Tribute of His Exc, The Senator Otunba Engr Gbenga Daniel, FNSE, FAEng on the Transition to Eternal Glory of His Exc Okwadike Dr. Chukwuemeka Pius Ezeife, CON, former Governor of Anambra State (1992-1993) delivered on Monday 15th of April, 2024 in Abuja

Not All Men Die; Okwadike Chukwuemeka Ezeife was one of them. Few men were self taught, self made, Dr. Pius Ezeife (PhD Harvard), was one of them. He had no history of secondary school education, but he went on to become one of the best and brightest brains in Nigeria.

If you are looking for an Ibo, Yoruba or Hausa man, I plead with you, look beyond Dr. Ezeife because he was, in reality, a Nigerian, sacrificing all for the country that he strongly believed in.

One of the last patriarchs of our nationhood is about to be interred. You might bury his earthly cloak but definitely not the ideals that he espoused and the ideas that represented; we might weep and mourn, but Dr. Ezeife is with the Ancient Triumphant speaking to us in all the ideals that he stood and fought for.

Many people claim to be progressives today in a comfortable era, Dr. Ezeife fought gallantly as a social democrat when it was sacrilegious to profess the ideal of progressivism, he was elected as a Governor under the banner of the Social Democratic Party in 1992 when only men could be counted and dangerously to do so. He never wavered in his conviction. He stood up for Nigeria when it was considered a taboo to speak for the downtrodden.

Few people here would perhaps know that at the point that I considered that most Nigerians are ill-educated about the politics and governance of our country and therefore sought to increase the level of education of our citizens to be able to make well informed political choices, I founded the Political Leadership and Training Institute, what is now known as the Political Academy (POLA), Dr. Ezeife was one of our major Resource Persons to discuss critical issues about our nation and continent with a view to finding lasting, effective and workable solutions and through which he became a member of our Institute’s Advisory Board.

One of his very incisive, and perhaps the last deliveries was on the 13th of September, 2020 even at that critical period of the COVID-19 pandemic, where he shared his knowledge on “Understanding Nigeria”.

I shared a very close bond and affinity, in social, political and world perspectives with Dr. Ezeife.

Dr. Ezeife was one of the last consciences of our nation, traversing our ethnic divides sharing a strong hope that one day, just one day we might be able to build a Nation from the ruins of ethnic diversity and social cultural differences. He had friends cutting across all the divides, the old and the young, the rich and the poor.

According to Williams Shakespeare, “when beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of Princes”.