By Frank Tietie
Two things his mother never wished him to be were a soldier or a lawyer. She said a soldier gets killed in combat, while a lawyer gets killed with charms from opposing interests. Yet Eneojo Christian Ayegba, a Kogi State-born son of Olamaboro, whose deepest teenage desire was to become a lawyer, would not be deterred by such fears.
He gained admission into the National Defence Academy (NDA) but abandoned it out of love and obedience to his mother, choosing instead to study Pharmacy at the University of Benin. That was where our paths crossed, at a time when many of us, responding to a rising wave of cultism and gangsterism on campus, were experimenting with a counter-cultural movement. In our youthful idealism, we tried to blend Christianity with various ideological movements in history, nurturing a feeble hope that we might one day save Nigeria.
While I was influenced by figures such as William Wilberforce, Charles Colson, the disgraced aide in Richard Nixon’s government who found redemption in prison and founded Prison Fellowship, and Pat Robertson, a lawyer enchanted by the prosperity gospel who became a televangelist and started The 700 Club, Eneojo’s heroes were Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. So deep was his admiration that he once planned to visit Cuba for Casto’s burial whenever he died, though, of course, he has not visited Cuba to this day.
Eneojo was a die-hard radical, always ready to lead student demonstrations and riots, while I entertained unrealistic dreams of making life better through philosophy and technology. I believed I could be anything, from a DJ in a nightclub to a missionary in a far field; he, on the other hand, was far more focused.
I fell in love with Eneojo’s spirit when he donated ₦500 (Five Hundred Naira) to the movement I was leading at the University of Benin, at a time when school fees were about ₦70 (Seventy Naira). I thought he was crazy. But a crazy man could not survive up to Year Three in Pharmacy, a faculty notorious for “hacking” students.
Then he fell gravely ill, so ill that death seemed imminent. Despite several tests at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), his ailment could not be diagnosed. He wasted away, emaciated, hovering at the edge of death. He was forced to decide where he would die, at his sister’s place in Lagos or in his village in Kogi State.
In his final struggling days in Benin City, he felt an uncanny urge to go to Lagos. There, he received care for a few more months, yet without improvement or diagnosis. But something extraordinary happened. The students of the Faculty of Pharmacy decided to die with him. They approached the Dean, secured a one-day lecture-free period, and declared a faculty-wide fast and prayer to save Eneojo. They also raised about ₦26,000 (Twenty-Six Thousand Naira) to support his hospital bills.
It was only after this collective intervention of fasting and prayer that the German-trained doctor handling his case in Lagos finally discovered the cause of illness, being tuberculosis, without the usual symptoms. By then, half of his lungs were gone. He was immediately transferred to the emergency unit of the Navy Hospital, Lagos, where he was eventually treated back to health.
He returned, wrote his final-year Pharmacy examinations in 1999, graduated, and was duly licensed to practise pharmacy in Nigeria. But he did not stop there. He returned to the university, pursued his long-held dream of becoming a lawyer, graduated with flying colours, attended the Nigerian Law School, and was called to the Nigerian Bar as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
About 26 years after we last saw each other at the University of Benin, we met again today in Abuja. He had travelled from Kogi State to handle a custody matter at a Customary Court. I was overtaken by emotion but held myself together as I sensed that familiar, almost angelic presence. He still carried that spark—the same one that resonated the first time we met nearly 30 years ago.
Today, Eneojo is a consultant in industrial pharmacy, helping to establish drug manufacturing companies in Nigeria, while still actively engaged in legal practice.
His life has taught me profound lessons about a man’s will to survive and to become.
I was grateful to share a meal with him, and relieved him of the need to continue his Abuja matter by deciding to take it up personally and hold his brief, sparing him another journey from Kogi on the adjourned date. He is presently married with children and practises law in the Kogi State area.
Eneojo Christian Ayegba, I celebrate you in life. Remember His promise to us back then: “that the journey has only just begun”.
Frank Tietie
Lawyer and Media Personality is the Executive Director of Citizens Advocacy for Social and Economic Rights (CASER), writes from Abuja.