James Eneojo Ocholi: A post-humous testimonial

By Tunde Olusunle

Ramon Mora Street in the Old Kado area of Kado District, Abuja, has lost its erstwhile serenity and anonymity, since Sunday March 6, 2016. Those familiar with the neighbourhood easily remember it is typically landmarked by hawkers of marine produce, flowing over from the famous ‘Kado Fish Market,’ which is just about two kilometres away.

Since that fateful Sunday, however, a pick-up can painted in the colours of the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, has become a dominant feature of the landscape in the area. It is complemented on the opposite side, by a sedan car belonging to the Nigerian Police Force, NPF. Ramon Mora Street was home of the late Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Barrister James Eneojo Ocholi, SAN, his wife Mrs Blessing Ocholi and his younger son, Joshua, who all passed on in the unfortunate road accident of Sunday March 6, on the Kaduna-Abuja expressway.

It is unlikely that the road has ever witnessed the sheer volume and intensity of users, predominantly sympathizers, who have flocked to comfort the Ocholis on the most tragic incident, as it has in the last week or so. Sympathizers have come from all over, including the wife of President Muhammadu Buhari, Mrs Aisha Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN and his wife, Dolapo; the National Assembly, led by Senate President Bukola Saraki and Ocholi’s colleagues in the Federal Executive Council, led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Babachir David Lawal.

State Governors, past and present; leaders of the All Progressives Congress, APC, across board; the political leadership of Kogi State led by Governor Yahaya Bello; the body of Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SAN; various bodies and associations from the Church of Christ, as well as leaders and members of organised labour, have all visited the family.

His kinsmen from Igalaland in Kogi State-old and young; friends of the family, associates and acquaintances, have variously demonstrated solidarity with the Ocholis at this moment of phenomenal grief. As early reports of the sad incident filtered through the social media that Sunday March 6, frantic calls to several friends and political frontliners from Kogi State, to confirm the status of the report concerning the Minister representing my state, our state, and members of his family, confirmed one’s worst fears.

Except for two fleeting encounters, I never knew Barr James Ocholi, too closely.

Of course I knew him by reputation, beginning from when he flew the flag of the erstwhile Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, as governorship candidate in 2011, in Kogi State, at the same time President Muhammadu Buhari took a third shot at the nation’s number one office, on the platform of the same party.

He stared in our faces and consciousness from his billboards and posters, with that trademark well-kept, low-trimmed grey beard which at once conferred civility, urbanness, sophistication and purpose on his person.

In the aftermath of the 2015 general elections, we found ourselves guests in the home of one of the foremost political leaders from the North Central zone, somewhere in highbrow Maitama, Abuja. He was Deputy National Legal Adviser of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and I didn’t need our host to get us to meet, before we courtesied to each other from our various sections in the living room.

He was to put up a class act on national television, in the course of his screening for the office of Minister, by the Senate of the Federal Republic, in November 2015. And for many who did not know him too closely, Ocholi’s calm, profound, informed, erudite and confident outing, easily announced the discovery of yet another shining star, in the mould of the Babatunde Raji Fasholas, on the nation’s political horizon. Eternally fractious and divisive as we are back home in Kogi State on issues of politics and the appropriation of political patronage, there was an unusual concurrence by the perennially dissenting ethnicities and interests, that we had a worthy representative in Ocholi.

Indeed, in the run-up to the November 21, 2015 governorship election in Kogi State, the Kogi People’s Democratic Party, PDP, attempted to make political capital out of Ocholi’s subsequent designation as Minister of State in what they described as ‘a small ministry,’ despite his pedigree. They maintained that the designation was beneath the appointee, and demeaning to the state he represents.

Ocholi had calmly replied the PDP, that he was not aware of any hierarchical calibrations in national service and that he was both honoured to serve the Federal Republic and grateful to be given the opportunity at this time from a state with tremendous human resource potential like Kogi. We were to meet again at a function outside the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, early this year, where we both honoured a mutual friend, at a ceremony organised in the latter’s honour. I was struck by his sense of commitment to friendship, taking the trouble to commute over 600 kilometres to attend the event, on Nigeria’s trademark deathly roads.

Indeed, I was astounded he didn’t wear the airs of the typical Nigerian ‘bigman,’ who would usually make a boisterously disruptive entrance either midway through a ceremony or at the tail end. Ocholi actually arrived ahead of the honoree, which allowed time for the exchange of pleasantries and banter, before the commencement of the event!

Following the unfortunate demise of former Kogi State Governor and flagbearer of the APC in the Saturday November 21, 2015 governorship, Prince Abubakar Audu, before the conclusion of the election, Ocholi moved quickly to broker peace and understanding between contending tendencies in the state. At the Sunday December 6 meeting, which was barely a few weeks after his inauguration as Minister, Ocholi harped on the imperative of a new rapprochement between the various geo-political components of the state, discouraged insensitive and incendiary talk and hate speech, and urged the people of the state to be law-abiding. Ocholi stressed the need for leaders in the three senatorial zones to promote reconciliation and collectively work for good governance in the state.

