Engr (Professor) Emmanuel O.
Ezugwu – In Death, Life.
A Tribute By Engr I.N.A. Ugwuegede
The journey of life for us all presupposes that
we acknowledge the inevitability of death.
Indeed of all the evidences of life we were
taught in school – locomotion, reproduction,
reaction to external stimuli, etc., - one that is
not often mentioned, or at least discussed as
frequently, is death. All living things suffer
death. And only living things die. This latter
statement may require some elaboration for it
can be easily countered that inanimate
concepts, ideas, for example, may exist for a
while but they do come to an end. Perhaps
that is so, though it can be equally rebutted that the ideas do live on, irrespective of whether the
practices they espouse continue or not. But, either way, that is not the concern of this piece. I
am concerned with the finality of death concerning my friend Emma Ezugwu, and the things
about him that live on despite the demise of the corporeal body that he inhabited. Yes, Emma
passed on in the early hours of the morning of Thursday, 17th September and we can be with
him no more. The rational part of me knows and accepts that fact. But there is some part that
still communes with him, that knows him yet, that feels him. I converse with him yet. Anyone
who knows Emma to more than a passing degree will almost always correctly predict his
reaction or answers to any given situation. In that manner we do still therefore feel him and
hear him. He therefore lives.
It is not my brief, nor do I have any inclination, to proffer his biography here. There are others
more properly disposed and equipped to that, though every person can only speak from an
aspect of the man. A man of many parts, his story as a loving and caring husband and a doting
father to his immediate family, paint but a slide of him; his students, teachers, colleagues in the
academic world also know but another side of him only too. Those he met with socially and
interacted with in less formal situations also can attest to yet a different aspect of him. Emma
was many things to many people. A person of consistent and dependable character and
disposition, he was able to interface with a very wide variety of society and remain at home
with them all. The consummate intellectual, he was up there at the highest levels of academia:
the headship of tertiary institutions of great repute, one of which he nurtured from birth.
Emma was the accomplished engineer and as head of the Machining Research Centre of the
South Bank University, he was at the literal cutting edge of the metallurgy and machining
industry in Europe and the world. I was once privileged to visit with him at the Centre, at a
time when he had just won some accolade from the Rolls Royce on account of the research
work carried out under him by the Centre for the aeronautics industry. His very busy schedule
on that occasion of my trip did not prevent him from making out time to take me to one of his
haunts in Old Kent Road, London, where he had arranged a hanging out for me in welcome tothe UK. He made me thoroughly appreciated and insisted on showing me all the Nigerian
restaurants and friends of his on that occasion. Ebullient as could be, he was wont to order his
favourite ale speaking to the hapless waiters in a pure Nsukka dialect. Right there in the centre
of London. And why not, he would ask you; the waiters, according to him, ought to know that
Bia nwokem, nyem Heineken could only mean a request for the beer.
For me, Emma was a friend and a brother. Freely and easily he related. He sought for,
supported and encouraged what later became a torrent of Nsukka and Opi indigenes to the UK
and Europe. He was mentor to many of these and I know that not a few are in dire straits on
account of his passing. When our daughter was to go and study in the UK, it was to his alma
mater, the University of Coventry that she went, and he remained supportive of her stay there.
He took us to his home in Croydon to enjoy the cuisine and hospitality of Patty, his dear wife
who had been his ever faithful and dependable crutch at his side from Idah days. (Yes I also
knew of those days. With his elder brother Joel, we in Nsukka were somehow part of the
Shambala phenomenon in Idah spearheaded by Emma! If I do not explain this in full, it is
because Emma smiles right now and tells me to go easy on the tales of the past. Indeed he
lives.)
Our relationship with Emma Ezugwu and family was three dimensional, full and fulfilling. We
were free to impose on Emma and the family in London all the way from Nigeria for messages
and information and contacts and the like. Freely asked, freely given. When occasion
demanded, Patty took turns with us in taking care of our ill daughter including spending the
night there in the hospital in London where life-saving procedures had been carried out. I had
gone to the university with Joel and shared a classroom and hostel with him for years, knowing
each other’s foibles and mannerisms. At a time when there were very few of us from Opi in the
university, just the two of us in the faculty of engineering and a total of six or so as
matriculants that year, we, Joel and I, definitely grew close to each other. And so I was a
welcome presence at their Enugu road residence where we met with Emma and all his other
siblings, under the ever vigilant eyes of their mother who was always more than the handful
that growing young men could easily become.
