DEATH, no doubt is a necessary end; it will come when it will come. But when death punctuates a life that began to flourish and nourish other lives, its tragic visitation can be very painful and traumatic.

This was what the Edogas of Mgboko Aku and the Ugwuojus of Amogwu Aku, Igbo-Etiti local council of Enugu state, relations, together with their teeming friends and well wishers went through on December 26, 2012, when all of a sudden, they lost one of their stars, Bernard Onochie Edoga (Ogbo), an upwardly mobile Atlanta (USA) based young and promising professional.

Ogbo, as he was fondly called, had suspended his activities in the U.S. to touch base with his fatherland with a project to establish a top quality Comprehensive Medical Centre to provide the finest health care services to Nsukka environs and beyond.

It was to be a quick and efficient trip and then jet back to Atlanta and to the waiting warm embrace of his beautiful wife, Nwanneka, and two lovely children-Emma and Chuma. But like in favourite Robert Frost’s poem, The Road not Taken, affable and innocuous Ogbo fell to the assassins bullets without rhyme or reason on his way to Aku to keep a date with Dr. Charles Ugwuoju and twin sister wife, Prof. Dympna Ugwuoju’s ’s palatial country home house warming ceremony, and also attend the yearly family meeting of the Edogas which holds every December 26; all of which turned to ashes in the mouth.

Three years on since the bizarre, shocking and callous assassination, December26 had always evoked sad memories for the Edogas and others in their web of family relationship. Even for us as friends, no December 26 passes without our reflecting in a collective mood and talking about Ogbo, the frailties of life and our collective transience.

The nagging question has been and still remains “who killed Ogbo Edoga? It is a question that simply will not go away for as long as the answer is blowing in the wind. Not a few relations and friends are bitter that three years after, the question of who killed Ogbo and who will salvage us from the current miasma is being asked — a question which no doubt stirs emotions.

Mr. Kachi Anwunah, a mutual friend and St. Theresa’s College (STC), Nsukka, classmate of Ogbo confided: “It makes me feel unsafe and sad. It makes me feel that in this country, anything goes.”

Friends of Ogbo have written to past governments and to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) on this issue appealing for them to take it up. They don’t even get a reply because they are not interested. And that is why for a long time to come the question as to who killed Ogbo Edoga will continue to resonate and haunt the conscience of his killers. Ogbo’s friends miss him terribly but take solace in the fact that we see a lot of him in Emma and Chuma.

Thanks to the grace of God that has enabled Ogbo’s twin sister to overcome the spell of devastation, downcast, trauma, worries and clouds of gloom that attended the tragic death and burial of Ogbo. She championed a memorial mass at the Mgboko-Aku home of the Edogas for the continued repose of Ogbo’s soul and unveiled his marked grave on December 26, 2015. Even Ogbo’s mother (Nnedioranma) roller coaster of emotions appear to have abated as she moves on, personally deciding to forgive the assassins in her heart while the matter may not be forgotten.

Because carrying the burden of thinking of all these in her heart is like carrying poison along with her and she will be hurting herself. The capacity to forgive puts us in a position to recover from the set backs of today and muster the courage to face tomorrow. This is one good gift bestowed on mankind.

Truth is, the end of one’s sojourn on earth can only reaffirm the fact that we all entered the existential stage alone and will exit the same way. Nature has placed at the disposal of every human being the ingredients necessary to form the basic philosophies of life.

This means that even though not every one would become a thinker in the mould of Socrates, every average person is imbued with enough data to enable him embrace some fundamental lessons of life. A key message here is that life is short. Even if some one lives to be 100 years, it is still brief compared with the life beyond. And since the world does not revolve around you, don’t expect it to come to a halt when you depart.

Life would certainly go on. The earth would continue to revolve around the sun and rotate on its axis. People, no matter how close they are to you, would overcome the anguish or whatever emotion they exhibit at your death and move on with their lives. The length of time differs from case to case but the bereaved would surely overcome and move on. It is Ogbo’s time now. One day, it will be the turn of this writer to go the way of all flesh, to keep the inevitable date with his Maker.

Life would be more fulfilling if Ogbo’s killers internalise the key message here that at the end, we shall all die and use its simple lesson to redirect their lives on the right path of contributing to human life, rather than taking it. It is on this note that Ogbo’s friends reassure him that “our friendship chain may now be broken and only God knows why, but as God calls us one by one, the chain will link again. And just as your death leaves a heartache no one can heal, your time amongst us leaves a memory, no one can steal.”
Requescat In Pace, Ogbo.
Anekwe is Editor-in Chief of The Newstell.