Once in a while, my ancestral home, the Umuezeala Nsu community in Ehime Mbano LGA of Imo State, appears in the news for some very good reasons. But none has come close to the event that took place on Thursday, July 23, 2023. The occasion was quite consistent with the iconic status of the man whose funeral became a one-week carnival of sort.
On that day, dignitaries from all walks of life had joined the local folks and the Nwajiuba family to bid farewell to their patriarch, Chief Sir Jonah Chukwudoro Nwajiuba (1931-2023), knight of St Christopher, who was given such a burial befitting a prince. Shakespeare was right when he said that the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
But what did we expect for a man who produced a vice chancellor of a federal university and a minister of the federal republic, among several successful children? What did we expect for a man who lived for 91 years, only four months short of his 92nd birthday, a devout Christian, over-shooting the life expectancy ratio of about 70 years in Africa?
So, expectedly, the quiet Umuezeala community was thrown into national limelight as some of the country’s influential personalities converged on the village in solidarity with the Nwajiuba family as they laid their patriarch to rest.
Yet, it was not all about Pa JC’s high-flying children. For Pa Nwajiuba was a distinguished personality in his own right: a trailblazer who achieved many firsts in his lifetime. Many of his kinsmen would remember him as the first person to erect a storey-building in Umuezeala. Back in the days, that was phenomenal. He was also among the first persons to own a car long before the civil war started. If my recollection is accurate, he was also among the first Umuezeala sons to return to Nigeria after acquiring the proverbial ‘golden fleece’ in the United Kingdom. Those were the days before Andrew ‘checked out’ and the mismanagement of our common patrimony became a trigger for the forced exodus aka ‘japa’, of Nigerian youths to other lands. The ‘japa’ phenomenon is a matter for another day.
For now, it is about celebrating Pa Jonah whom I grew up to admire greatly. Though I recognised his pace-setting personal achievements, what endeared him to me was his reputation for mentoring young people. Ordinarily, this should be seen within the context of the pristine Igbo traditional worldview that regards the upbringing of the child as a communal obligation and not the exclusive responsibility of the biological parents. It is aptly captured by the Igbo dictum: “Otu onye anaghi azu nwa” meaning that no one person trains a child.
What stood Pa JC out from the crowd was that, beyond his financial commitment to the education of other people’s children, he was a mentor extraordinaire who guided them to make the right choices. His passion for education was phenomenal. My eldest cousin, Chijioke Agu would never be tired of recalling how Pa JC admonished him to dump his ‘lucrative’ salesman job and head back to school. He did, abandoning his ‘prestigious’ sales van and the perks that came from sales commissions. Now 75, my cousin considers Pa JC as the light that led him out of self-immolation.
In retrospect, it is not surprising that Pa JC’s eldest child, Prof Chinedum Nwajiuba became a vice chancellor and his second son, Hon Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba (Ph.D) served as minister of state for Education before resigning to vie for the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the February 2023 election.
Pa JC was a great man. A pathfinder of incomparable value to the Umuezeala Nsu community. His story epitomises Henry Longfellow’s time-honoured words that the heights reached by great men were not attained by sudden flight but by toiling; burning the midnight oil.
Through a small handbook titled “Biography of Chief Sir J.C. Nwajiuba”, the authors, Chioma and Anulika Nwajiuba (both his granddaughters), made us to know how Pa JC endured difficult years in school in Onitsha where he shared a room with three other students; how upon leaving school, the quest for employment saw him traversing the creeks of the Niger Delta and above all, how his modest height was used as an alibi to deny him a teaching job in parts of what today is known as Imo State.
To the glory of God, once he got the opportunity to prove his worth, the young JC rose meteorically in a career that saw him work in Shell as a labourer, office boy and administrator. His Shell odyssey was an epitome of patience, humility, and sheer courage. His survival instincts pushed him to great levels of dedication and sacrifice that commend his story to the younger generation.
In retirement, Pa JC who held the traditional titles of ‘Eziokwu bu Ndu’ of Nsu 1 (same as of Umuezeala Nsu), devoted his time to mentoring young people, community development and church work and particularly, stabilising the Nsu Community Bank (now Nsu Microfinance Bank) that continues to serve as reliable financial services outlet to the community and provider of employment opportunities.
Writing on his verified Twitter handle, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25 presidential election, Peter Obi said he joined the Nwajiuba family at the burial ceremony of their father, Sir Jonah Nwajiuba, at Umuezeala Nsu, in Ehime Mbano, Imo State.
A father of six children, Pa Jonah Nwajiuba will be remembered as a consummate administrator, indefatigable community leader, trailblazer and uncommon mentor who bequeathed to Nigeria and the world great children.
–Agu is a journalist and native of Umuezeala Nsu, Imo State.
