Remembering Michael Anyiam-Osigwe

BY MICHAEL IGAGA JR

My boss, my friend and brother, Michael Chibuzor Anyiam-Osigwe, today November 29, 2018 completes four years when the crude brutality of your death left us with an alluvion of tears and a philosophical puzzle on the antinomy of life and death.

Deriving from the ineptitude of the Nigerian State, armed robbers brought you down in a rain of bullets on a sunny afternoon. The country had no project for your security and never found the vendors of that horrendous assault on a national asset as you. That is still the state of the nation even today.

Driven by the magnetic prowess of fate, we met in 1999 and discovered that we were predestined as two souls that share a vibrational frequency to explore creative progress and historic leap for humankind. The rudder of our work resided in the thoughts and perspectives of your father, which made our task easier. As we set out to work, you impacted on me the higher yield that comes with the synergistic potentials of the larger whole. You integrated our efforts into the Group Mind paradigm of the Anyiam-Osigwe clan. Together with the rest of the family, we set to work. With you as the coordinating skipper of the secretariat, we commenced the process of unveiling the thoughts and perspectives of Emmanuel Onyechere Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe and subjecting them to wider intellectual evaluation.

His life and times eased our mission. His thoughts were complete and better ordered beyond our own imagination. Being convinced of my sincerity of purpose in the enterprise of evolving a Better World Order, you granted me access to the hidden treasures called Papa’s diaries. From then on, we became partners in identifying those aspects of his diaries we felt could be understood by society.

From 1999 to your inevitable transition in 2014, we gave up all we have and dedicated all our time to locating, arranging and packaging Papa’s diaries into volumes of works under his various titles and sub titles. We worked outside conventional schedule. In our commitment, we had no consideration for our wellbeing. That singular factor helped us immensely in sustaining our vision. At the middle of our onerous task, I woke up to a phone call in November 30, 2014 confronted by the fact that the pang of death has put us apart forever. The shocking impact of that moment remains permanent in my psyche unto this day.

Today, four years after your transition, I have been able to transcend maledictions against your assailants as I am comported by the ingenious regulation of the natural order. Although, your transition delivered a devastating cataclysm on my mental state, but drawing from the limitless capacity of my meta-conscious to intuit and apprehend the abstract, I see you when my mind and consciousness desires; and even now as I write this piece, I see you Michael. I am not talking about imagination. I am defining the capacity of my inner prodding to intuit into your consciousness as I continue in our work. Drawing from the innards of the subconscious, we are still working together as we worked while you were physically here.

In the midst of my nostalgia, I stand resolved on the alter of theodicy glorifying God from everlasting to everlasting; for good will forever triumph over evil. As I intuit into the metaphysical construct of the number four, I can understand that in your dwelling in immortality – the realm of absolute bliss – you are wholesome in the ground and essence of the moral arc. Here, integrating into the metaphysical construct of the number four, we are witness to the harvest of your values in the outcome of the most decisive work you undertook. While still with us physically, you efforts glorified your father with a professorial honour by his conferment with the Odera Oruka award, being the first acknowledged authentic natural philosopher from Africa.

Still deriving from the articulation and arrangement of your father’s work, his philosophical works has earned course titles at the Masters levels of one of our tertiary institutions. All these achievements reflect the predictive outcome of your psychic component. Your focus, conscientiousness, methods, pragmatism, honesty, certainty, loyalty, dedication to the job at hand, your capacity to be conservative and protective, your disposition to patience, service, persistence, hard work, dependability, trust worthiness, has immensely delivered on the success of the family and the Foundation.

In your worthy contribution to family and institutions in your earthly life, your record of completion, wholeness and fullness instructs us on how precisely a successful life ought to be lived. We remain sustained in the vision you left with us – your students and co-sojourners in the waters of earthly experiences. We hold forth against all tempests pursuant to sustaining the task your physical absence leaves us to complete. Adieu boss. Bonne nuit. Adieu our Icon; the apostle of value laden life, MICHAEL CHIBOZOR ANYIAM-OSIGWE.

Michael Igaga Jr, administrative secretary of the Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation wrote in honour of the founding coordinator general of the Foundation