By Femi Kusa
johnolufemikusa@gmail.com
www.olufemikusa.com
For how long we had been telephone acquaintances before he suddenly passed on 7 February 2023, I cannot recall. I can put it, though, at about 10 years. We never met. He lived in Aba, I in Lagos. He called me his in-law because some of my sisters are married to Igbos. I, too, call him my in-law because some of his sisters married Yorubas. There was hardly any day he was not the one to call to start the day’s conversation, which hovered around politics, his health as a colon cancer patient, his helpful friends, his business, and challenges with his extended family.
In politics, we were on two sides of a crossfire. He was 100 percent a Peter Obi follower and would be glad if I was. He was one of my many Igbo friends who disliked traits I did not like in some IGBOS who were giving all Igbos bad testimonials. My in-laws are good Igbos. So was Dr. Obisike Erondu. The traits of bad IGBOS which may have consumed Dr. Erondu included territorial ambitions not only in Nigeria but everywhere they went such as South Africa, Benin Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, China, India, Dubai, etc. These bad ambassadors of their people are aggressive, covetous, domineering, clannish, unaccommodating, and not given to peaceful co-existence even on “foreign land”. Every nationality has its fair share of such persons. They become rotten eggs that despoil a whole basket of eggs if they become the active flag bearers of a people and the pure stock does not call them to order.
Thus, whenever Dr. Erondu cast his health challenges aside, sought my votes for Peter Obi, and requested that I give him the telephone numbers of Yoruba politicians, he could speak with, I told him that Obi’s followers, not Obi himself, would be Obi’s problem not only in the South-West but in the North as well. And it happened!
HOSPICE
I played the role of a hospice worker in his life. The hospice worker eases a terminally ill person into the world beyond this one, making him or her know no fear of a transition and, as much as possible, keeps the dreadful health challenge out of the thought.
Many hospice workers are too committed to the rules of their profession, as I found in the first book on this subject I bought in the 1980s when my maternal grandmother developed cancer in the right breast. I couldn’t tell her a lie about it. Then, I knew little about how to help to prolong the life of a cancer-challenged person, using diet, nutritional supplements, herbs, and other therapies. I frankly told her the doctors wished to remove the breast. She was about 76, a passionate Christian of the Christ Apostolic sect, and said she would rather return to her Maker the way she was born, not butchered or mutilated. Of course, her references were to the earthly mud body, not to her soul. The difference between both is not well understood by the Christian Church which, accordingly, does not inveigh its adherents with the appropriate knowledge.
She thanked me for being frank, and I prepared her for the beyond, like the dutiful hospice that I was trying to be. I guess I did the job better with my father. When he passed at about 3.30a.m in a hospital in Obanikoro, Lagos, on 26 August 1998, a Wednesday, he told me in a dream about 20 minutes later he had gone. Then, I lived in Awuse Estate, Opebi, Ikeja. He reminded me to not forget everything we discussed, including his funeral the first Saturday after he passed. He took my hand in one of his and placed my stepmother’s on top of it before he said those parting words.
I prepared to head immediately for Obanikoro, but my wife for security reasons on those days advised that I wait till about 6 am. By 5.30 am, my brother, Yinka, and the wife of one of my father’s tenants came to break the news to me. I did as he wished. And, by 6 am, on the day after the interment, I went to the village cemetery to wish him to not abide in the grave till a Judgement Day but to seek help from all the helpers in the beyond he would find always nearby, and continue his journey through Creation, always getting involved in joyful activities, never looking back to the earth, to avoid becoming earthbound as it is symbolically and pictorially expressed in the Bible story of Lot’s wife and the mound of salt.
OBISIKE
I was glad this man was surrounded in Aba by persons equipped with this knowledge of the afterlife. He had another insightful friend, CLEMENT AGWU who lived in Port Harcourt and became a health discussant with me through him. Through Mr. AGWU this week, I learned that the great “twist” dance hero of the 1960s and early seventies, Elvis PRESLEY, who came to Ibadan for a performance, had 75kg of impacted (stone) fecal waste in his intestine during autopsy. This was the combined weight of about six or seven babies at birth! The lesson in that is that we all must look after the health of our intestines. I do not know how Dr. Erondu looked after him. But he bravely fought colon cancer and offered himself as a case study to all his friends. Not only did he change his diet, but he also undertook various detoxification programmes. He was a man endowed with a sharp intellect, the crown of which was three Ph.Ds. He was a Veterinary doctor. He ran poultry and bred guard dogs and snakes for their poison which he sold abroad. Can that account, I always teased him I would not attend his thanksgiving service in the church or visit him at home whenever he got well because snakes and I were no friends. He also had a great deal of interest in snail farming.
CANCER
The cancer was brutal. It blocked the colon passage and constipated him unless he took laxatives. He liked a particular brand. Whenever he took it, the laxative “pushed” out all the congestion and, also, opened bleeding spots in the tract. He bled a lot with each evacuation. From our conversations, he learned he would be losing electrolytes as well and that too much loss of them could make him faint or die. Thus, he began a routine intake of ORT salts from the pharmacy after every laxative therapy. He backed this up with fruit and vegetable juice intake, avoiding the sugary or sweet ones since cancers use sugars to grow. Occasionally, he took a blood transfusion administered by a nurse who lived nearby in his housing estate.
