Professor Nimi Briggs: Great hero FGN lured and betrayed

My inspiration was going to conjure up something else today when the train it was travelling in was distracted. Perhaps I was the one who was distracted as I strove to draw impressions from the passing landscape that has caused many of our countrymen and countrywomen distressful distresses. What a landscape Nigeria is! What a landscape this country your country my country their country our country is!

The moral picture or study of the character or personality or being of our country is a bit by bit matter, a piecemeal affair that one will try in vain to draw or paint or sculpt with a great measure or versatility of diverse combinations. I could not implore my inspiration to convey to me the leading characteristics of the protagonist of our landscape and its certain nature. I am in a kind of jam as I look up to my imagination and inspiration to decipher the intelligence of each enlightened protagonist of this landscape that raises more questions than answers. But how richly or rightly enlightened is our protagonist who employs his cohorts to lure, dwarf, confine and then betray their intellectual superiors whose intellect is never short of the spirit and actions of the courageous and the brave? These questions were whispered in confidence to my rugged inspiration whose colour became the colour of the pure algebra and geometry of truth when the news of the death of Emeritus Professor Nimi Briggs entered me in a manner that utterly dazed me even though I never really knew the eminent professor of medicine, an exemplary hero and committed patriot to the cause of tertiary education and administration in twenty-first-century Nigeria. Of course, I knew him by beauteous reputation. He had the scent and aura of true heroes and people of honour all about him. This is how the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria of the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital announced his death, the death of the ex-Vice Chancellor of the University of Port Harcourt:

“What a rude shock and colossal loss particularly in the annals of our history as a nation. Prof. Nimi Briggs contributes immensely to the advancement of academic and medical education in Nigeria. His love for good condition of service for academic staff in Nigeria is unquantifiable. His last legacy was the bold and courageous fight for ASUU against an intransigent and insensitive regime. He will be sorely missed by all for his doggedness and commitment to the cause of humanity.”

Professor Briggs dies an idol. And his death reminds us of Friedrich Nietzsche’s dense words which fit our landscape: “Often filth sits upon the throne – and often the throne upon filth, too.” How truthfully and beautifully true as I say this without qualms!

Now I must yield the column’s pleasant landscape to the melody of each professor outside the range of the University of Port Harcourt. In its own unique way each song does the song of the necessary hero. I begin with the mournful melody of Professor Olu Obafemi, an associate of associates of Professor Briggs who knew the value of a peculiar greatness like Professor Obafemi who knows how to inflame this kind of peculiarity:

We are still struggling to live down the shock and outlive both the disbelief and the refusal to believe since yesterday morning when the thunderbolt of the demise of a great hero hit us full in the face. The last frightening words I personally heard him utter were: ‘Olu, pray for me. I am very sick.’ We prayed very hard indeed, didn’t we? But callous and cruel death, and all its agents won’t let him be… won’t enable us avert this colossal deprivation.

Indeed, it is very hard to come to grips with the dawning reality that death has imposed on us: that a man of the physical, mental and intellectual agility of Professor Emeritus Nimi Briggs can simply disappear from among us. It makes one feel so lonely and alone. The closeness and the familial manner we worked together – the seven of us on the FGN/ Universities-based unions: the air junketing nearly on a weekly basis for nearly six months to produce an Agreement which in the end has not seen the light of day, makes one feel trapped in a terrible cul-de-sac—physically and mentally. To now be confronted with the saddening reality that there is still no light at the end of the tunnel, after all, for the system that he loved so much – the academia, the nation and humanity that he gave his all to brighten up makes the grief almost interminable. Somehow, as one tries to come to some understanding that all of that struggle, with all its sordid feeling of conscious frustration, will yield promise and a positive end, Professor Briggs’ death will never be in vain. It is my belief that the hero went into immortality with a song of victory and triumph.

Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano, another committed scholar and ASUU redoubtable with an eye to history illuminates Professor Briggs thus:
In “The Gift of Death: (U of Chicago Press, 1995) Derrida links Death to Responsibility, and Death as the experience of the Sacred. Professor Briggs and with our own Professor O.O, stood for a new dawn for the universities and the professoriate, and Briggs and co did their utmost but met a concrete wall in the form of two Medievalists and a Narcissist. The first medieval grew up in a rural backwater, and served in a feudal establishment established by the Turks. The second grew up in a post-village backwater of sorts and could not rise up to defend his previous Romantic obfuscations. The third is a little, thick, broad man with an ego the size of Kilimanjaro. He grew up in Amos Tutuola’s mythical setting. All three hated scholarship and our union’s assertion of self or self-worth. Those three must have “killed” the great Professor Briggs in the symbolic sense that he must have died with his heart in his throat on account of the way he was treated by those angular three musketeers of Envy, Narcissism, and what the Hausa people call “giyar mulki” (power drunkenness). My only regret is the shinning Professor didn’t live to see June 1, 2023, when those three deformed Vulcans would have left the stage forever. My heart and sympathies go to the Professor Briggs family. Death, to echo Epicurus, is the most terrifying of ills. Briggs had received the “Gift of Death” in that he won’t ever die again and also because he lived up to (his) Responsibility. Adieu, great Professor; you are our hero in life and death.

Professor Ademola Da Sylva, a Christian prophetic revolutionary scholar and ASUU’s exemplary personage of courage whose conscious attitude is always against our justice-less landscape, ennobles Professor Briggs as follows:

My condolences go to both the immediate family and the Global academic family. A great hero indeed whose legacy of quality leadership, integrity, hard work, sacrificial commitment and belief in the systemic recovery and workability of this our country lives on, and shall continue to be appreciated and cherished by generations of compatriots, including yours truly. I believe his sacrifice and that of his recent national assignment shall still yield the required deliverables and expected outcomes, sooner than later, in shal Allah! May his gentle soul find perfect rest in the bosom of the Lord Jesus Christ!
Professor (Mrs.) Mabel Evwiehoma, a quiet but firm scholar of maximum vitality of courage who never conceals her “Yea” to good causes and “Nay” to bad causes, carved Professor Briggs as “a Professor of Medicine who quoted Shakespeare like nursery rhymes. He was really an interdisciplinary scholar. May God grant him eternal rest!”

Professor Abubakar Tanimu, a very taciturn scholar of obligatory academic courage of one “made of truly proud and noble material” paints Professor Briggs as “a public spirited scholar with a resilient spirit. He gave his best whenever he was called upon to serve and he will be remembered for his commitment to service and support for the best practice and institutional growth. He died in active service to his country and vocation and this is a rare feat. My condolences go to his family, friends and associates, including our dear Professor Olu Obafemi.”

All these patriotic melodies of melodies of mournful but soulful rhythms across our universities tell this columnist the carver one thing: Professor Nimi Briggs lived and died well despite the betrayal by the institutional federal landscape that handed him duties he very patriotically performed but which those who handed them to him “failed to carry out,” to quote IBK. What a woeful woe!

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.