Dele Cole & Emmanuel Uduaghan: Memories of two departed great men, By Mathew Hassan Kukah

I do not recall when I first met the great man, Ambassador Patrick Dele Cole. I had read his very illuminating opinion articles in the Guardian. He was at that starting block of that great flagship of Nigerian journalism. Our path later crossed during the Obasanjo era. Debonair, swanky and effervescent, Ambassador Cole cut the image of a man who was beyond prim and proper. His regal visage and radiance suggested that life had been very kind to him. His voice wasn’t thunderous but it had a gentle depth. In his articles or in conversation, he laid out his points with gentle finality, authority and conviction. He exuded confidence and his opinions suggested a man who was a thoroughbred. He was persuasive but not argumentative.

When he spoke, his words and ideas were laced with the concentration of a poker player. I really did love to listen to him in the few times we encountered one another. My last conversation with him was in the lounge of the International airport in Port Harcourt as we both waited to catch different flights last year, he to Lagos and I to Abuja. When they announced the delay of his flight, I was actually pleased and I told him so. ‘You are Bishop, you should not rejoice over the misfortunes of your flock’, he intoned. ‘When they announced the delay of my own flight’, you did not sympathise with me, was my rejoinder, as we settled down and continued with our conversation. We talked about Nigeria and the lingering issues in the Niger Delta. He suggested that we should plan to have a long conversation. You did a great job in Ogoniland, he said to me, yet, the issues around the discontentment of our people are still lingering and spreading. We mulled the possibility of a meeting, but he looked a bit weak and I did not press him for dates or a venue. We just agreed that we would need to talk.

I had initially assumed that Ambassador Cole was a Lagosian and a descendant of one of the great migrant groups that had settled in Lagos. One day, I read an article he wrote on the Ijaws in the Guardian. The points presented and the characterization of the Ijaw people were raw, bare knuckle jabs. I called Ambassador Dele Cole and told him I had just read his piece. I immediately challenged him asking if he were not worried that the Ijaws might come after him, with this kind of opinion of them. ‘You definitely know what you are talking about’, I said, but the piece is so laden with stereotypes that it may offend sensibilities. ‘But I am an Ijaw man myself’! he replied, as I recoiled back. ‘Opari, I spat out, as I mentally crawled back into my little shell of ignorance. How could I cry more than the bereaved?

In the first year of the Obasanjo Presidency, I encountered Ambassador Dele Cole in the main lounge of the Hilton Hotel in Abuja late one evening. It was around 11pm and we had had a long session during Oputa Panel sittings. He saw me before I saw him, and called out: ‘Father Kukah, please, please, I need to talk to you. I was asking for you and they said you are here in the hotel’ he said in his distinctive voice.

‘Why would he be looking for me’, I thought to myself and then he said: ‘The President is going to Ndjamena tomorrow morning to address a meeting of some African regional leaders. We do not have a speech for him yet. Please, can you write a speech for us between now and 5am’? I looked at him in utter shock. ‘What is my own with writing a speech for the president? You have speech writers’, I said to him. Smiling, he leaned his heavy frame towards me like a man who had just closed a deal. Please, he said again, do this for us. I didn’t give him an answer but he seemed convinced that we had a deal. I went to my room and actually by about 1am, I had a draft speech delivered to his room in the same hotel. I did not hear from him but later in the evening, I smiled when I saw the media reports of the meeting. It seemed he had not even edited the speech. He later called to say how grateful they had been and that the speech had been well received, both by the president, and his audience.

Some months later, I again ran into Ambassador Dele Cole, this time, at the airport in Lagos. I decided to go on a jocular attack: ‘So, Ambassador Cole, you literally forced me to write a speech for the president. Now you are giving out Ambassadorial positions and you can’t even recommend me for a position?’, I thrust.

He let out a big laugh and said: ‘Why are you in a hurry? Actually, Eritrea is still vacant and I had already penciled you down there. ‘But they are at war’, I protested, playing along. ‘Yes, but you are priest, and that is your main selling point. You will help end their wars’, Dele Cole said, in his characteristic quick and clever wit.

May God console his family, the Ijaw nation and our great country.

AND, THEN, DR EMMANUEL UDUAGHAN…………………..