SURGERY
Dr. Erondu declined surgery that would divert evacuation from his lower abdomen to a bag that would hang outside his body for the rest of his life. He wished to become functional again as a parent and head of his family, professionally, in business and politics. He detested surgery because, inevitably, it would involve chemotherapy, which sometimes kills rather than save a life. On top of these travails, he engaged in extended family inheritance battles which sapped his energy.
FAMILY
His grandfather was a landowner. When the grand old man passed, he left his eldest child in charge of his property. By Igbo tradition, the eldest child will share the property as he liked among other male siblings. Dr. Erondu’s father was the eldest child of his grandfather. According to Igbo tradition, he shared the property among his male siblings. But one of his younger brothers did not leave their father’s house for his own. Dr. Erondu’s father soon died, living his eldest child Obisike in charge of his property. That was where the problem began. Dr. Erondu could not get his uncle to vacate his father’s property. The old man saw the property as his father’s. Dr. Erondu felt belittled that he could not protect his father’s inheritance. The extended family imbroglio worsened when his uncle died and his cousins insisted on burying their father’s remains on the property. This, finally, would make the property an extended family monument. Dr. Erondu could not stand this. So, he hired a lawyer to obtain from a court an interlocutory injunction to stop the interment.
In this scenario, an African man of science and letters may begin to succumb to phobias of the roots in the “village people” syndrome. Thus, Dr. Erondu fought not only a physical battle but a psychological war and psychic engagement all rolled together, congesting him with negative energy.
Trying as I did to take Dr. Erondu out of this case was not easy or successful. He was fighting a war on three fronts. One front was the tumor that blocked his colon. Another was the home front where he wished he could once again take direct and effective charge of his family as not only the breadwinner but, also, as the effective role model. Both aspirations are the goals of an Igbo husband and parent and pride when he achieves them. Finally, there was the feeling that he would betray not only his father but Igbo tradition as well if he failed to protect or properly sort out the inheritance question.
PASSAGE
These were the forces that continually wore down this gentleman. On 7 February 2023, we lost touch. When I did not hear from him as usual, I began to telephone him. When I heard no reply, I thought he could be in hospital, and called his daughter who was on holiday. Everywhere was mute. Then, one day this month, my phone rang. It was his number. Before I would listen to him, I charged:
“Why have you not been replying to my calls?” A woman’s voice answered. I expected the worst.
“He has gone,” she announced. Wa-oh, wa-oh, wa-oh”, was all I could be saying!
Dr. Erondu’s passage is a transition I cannot help remembering. He was, to me already a brother. Any day he tried something new, and his strength returned, I rejoiced. My prayer is that, wherever he is, he would learn to put matters of this earth behind him and awaken to a joyful life in the hope of a more beautiful sphere of existence in the Universe where he is now privileged to experience Life. He may have been a victim of the traits I told him were prevalent in Peter Obi’s followers.
OBISIKE ERONDU
We need energy to not only be alive but to also kit up the “soldiers” in our bodies which stop disease-causing germs from making our bodies their homes and world. The right kinds of foods and drinks help us to produce some of this energy. The rest comes from the soul, which dwells inside the body and leaves it when the body can no longer fulfill its own part of this bargain. Energy from the soul may be positive or negative. Joyful life brings positive energy. Anger, hatred, and co-travelers make negative energy. It is ironic that Dr. Erondu set out for a better life, arming himself with education wherever he could obtain it and at whatever cost, a man who would set up his abode in a posh housing estate where electricity hardly blinks, to get himself out of the madding crowd, a man who did not choose his wife from the pinnacle of society to give himself peace at home, would find himself drained of energy by inheritance squabbles. Fighting cancer for almost 10 years is no mean battle. Adding to that physiological war another war at the psychological and psychic levels robbed the soul of positive energy and in turn, shut the ravaged body from etheric energy. What would this bring but what it has? We cannot be a judge in this matter, as in any other. For we are enjoined to “judge not” so that we, too, may not be judged.
At 58, Dr. Erondu was still a young man. And, in any case, he was very confident he would overcome his travail. But how I wish he knew that ENERGY’ IS LIFE!. I had the strength to walk away from inheritance from my father because he had walked away when the heat became too much and, nevertheless, towered above inheritance guzzlers. So, I couldn’t blame him for dissipating energy on the inheritance struggle because he did not have the benefit of my own experience. One lesson I believe he would have taken away is the discomfort people like me experience in the conduct of followers of his friend, Peter Obi. As they impact their guests wherever they go, so have persons of similar tendencies impacted his peace and life. But can we reasonably blame him for laying claim to his property when we ourselves lay claim to ours and seek to protect it against belligerent and covetous guests?
Goodbye, Doc.
FEMI KUSA was at various times Editor; Director of Publication/ Editor-in-Chief of THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER; Editorial Director/ Editor-in-Chief of THE COMET NEWSPAPER. Currently, he keeps a Thursday Column on Alternative Medicine in the NATION NEWSPAPER.
Some of his health columns may be found on www.olufemikusa.com and in MIDIUM a digital platform for writers. He is active also on Facebook @ John OLUFEMI KUSA.
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