The late Minister emphasised the need for regular interface between the various components of the state and rallied support for good governance to move the state forward, irrespective of where the Governor eventually emerges from.

If my mental construction of his person and persona remained incomplete, my respected brother and good friend to the late Ocholi, John Olusola Baiyeshea, SAN, reminded me when we spoke about the December meeting convened by Ocholi, that he was indeed an archetypal gentleman and selfless pacifist. The comments of Baiyeshea, an ordained pastor like Ocholi, who was also admitted into the Body of SANs in 2007 like Ocholi, in one of our correspondences the morning after the tragedy, told me more about his deceased colleague.

His words: ‘I could not sleep… This guy rose from bare grassroots without any godfather. He got to the position of eminence purely by his own merit and the grace of God. I can’t understand.’ Perhaps more than whatever one had seen or heard about him, my condolence visit, along with my longstanding friend and brother, Dr Onukaba Adinoyi Ojo, to his Kado home Tuesday March 8, 2016, presented to me, the most humbling and sobering testimonial of the man James Eneojo Ocholi.

He lived a contented and happy man with his close-knit family, in a modest semi-detached duplex on Ramon Mora Street, devoid of any grandeur and affectation. You can barely squeeze two regular sized vehicles into the narrow driveway on the side of the house.

The interior itself is shorn of any form of ostentation and affluence, traditionally associated with his standing in society. He didn’t live in the opulence of the aesthetic monstrosities of Maitama, Asokoro, or Asokoro Extension, where power mongers have serially violated the masterplan of the FCT, in the name of ‘carve-outs’ and ‘maximization of existing infrastructure.’ For a moment, I wondered if we were in the annex to what should be a more palatial, more grandiose mansion, typical of the contemporary Nigerian senior government functionary, nay Minister of the Federal Republic.

Indeed, in a milieu of jet-flying, multi-billionaire SANs who are in gritty contest with Forbes-listed moguls, the simplicity of his abode, beat my imagination that James Ocholi was in the same profession.

Adinoyi Ojo read my consternation.

My doubts were only assuaged when I was served the condolence register and confronted with the names, handwritings, in inks of several colours and signatures of virtually all the heavyweights on Nigeria’s political scene. Sympathizers will most likely not be touring various locations to sign various registers, I told myself.

The dregs of my doubts were effectively cleared when, as I walked out through the door of the house, the Minister of State for Investment, Mrs Aisha Abubakar was waiting to take her turn to express her condolences. The SGF, David Lawal and APC candidate in the last gubernatorial election in Bayelsa State, Timipre Sylva, we’re some of the other dignitaries who showed up there as we exited. As we navigated our way out of Kado Estate that afternoon in Ojo’s car, I could not but share with him the magnitude of the loss Kogi State and indeed Nigeria had just suffered and just how pained I was. Ocholi surely belonged to a rapidly vanishing specie of the contemporary Nigerian. Not too many people of his distinguished accomplishments remain notably unassuming, demonstrably humble, characteristically self-effacing, strikingly simple and unusually modest.

President Muhammadu Buhari alluded to his legendary humility during the special valedictory session of the Federal Executive Council, FEC, in his honour, when he noted that despite his obvious seniority as a member of the respected Body of Silks, he accepted to serve under a junior colleague in the interim national executive of the APC. For the avoidance of doubt, Ocholi was already SAN way back in 2007, yet he made no fuss serving as deputy to a learned colleague who was only admitted to the Body of SANs, eight years after him! President Buhari noted the similarity between the legal and military professions, where issues of seniority and ranking are taken very seriously and passionately, and observed that Ocholi never took it to heart.

He was a very versatile personality who most competently combined the secular and the spiritual. He served as Chancellor of Salem University, Lokoja, Kogi State, at the same time as he functioned as the National Secretary of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International, FGBFI, while pursuing his ambition to lead his state in 2011 and 2015, respectively. Ocholi was surely one of a kind. He was peculiarly decent man.

As the Holy Book enjoins us, we can only be grateful to God in all things, and in this instance, for Ocholi’s life and the lives of his beloved wife, Blessing and cherished son, Joshua. We believe God they have gone to rest in the bosom of the Most High.

We also take solace in the Yoruba saying, ‘Oba ku, oba ku’, which translates as: The king may be gone, but the heirs to the throne remain. The Ocholis left behind Aaron, a lawyer; Ojone, Uyo and Ele, all well-groomed children who will hold aloft those ideals, principles and virtues for which their parents and brother lived.

Ocholi would not have died in vain if the elite and indeed the political class learn tangible lessons from his altruism, selflessness and authenticity as an individual and a public servant.

Adieu.

* Olusunle is a Member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, NGE and the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, respectively.