Beyond that I was particularly situated to have called their mother Mama. Chairman of the Opi
Foreign Women Association, as we playfully christened the group of non-native Opi wives, a
group to which my mother, she a Princess from Obimo, belonged, Mrs Ezugwu was a
matriarch with a heart of gold. She took my sister, Joy, and I as hers and regaled us, my sister
particularly, with tales of old and songs and virgos for all occasions. It was not uncommon for
her to be on a long telephone call with Joy relating the lyrics and tune of one song or the other.
Onw'o m, onw'o m, A ya d’m onw'o m ek'ri onye? This popular Nsukka song was one of many
relayed between my sister Dr Joy and Mrs Ezugwu, and made popular for it. She took an even
more motherly position where we were concerned especially after 1999 when our dear mother
passed on, and remained steadfast and insistent at my sonship all through till her end. When
she fell terminally ill, Emma called me and informed me so. Bia, Abonyi, eshi a’d’kwa’g Mama.
We all rallied round her and stayed beside her till she went to answer to her maker. We did not
mourn, as Christians say, like persons who have no hope. She had fallen ill, we had done much
to alleviate her pain and illness and had, even unknowingly, prepared ourselves for the worst.
We therefore accepted her death with equanimity. And mourned her in praises.
Can I honestly say the same for Emma? Is it sufficient that “it is not how long but how well” a
life is lived? How do we not become heart-broken? What do we use to assuage the pain? Howlong is long enough and how well is well enough? What are the indices of judging whether it
was well or not. And dare we judge, really? Who are we, mere mortals, to judge? For on the
temporal plane, it would appear that the race was yet unfinished, the job uncompleted. For our
friend and brother, the erudite academician and distinguished engineer, it seemed the best was
yet to come. On sabbatical leave at the Nigerian Universities Commission, fresh from the Air
Force Institute of Technology, AFIT, Kaduna, he was eager, willing and poised for more
challenges. I know that he was a research fellow for one of the academic Trust Funds and was
poised to begin an assignment for them. We were all awaiting laurels again from him, similar
to what he had done at the Air Force Institute, lifting the institution beyond their dreams in
verifiable academic standards and getting them in their very first decade of existence to become
a degree awarding institution, a feat for which the grateful institution named their Library
Block after him. We did not know whether he would once again seek the headship of the
university that once sought him and invited him to apply for its headship, an exercise that
unfortunately showcased the extent of the departure from the vertical that the spires of the
ivory tower had suffered. In that exercise, the laws of simple arithmetic were stood upside
down to ensure that Professor (Engineer) Emmanuel Ezugwu did not emerge as the Vice
Chancellor for they, the so-called powers that be, were in awe of his credentials and rather than
be excited by the potential that he showed, they were afraid that the light from his leadership
would shine on their inanities and inadequacies.
How then do we rationalise and accept this sudden death of our champion? How do we help our
grief so that we do not grieve like the hopeless? Perhaps the good book will help us.
Hebrews 12:1-2: “[1] Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the
race that is set before us, [2] Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.
Though there is a wealth of wisdom in the meaning of this and the following verses, the
snippet I take, and that is sufficient for me in this circumstance, is the issue of The race that is set
before us. Life is a race, a heavenly race ultimately. And what is set before us is different for each
and every one of us. It is on this premise that I can begin to reconcile that Emma has served
and has returned to He who sent him. His own race is over. He has run it well. The trophies of
the race he ran are there for us all to see. They are in his family, wife, children, brothers and
sisters and others. They are in his friends and students and all who became better persons on
account of him. And so I begin to say to He who took Emma to be with him, thank you Lord
for the time you gave us to be with him. It was a privilege and of your will and power. We shall
forever remember him and be consoled by the life he lived. In our grief, we weep; permit our
tears, manifestation of our struggle to come to terms with the reality of his absence.
Emma, to live in the hearts of those you love is not to die.
Fare thee well brother and rest in the bosom of the Lord.
Ik Ugwuegede
For the Ugwuegede family.