Like Al Barney in the James Hadley Chase novel, ‘An Ear to the Ground’, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan was a politician with an ear to the ground, and a very down to earth, populist touch. He spoke across the fence of intellectualism to the streets where the poor lived. Beyond the ordinary people of Delta, it was always great listening to him connect with ordinary people. He always met them at their own level, with neither airs nor pretension.

My first personal encounter with him was when he asked one of his commissioners to invite me to speak in Asaba, during his first term as Governor of Delta State. After that, we maintained a good relationship. He would later extend another invitation to me, this time in his second term, and this time, with the Sultan of Sokoto. He personally called me and asked: ‘I want you to come and speak to us on the topic of Anger Management’. I jokingly said to him, ‘With whom are you angry, your commissioners or your wife’? Rather than answer, he said: ‘I just want to have this conference because I think I would like to learn how to manage anger better. There are some decisions I have taken in a fit of anger and later regretted. I will like to hear your perspectives on this topic’. ‘In that case’, I replied, ‘you are better off getting a psychologist, or maybe a professor from one of the universities’. ‘You are more than a professor of psychology and you are my choice’, he said with an air of finality. As we were about to end the conversation, he said: ‘Can you please help me persuade the Sultan to come also? Having both of you here will be wonderful for us’. Long story short, His Eminence and I did turn up in Asaba to a great audience which, in the end, did include a professor of psychology who delivered an excellent speech.

We maintained a good relationship and he and I often spoke after he left office. Back in 2014, we had completed the refurbishment of our Clinic here in Sokoto. I decided to invite him to come for the commissioning. ‘Why do you insist on inviting me’, he asked? I responded saying: ‘It is a Mother and Child Clinic and I will like you to come and speak to the women especially in a language they can understand’. He accepted.

On July 28th, 2014, he arrived Sokoto. It was a great event and I will never forget how he connected with the women in his excellent pidgin. I can almost repeat his words that went something like this: ‘Bishop Kukah don build Clinic for una. If una de come here, to born pickin no go hard when de time reach. I be doctor myself and I know how women de behave when time to born don come. When pain come, dem go abuse husband, saying, useless man, stupid man, idiot. You no go ever come near me again. All dat na shakara. After she born finish, small time she go open hand begin cry. She go say, my loving husband, where you commot go? Make you come take me oooo. I am ready for you’. The whole crowd was ecstatic. The women got the message as only Dr. Uduaghan could pass it. The Sultan who was there also added his own quip by encouraging all people to come to the clinic because as he said to much applause: ‘Mosquito de go church, mosquito de go mosque. So, mosquito no get religion’.

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Dr Uduaghan’s visit was a great source of encouragement. He decided to announce the donation of a new and beautiful ambulance to the Clinic. It is still in great condition. It will remain our connection with his great memory here in Sokoto.

In 2015 when my good friend, Professor Pat Utomi contested elections for the governorship of Delta, he apparently had a spat with Dr. Uduaghan. It was taken up and escalated by the social media. I read it and then, one evening, I decided to put a call through to Dr. Uduaghan to ask what was going on between him and my good friend, Professor Utomi. Nothing o, my Bishop. Pat and I have no real issues, but you know this is politics, little things get exaggerated. I then asked him if he would be willing for the three of us to sit down and iron out things. He agreed. I put a call through to Pat and told him what Dr. Uduaghan and I had discussed and if he would be willing for the three of us to talk things over. He again repeated that both of them were good friends and that there were really no serious issues. Pat agreed to come to the premises of the Kukah Centre in Wuse 2. We spent less than one hour and it was all over. They both shook hands, patted one another at the back and that was it. I then said a prayer and that was it.

I really liked Dr. Uduaghan. He seemed surprised that I cared about him. One day he confessed that this was exceptional because most people move on after one has left office. We laughed over that. I had no idea that he had been sick for a long time. One day, I saw photographs of him in the social media suggesting that he was very sick. I called him several times, but there was no response.

One evening in June or July I think, I called again and his wife answered the phone. We spoke briefly and I told her I was calling to find out how her husband was. She told me she would try to see if she can put us in touch. I held the phone for some minutes with no answer. I did not want to push and finally hung up the phone. I concluded that if it was possible for us to speak, the wife would call me back. She didn’t and I thought it was better to remember him in prayers instead of pushing it. He was a great soul and I am glad our paths crossed. May God grant him eternal rest, console his wife, children and the people of Delta state. Amen.

Dr Mathew Hassan Kukah is the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese