological clarity and political assertion, Abashi planned to prioritise education when he won election as Chairperson of Nasarawa Eggon Local Government Council in 1999. Lenin was his idol and it seemed clear he wanted to replicate Lenin as a LGC Chairperson, starting with education.
His first shocker were the legal and bureaucratic roadblocks that he met. Using his good connection with the governor of the state at the time, he managed to unmake some of the roadblocks and to continue on his way. But there was the roadblock that he doesn’t appear to have been able to overcome, given the way he talked about the encounter. It was with the pupils, the kind of answers he got by asking pupils in his exploratory tour of the LGA ahead of what he was planning to do. The way he talked about it subsequently, it is doubtful if he ever managed to overcome the scale of the damage that education has suffered. At one point, he asked if Nigeria could ever get it right again. That was like inferring how could it be otherwise if the situation in my local government is this bad, my local government being a microcosm of the larger Nigeria. Things have gotten worse since his death.
An artistic imagination of Cde Chris Abashi by his artist son, Mouktar
The great story is that his resourceful but now late Mrs Cecelia Abashi has gathered together all the documents relating to the innovations in governance that her husband was planning as a LGC Chairperson. Her aim was for a careful script manager to turn the file into a book. The nomadism of the handler of the project and the financial implications have stalled the publication but, somehow, it is the story that should be told to show how far autonomy of agency can go outside of discourse.
Life is a series of battles. Very few people win all. Chris and Cece won a lot of their battles. Cece won her battles with an inner strength and native intelligence to overcome roadblocks, including the death of her husband, the burning of their family house, the challenge of singlehandedly raising the four children, all but one of whom are settled. In fact, she died in the home of one of their daughters.
These were no mean challenges which only her foresight in coming to the conclusion early that she was on her own could have guaranteed. She wasn’t on her own because everyone ditched her. No. It rather is the case that the people who ought to help her were themselves in need of help, not so much because they all turned lazy but because the economy has put everyone in such a condition. How can there be cheerful givers in a hit-and-run economy? Otherwise, the comrades, for example, tried for the family and many others too.
But Cece bore it all, never showing any signs of stress. Someone who went on to write and publish a book as well as started a PhD programme at the time she did all these could not be someone who was overwhelmed by her circumstances. For the PhD, she sought a place in a first generation Nigerian university – the University of Nigeria, Nsukka – rather than adopting an Unoka style of going to a nearby university to get it over more quickly, using one sentiment or another. Of course, Unoka is the character in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart well known as a prodigy of a flutist but also known for improvident life because of his knack for cheap options instead of hard, risky moves outside of his comfort zone.
Going to UNN was not an only manifestation of her manoeuvrability. Once she went into what was like trading in honey. Because she was getting the honey straight from the source undiluted, hers was so sought after. But one was once forced to tell her that she was not suitable for that line of business because what she was doing was not business but charity.
She was peaceful and generous but stubborn and complex. Trouble free but when not transgressed against on matters of principle. Otherwise, she could not be taken for granted. And crossing her red line could be a nasty experience for whoever. Her strength lay in her power to amass details and the capacity to synthesise them into narratives that can be compelling in the transparency of the honesty in doing that.
Her death and burial should, therefore, not be an occasion for weeping but of clapping hands in celebration of the ultimate overcomer. She is, indeed, the overcomer personified.
