अदिउए COMRADE

ADIEU! COMRADE

“Hi! Please, do me this favour, your editor will understand, for the next two Thursdays, drop your biro, put off your laptop and enjoy your Xmas and New Year Day! From Comrade John Ogbedu & Family.” The preceding text message was sent to me (on Wednesday December 23, 2008) by the South-South Bureau Chief of the Tribune Newspapers, Mr. John Abang Ogbedu who died on Saturday January 17, 2009.

Comrade, I want to give you a situation report on how I complied with the favour you sought for in your Christmas text. Precisely on Christmas day, I did not go to work or write any word, my laptop was shut all day but Daily Champion Deputy Editor, Mr. Innocent Nwobodo, called about 7 pm to asked why I did not submit this column for that week, I responded that I thought the paper would observe its tradition of not publishing on December 26. He asked me whether I am running my own Champion and where I got the information. I was given an hour deadline to submit a write up. I hurriedly “carpentered” something and sent to fulfill all righteousness.

Comrade, you see it was not possible for me to do you the favour because these editors in Lagos they don’t understand “grammar” why I should drop my biro or shut down my laptop and enjoy Christmas. Let me confess, the next Thursday, that was January 1, with the experience of December 25, I have to abandoned my wife and daughter, who were spending the Christmas in Port Harcourt and go to work. Comrade, I would have loved to shut down my laptop and enjoy those two days especially when my family was in town but I have no alternative than to do the biddings of my employer.

The New Year celebration was still on comrade, when you decided to depart from your family and colleagues. About 7 pm that Saturday, my colleague, Chinedu Wosu, in an emotional laden voice called to inform me that you are gone. Immediately he dropped, I called your number and your wife answered and confirmed what Chinedu told me. Comrade, you spoilt the New Year with your departure, remember I told you that whenever I am in Calabar we would visit you with my wife. We actually came but you were not at home but in the morgue. Your wife, that wonderful woman, received us.

Comrade, I am suspecting you; why did you asked me to assist you bring your car from Port Harcourt to Calabar if you were not entertaining the idea of traveling “abroad” without visa and passport. Comrade, once again, you have proved that you are a strategist of the first order, so that visit of Friday, January 2, 2009 to Port Harcourt was to bid us farewell. If we had known you would not come back to the Garden City, we would have arranged an emergency “Happy Hour” to say goodbye. Or were you afraid that some persons may go to Court of Heaven and obtained an injunction restraining you from traveling “abroad.”

I met John Ogbedu in 2000 when I was working as a correspondent of The Punch Newspapers and he was the State Secretary of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Cross River State Council. As a former Chairman of the Cross River State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) he was very cooperative and a reliable source of information about the activities of the then government. When the then state government and the labour was involved in a dispute over minimum wage of N5,500 introduced by the Obasanjo administration, Ogbedu was the power house of the NLC. The dispute led to a strike and during the period of the impasse Ogbedu, churned out several bulletins that dwarfed the state government propaganda on the state radio and television.

Ogbedu was a thorn in the flesh of the government and his tenacity help to sustain the strike for so long that the government has no option than to accept the terms of labour and agreed to pay what they demanded. After the victory of labour, the government was not comfortable with comrade remaining in the state, so he was transferred to the State Liason office in Lagos without transfer allowance. And above all he was made to work under a junior officer, just to humiliate him and break his spirit.

One thing led to another and Ogbedu was sacked from the state civil service, a price for serving the workers of cross River State. He refused to compromise and many thought he was a fool since he refused to take money or appointment rather he insisted on the corporate interest of all workers and not his comfort. During the course of the struggle for a better package for the state workers, suspected agents of the state beat him to a state of coma, they abandoned him when they thought he was dead but he survived.

Comrade has always been a fighter, when he came to Port Harcourt, armed robbers shot him and collected some money meant for the furnishing of a new office his company has acquired he survived that attack and we joking tell him he would not died young. But comrade, on Saturday January 17, lost the fight to stay alive to a heart-related ailment.
Adieu comrade, you fought a good fight, you won your battles, but for now your struggle has ende.

Comrade, on January 30 and 31, my editors would understand, they would see reason why I should down my biro and shut down my laptop and accompany your corpse to Mbube in Ogoja to bid you good night. But your boy, Chinedu, would not come; two of us cannot leave Port Harcourt, in case the militants took over power, so please understand, he reluctantly accept the idea that he would not come for your burial. He is still loyal.

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