Dr. Alex Ekwueme At 70: An Exemplary Public Life
By Obi Adimora
This was the tribute my late father, Justice Okechukwu Adimora, paid to Dr. Alex Ekwueme to mark his 60th birthday at his Oko country home.
Hyperbole comes easily at such moments, but the judgement would be endorsed by many who have worked with Dr. Ekwueme in the course of the different facets of his career.
Dr. Ekwueme will be 70 tomorrow. I could not have asked for a finer friend than him. I love him not only for the extreme richness of his intellectual itinerary, but above all for his courage and the constancy in his conviction and political choices, which have remained unchanged even when they were in contradiction with the main stream of opinion and fashion.
He is, first of all, a model of rectitude in his personal relationships – in this respect, one of the most fastidious men I have ever encountered. In all his dealings, he is straightforward, candid and direct. He is absolutely reliable; he never dissembled, never trimmed on his words or undercut a colleague or a subordinate. He is intensely human – concerned with other people’s interests, sympathetic and compassionate, discreet and understanding. When he thanked you for something, you had no doubt that he really meant it.
I do not want to make him sound like a martinet or fanatic, for he is neither. But he gives everything he has to anything in which he is involved. His enthusiasm is contagious. If there is a single personal characteristic that has set him apart, it is an inordinate, probing, insatiable curiosity. He continually seeks the why, the how, the reasons, and the motivations. A questioning nature and wonder, are hallmarks of great men. These become a way of life, which constitutes not only a fund of knowledge and feeling, but also a pursuit of excellence. “Wisdom begins in wonder,” Socrates said.
In politics, an endeavour where egos regularly outpace dedication, his career was shaped by the abrasive action between his steely sense of the right as he saw it and the politician’s inclination to temporise. Dr. Ekwueme has stood firm, not forgetting the people, never abandoning his dedication to their needs. He has not lost faith in the dream of what Nigeria might be.
In 1994, Dr. Ekwueme attended the Constitutional Conference where he immersed himself in the vital issues at hand, arguing them with the practical combination of authority, sobriety and dispassion. His genius produced the six geo-political zones, rotation of power, 13 per-cent derivation and single-term tenure for the executive branch, which was jettisoned and has now become our comeuppance.
He led the G34 on what seemed like an impossible dream. But his idealism lifted us to share in the dream and in so doing, his idealism conquered our scepticism. He saw hope where many could only foresee gloom. At the Constitutional Conference and the G34, he was optimistic that man-made problems could also be man-solved. In unrest and dissidence, he saw not just problems but also the interests, energy, awareness and activity that must be channelled to build solutions. To him, times of change were also times of great opportunity.
Dr. Ekwueme’s campaign to win his party’s primaries attracted a lot of people who shared his vision but never participated in politics. I was a volunteer and campaigned vigorously for him. After a whistle-stop campaign across the South West, we drove to Benin airport to board our chartered flight. Unfortunately, the airport had closed when we got there. Our jet was on the tarmac with the crew negotiating for the airport to be opened so that they could fly us to Abuja.
To break the monopoly of times in a seemingly endless negotiation, I asked him how he would like to be remembered after his Presidency. He broke into that great smile and retorted that he needed to win the nomination first and get elected. I probed further, asking him to give me a hypothetical answer and he acquiesced and said calmly: “Nnanyelugo, Nigeria is a country of marked contrasts. What will strike a visitor is the diversity of our society. I will like to revel in our diversity, respect it, celebrate it and enjoy it. To revel in it we must believe that our common humanity is more important than the things which make us different.”
That was the essential Dr. Ekwueme, always accentuating the bigger picture. Ekwueme’s heart is big and it works overtime, but it is more tender than any heart found among men of power. It is easily pierced by the tragedy and misfortunes of others, but it possesses marvellous powers of recuperation. When the PDP delegates rejected him in Jos, he was an open wound for a few minutes. But then he gathered himself in his suite at the Hill Station Hotel and began right then to climb out of defeat back to his sunny pinnacle – a journey he would repeat and repeat.
Dr. Ekwueme may be 70 today, but he is young in his outlook. He understands well why so many young people today, observing the contrast between their ideals and the reality around them, tend to turn away in discouragement and alienation. By the contagion of his confidence in democracy and love for the ancient Greeks that invented democracy, he will always encourage young people to stay involved in the political process. Like the ancient Greeks, he has contempt for those who refuse to participate in the political process. He appreciates the fact that while democracy creates inefficiencies that are expensive for society, the alternative in the long term are much more expensive and deadly.
Those of us who know him, have worked with him, love him and have been inspired by him, are far better men for that association. In the words of Shakespeare’s great French contemporary, Montaigne, “the advantage of living is not measured by length but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little. Attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in number of years, for you to have lived enough.”
Let us all dedicate our lives – be they long or short – toward the newer and better nation that Dr. Ekwueme has sought to create. And let us take inspiration from his faith that this age of ours, so full of tragedy and upheaval, is also full of excitement and possibility – above all, the possibility of justice and peace and the relief of suffering among the multitude of the human family.
Finally, it was Goethe who said: “we ask not that a man be a hero, but only that he be everything that makes a man.” His Excellency, Dr. Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme, GCON, Nigeria’s first Executive Vice-President, first registered indigenous Architect in Nigeria, is such a man. He has made a difference and will not be forgotten. Happy birthday.
