Nigeria: Onwuka - Jatto: First Among Our Ebola Heroes!

15 October 2014
opinion

IT was the very last church service I attended as a student in the University of Calabar in 1991, just after graduation. The preacher, trying to create a metaphor of hell fire with bad news, solemnly asked the congregation what news one would hear and wished it never happened. As many other members of the congregation, I had thought it would be the death of my father, which eventually followed in a few months. But no, it was the death of my younger brother eight years later, that resembled the situation described by the preacher! Recently, the unrehearsed, albeit valiant, exit of Jatto Abdulqudir, the ECOWAS Protocol Assistant, who met Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian Diplomat, at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, became a painful memorial of the three - my brother's and father's deaths, and the preacher's solemn message.

I met Jat, as we fondly called him, shortly after I joined the ECOWAS Commission, in 2008. The ECOWAS Commission had recorded success in many areas of its activities, particularly in returning all member states to civil rule, which impressed the international community and created better understanding between the Commission and its external stakeholders and at the same time, attracted new ones. This increased the traffic of visitors and invitations to ECOWAS, thus overstretching the few protocol personnel on ground, both in Abuja and the Lagos Liaison Office.

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