This article is in remembrance of a marvelous fellow whom I am convinced is not yet dead but still alive, from the present Akwa-Ibom State, whose real name I and many others of our set of National Youth Corps Service scheme members in Maiduguri, Borno State, in 1982/83, never got to know and may never get to know until we get to meet again in heaven on a day and date that only God can determine. 0r, perhaps, if in this day and age of the Internet he reads this, remembers the intelligence I release about him and us, and shows up one day to announce himself to Nigerians and me that he is the one, then we can then be reconnected and from then on, begin to share many more loads of pleasant memories about the good old Nigeria that members of my generation know and can talk excitedly about.
This brother of mine from our own part of Nigeria was simply just known among us as Lassa Man. The name was accidentally given to him by our camp commandant on account of a particular difficulty he had when he was posted several times from Maiduguri to offer his service in the famous town of Lassa in Lassa Local Government Area of Borno State. I cannot now remember what specific problem this likable Ebony black Akwa-Ibomite had at his posting places there in Lassa. I suspect it must have been accommodation. But whatever it was, he kept going there to Lassa and coming back to the camp in Maiduguri for reposting to yet another place. It is this his persistent going forth and coming back that led to his being called ‘’This Lassa Man’’ by the obviously frustrated camp commandant.
It arose from the constant disappointing expression that this Lassa Man is back again from that damned place that cannot provide for his need. And the name stuck. Our man accepted the name with great pleasure. It marked him out from the rest of the crowd. I remember that throughout his stay in camp with us, he has not known by any other name except This Lassa Man.
I can swear that if any other man or woman, friend, relative, or classmate outside our camp came from Akwa-Ibom or anywhere else in the nation or in the world and asked of him at that time using his real name, that inquirer would never have been able to achieve any measure of success with establishing his identity because no one in that camp during our stay before the eventual posting of everyone to his or her place of primary posting within Borno knew his real, original name. So popular was this guy with his accidental rechristening. If he were to contest any election in that camp he would have won roundly even if a battalion of Nyesom Wike, Nafiu Bala and other strategically placed ambushers were ensnared and encamped against him. It was the popularity of Lassa Man that led many of us in that service year to get to know of the unfortunate Lassa Fever epidemic that broke out in that rural Borno town in 1969 that earned international recognition that has endured till today over 70 years ago.
And in a country where it is getting increasingly difficult to come across a newsworthy item for commentary, it is this incident of over 70 years ago that has to inspire this write-up.
The news headline this past week is that Lassa fever kills 146 in Q1. Since 1969 to date, Lassa Fever yearly takes hundreds of Nigerian lives. This horrendous life taker is a disease of our poor environmental sanitation.
As I remember Lassa Man wherever he is on this planet now, I also remember with great sadness the disease from which his nick name was derived in the days and times when Nigeria was a good place for human beings to dwell in.
It is very regrettable that we have not been able to eradicate this disease by simply learning to keep our environment clean and not allowing the pointed mouth mouse that transmit this disease that kills hundreds and thousands.
As a good Chemistry student at the N.K.S.T Secondary School, Adikpo, Benue State in the 1970s, I used to see myself as one who could one day grow to invent vaccines and medications that could save lives from needless deaths from easily preventable diseases. Sadly, as the years passed by, I saw myself drifting away from such noble dreams. But the conscience has remained clear and sharp.
May be, it is through the path of politics that I will one day follow the noble path of my childhood heroes such as Alexander Flemming, inventor of penicillin.
I was eventually posted to College of Agriculture on Gamboru Ngala road in Maiduguri for the one-year service. The fun I had in this school and my recollection about the good life I had in this city and in this state will form several chapters of my memoirs.
I used to tell former Borno governor and now Vice-President of our country, Kashim Shettima, that because of the type of impact my one year stay in Borno had on my life, I have adopted Borno as my second home. Perhaps, as I draw nearer and nearer to the second and last installment of my earthly life, I may consider some day retiring to a part of Borno such as Lassa so I give a part of my attention to a disease that some indigenous experts should have given their lives to, at it source, finding a solution to its menace. Who knows, if I do not win a Nobel Prize for Medicine, I could get one for Peace, either of them in an effort to eradicate Lassa Fever.
