By Stephen Obekpa Lawani (CON)
On August 9th, 2025, the death of Chief Audu Ogbeh filtered across Nigeria. As common and cheap as death in contemporary times, his death came as a big surprise to even close circle members like some of us. After all, he had just returned from Jos five days earlier, hale and hearty.
Ahead of his burial on September 26th, 2025, it is important to rewind so as to put that date back in the minds of Nigerians and thereby enable more Nigerians to spare a thought on and for the sage. Chief Audu Ogbeh is deserving of that collective homage to his iconicity. It is all we human beings can do whenever death strikes and struts away as it has just done to Chief Ogbeh.
In collective solidarity and the practice of standing shoulder to shoulder with the bereaved, we not only pay the best respect to the dead, we also send the only signal death fears. Collective solidarity serves us as the ultimate strategy of containment of death since death is such a willful character with too many sneaky, unstoppable messengers.
Death as such is the critical insight conveyed through the Adunga allegory popularised by the little-known Idoma storyteller by name Elder Oleje Oona whom we used to listen to in those days gone by. It is a message worth recalling here.
“In one sentence, death is not escapable. But we are not vulnerable to death because we are careless. People die because death comes in many different forms. Death has many skillful messengers”
Adunga was the rarity nobody else had seen his back to the ground. He was too strong. At a point, Adunga decided to embark on a wrestling tour. In all his fights, he floored all the established challengers.
With no one left to challenge him again, he told his chaperon it was time for them to return home with him as the champion of champions. But his chaperon reminded him there was just one wrestler left.
Adunga wondered who could be such an unfortunate fellow planning to put up a challenge. He was told his name is Ikwu Onm’oche.
Where is he? Adunga asked. Look at him over there, said the chaperon, pointing at the challenger. But Adunga was furious. Will it not be a waste of time to fight a frail figure like the challenger the chaperon was pointing at when heavily built wrestlers could not stand me?, he asked no one in particular. Adunga’s chaperon replied to say that Ikwu-Onm’oche was determined to fight anyway.
Then the fight started. It went to three rounds. The first round ended with Adunga complaining of headache.
The fight went to the second round. At the end of that, Adunga complained of bellyache. His chaperon wondered why. After all, in none of his previous fights did he complain of indisposition.
In the third round, Adunga said he had been beaten by a snake. And it was the most poisonous of the snakes. In a few minutes, Adunga was stone dead.
The logic of this story must be obvious to everyone by now. None of us can be so strong as to win over death. Death has many ways of coming over and conquering us. It could come through headache or bellyache or snake bite. One could choke on a fish bone and die. Anyone can hit a stone and die. You can go to sleep and not wake up. You can be hit by stray bullet. And so on and so forth.
In one sentence, death is not escapable. But we are not vulnerable to death because we are careless. People die because death comes in many different forms. Death has many skillful messengers. We should always plan, of course, but there is no insurance against death yet.
“He was, indeed, a patriot. He loved this country, always hoping that things would get better. Much of his sadness were not about himself but about Nigeria and Nigerians”
Otherwise, Chief Audu Ogbeh outsmarted death several times in his life. He was a strong man in every sense of the word, a world class orator and ever a pleasure to listen to. Aside from the late Paul Unongo, there is hardly anyone else like Audu Ogbeh in the Benue horizon as far as holding an audience spellbound is concerned.
I should know all these because, apart from Chief Ogbeh and myself coming from Otukpa community in Benue State, we have always found each other together at every point, be it in attending Mount Saint Michael’s Secondary School, Aliade where we succeeded each other as the School Prefect down to the domain of politics and even in business. Although I became a politician only when the politics of ‘old breed’ versus ‘new breed’ created a vacuum to fill, Ogbeh and I ended up in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) before my subsequent movement. We were all in business even though, unlike myself who was mainly in the hospitality and banking sectors, he was in private farming. Though he started in academia, he was running the largest cashew farm ‘at home’ at his point of death. His cashew farm has the significance of proving that his interest in agriculture was not a fluke. He practiced what he preached.
As with cashew farming so was it with poultry where he also established a strong foothold. That made him a bringer of the employment, foreign exchange and food security that comes with that line of business. Notwithstanding everything, he still kept a plot of land around Adoka in Otukpo LGA which he had earmarked for a rice mill. With Chief Audu Ogbeh, it was always about how to make Nigeria a net exporter of rice. He had a multiplicity of plans. Even as a number of them never worked, the plans showed how high he was aiming. He was, indeed, a patriot. He loved this country, always hoping that things would get better. Much of his sadness were not about himself but about Nigeria and Nigerians.
He made himself a welcome personality in every part of Nigeria, be it the Southsouth from where he married; the Southeast whose son, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, he coordinated his presidential campaign in 1998/99; the Southwest where he had the Wole Soyinkas and Yemi Ogunbiyis as life-long friends and the North whose regional umbrella – Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) – he chaired, amongst others. Of course, he was the most altruistic National Chairman of the PDP.
As a result of that significance, I am sure I speak for Idoma land when I say that Chief Audu Ogbeh’s death is not an ordinary transition. The communal grief which greeted his demise has been worsened by the departure of another communal hero in the person of Prof Jonah Isawa Elaigwu two weeks before Audu Ogbeh. What a big loss in the face of mounting Idomaland’s share of generalised insecurity and climate change!
It is in this context that I must acknowledge the solidarity demonstrated so far through statements, condolence visits, text messages and phone calls from diverse quarters across Nigeria. But the climax will be September 25th, 2025 and that is precisely the point about this piece – the case for the most altruistic farewell to one of our best and brightest of us: Chief Audu Ogbeh.
Stephen Obekpa Lawani (CON), a former Deputy-Governor of Benue State, is the Ochagwu of Idomaland
