Again, I ask: what is this a sign of? Is it that as I am getting older and older by the day and I, like the rest of my mates and acquaintances, am getting nearer and nearer to the end of my days on the earth? This thought is not a good one at all. And as we Pentecostal Christians would say,’’ I reject this in Jesus mighty name’’. Or is it simply that I have too many good friends that are passing away in high frequency? This one sounds more comforting to the ear and to thought. Or could it be that I am too sentimental in my love for people and, therefore, waste little or no time in mourning them? If this is the case, I will learn to spare my readers the time to read other good news apart from news of departures of great souls.
But that will be a disservice to humanity. It is well and right to mourn by highlighting the good deeds of those who were among us and are called back to heaven to be with their loving Creator. Or is it that I am misusing my skills and privilege of being a writer and therefore have easy recourse to my pen when any of many numerous friends spread across the country passes away? The answer to all these posers does not lie in any of them but lies somewhere in-between them. We humans are commanded by God to mourn with those who are in mourning and to rejoice with those who are rejoicing over what God has given them or done for them.
I have gone into this long philosophizing because not long after the last one, I am once again called upon to pay a tribute to another dear friend of mine, another Tiv friend, Engr. Sam Agaku, who passed on last Thursday in his Makurdi home to where he retired after 35 years’ service at the federal level in Abuja. Sam was reported to have slept and peacefully transited to the great beyond.
I am not surprised at all in the manner in which God recalled Sam to himself. That is, through a natural, quiet death. It would have been unfair and unjust for a man like Sam to have died through a violent mode such as a vehicle accident, fisticuffs with an adversary or a violent seizure of some of his bodily organs. No. Sam was by nature a quiet, peace-loving, soft-talking gentle man. It is only those who lived by violence that ought to go out of life through that same means. He was a man you will say of him that he will not hurt a fly. He loved justice and fair play. Against the reigning ethos of this evil times, Sam did not like to possess things by crookedness and deceit. Not many men are like that in our society any more.
Sam and I met at the Federal Character Commission Abuja in 1999 where I worked as the Commission’s Public Relations Officer and he as a member of a technical committee in-charge of works execution. Because of my secondary school schooling in Tiv land and my absorption of some of their ways, I easily get affiliated to the Tiv people wherever I find them. So it was not difficult that I will discover Sam and subsequently other Tiv people in a unique place where nearly all tribes in Nigeria are represented. And we took to each other like a boy and a girl in love. We were flat mates at what eventually became our homes in Wuse Zone 4 Abuja. What is more? We each discovered the others’ love for God and Godly activities. I have never met a man or woman who loved God like Sam did.
Sam was a member of the NKST church, a church that has been in Nigeria for over a hundred years and now looks like an orthodox one, especially among the Tiv people of Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba states. But he got stuck to that church until death did him part. But what made Sam’s spiritual pursuit very unique is that he did not restrict or confine himself to that church alone. He used to get his spiritual food from all churches especially among the Pentecostal ones. Quite often, he and I attend many Pentecostal churches’ programmes and church services together to get our spiritual nourishment. He was not interested in denominational division which is very common among some modern day Nigerian Christian worshippers.
Another dimension of Sam’ life is that he was a phlegmatic man. Most phlegmatics are very slow in taking action and most of them hardly talk. One wag said of that character type that ‘’they cannot lead, they cannot follow. They are just like that’’. Sam was a typical phlegmatic. He won’t talk and he won’t very much act decisively. It takes him a century to act. Such that even concerning marriage when a man is the one who takes a decision as to who he should marry, the story is told us his friends how it was the former First Lady of Benue State, Hon. Regina Akume, who took the initiative to get Sam married to his wife, a woman he loved but will not make a move for when everybody expected him to do so! As the good God would have it, the marriage has produced many handsome, beautiful and intelligent children, one of my favourites being Nguhegh, a graduate of Benue State University, Makurdi.
Sam was a very brilliant mind who made a Division One Distinction in his WAEC at the famous Bristow Secondary School in Gboko. Like most members of my generation, Sam loved reading and In spite of his phlegmatic nature, he had an inner drive to read voraciously. He used to borrow books on politics, religion, fiction, non-fiction, etc, from me from time to time. He also loved watching movies, a pastime I was different from him in. After his brilliant stint at Bristow, he later went to the famous ABU Zaria where he read Building Engineering and emerged as a Structural Engineer.
Most of us who knew Sam just called him ‘’Engineer’’. One of his great achievements as a person and as an engineer was working as a member of a team in the conception, design and building of the elegant Benue State House in Abuja, one of the most beautiful plazas in Abuja. He used to talk with great pride about that house and his participation in bringing it about.
Sam’s final burial obsequies have been fixed for 12th and 13th of this month in his home town of Tsemker in Vandeikya LGA of Benue State. By the grace of God, we hope to be there to salute a friend, a brother and a fellow child of God. A great soul has departed this sinful place. I am confident that a battalion of angels waited at the Pearly Gate to usher Engineer into his mansion in heaven. Adieu, Engineer.
