By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Published: December 6, 2011
How time flies!
Thursday, December 8, will be exactly one year since my friend and brother, Maximus Uba, the man we fondly called Max, died in a ghastly motor accident in Abuja.
I was still in bed on that fateful morning when Oguwike Nwachukwu, a colleague of mine and Max’s cousin called. It was unusual for him to call that early. Before I could ask what the matter was, he told me rather gravely, “Maximus is dead.” I told him he was lying. “I just spoke with Didacus, Maximus’ elder brother now. He had an accident and died instantly,” Oguwike said solemnly.
I went numb and the phone fell off my hand. I had spoken to Max the previous night. We had a minor disagreement about a month earlier over some of his political engagements. It was nothing personal but he was a passionate man who believed in any cause he set out to pursue. It was not unusual for us to disagree on issues. But that disagreement was atypical, very much out of the usual run of things between us. He was very agitated and for the first time, our disagreement would actually lead to a “cold war.” We didn’t talk to each other for about a month.
So, when he called that night, I was pleasantly surprised and relieved. As usual, he abused me and we agreed to meet in Abuja that weekend and sort things out. What providence! How could I have known that the conversation would be our last? How, on earth, could I have known that the goodnight we bid each other would be the last? Who could have imagined that we were telling ourselves a very big lie when we said we would see over the weekend? At that very moment, the profundity of the admonition in the “Book of Common Prayer,” that “in the midst of life, we are in death,” dawned on me.
When I broke the heartrending news to my wife, she was distraught. Max was her friend too and together we were family, literally speaking.
In my hysteria, I couldn’t write a tribute. In spite of the finality of death and the loud statement it makes, there is always that flicker of hope that it is only a bad dream. Until I saw the body lowered into the grave on December 23, 2010, I had hoped (forlornly you dare say) that somebody would call, just as Oguwike did that morning, to say it was a bad joke. But it wasn’t. Besides, how do you suddenly begin to refer to a friend of yours with whom you had a hearty telephone discussion some hours earlier in the past tense?
Max and I came a long way right from the very first day we met at the Associated Bus Company (ABC) terminal in Owerri in the late 1990s. We were coming back to Lagos and used the over 10 hours the journey lasted to discuss. By the time we arrived Lagos, we had become friends. Thus began a very close relationship that lasted until that fateful morning. I helped him secure a job with the defunct The Diet newspaper, where I was working then. The restless soul he was, he resigned after one month. Max was a good writer and loved journalism but didn’t have the patience and discipline to practice the profession. He had the knack for making friends, and, therefore, preferred Public Relations to journalism. But his was a novel genre of PR, which he combined effectively with political activism. He didn’t do his job for money. Thus, he worked for Senator Arthur Nzeribe for many years without being paid. He simply loved the maverick politician. He was always attracted to enigmas.
Because financial reward was not the motivating reason for his political liaisons, he could easily turn his back on his “clients” even after helping them win elections. It happened in the case of the late Tony Anyanwu, former member of the House of Representatives, who, incidentally was his mate in secondary school. It also happened in the case of Chief Ikedi Ohakim, former Governor of Imo State. Before Ohakim’s election in 2007, Max was one of his best friends and handled his media. It was Max who introduced most journalists, including myself, to him. I was in the United Kingdom when the former Governor won the election and I expected that his first appointee would be Max. That was not to be. They had quarreled. That was Maximus for you. Many other people in his shoes would have done anything if only to be offered political appointment. Not him.
It was this stubborn streak, which most times defied logic, that made him controversial. He made mistakes and had his faults, no doubt, after all, he was human. But our relationship was quite strong. It even became stronger when he married his wife, Lizzy. Even when they relocated to Abuja after Lizzy was transferred to the Nigerian Law School in Bwari, and most of Max’s clients who were politicians, moved to Abuja, he would come to the airport to pick me anytime I travelled to the capital city and the wife would insist he brought me home. And in Lagos, my home was his anytime he was in town.
One year after his death, the overwhelming feeling of grief for everybody who knew him remains mutual. It didn’t matter what you were to him. What was important was that you made his acquaintance. Maximus believed in friendship. He celebrated friendship. He was a faithful devotee to the cult of humanity. His love for fellow human beings was extra-ordinary. He had passion for life and lived it to the fullest. He believed in fairness, equity and justice. He never believed in coveting anything that was not his. A friend’s problem automatically became his and all his life, he strove to be a friend in need. He would plead to lend a helping hand even when you were reluctant to involve him in your personal problems.
It is one of the supreme ironies of life that good men, most times, die young. Doctrinaire Catholicism explains that it is so because God wouldn’t want such people to be corrupted in this evil world and would, therefore, recall them to rest eternally in His bosom, while evil men are given a longer time on earth to repent. I don’t know how true this is, but if, indeed, it is true, then, it is a very unfair reward for goodness. Shouldn’t long life be a reward, a natural consequence of good life predicated on service to humanity?
But we can neither question God’s infinite wisdom nor pick quarrels with death since that would amount to an exercise in futility. But truth be told, one year after, Max’s death still hurts, and badly too.
When I read Woody Allen’s refrain in his classic, “Getting Even” that “on the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as simply as lying down,” I must confess I didn’t quite appreciate his drift. But when the man I spoke with in the night lay dead in the morning, I became more aware of how simple and near death is.
Max believed that Nigeria could be better. In the short time he lived, he contributed his own quota. On Thursday there will be a public lecture with the theme, “The Freedom of Information Act, the media and the anti-corruption war in Nigeria,” in his honour at the Chida International Hotel in Abuja. It will be delivered by Prof. Yemi Akinseye-George. That will, no doubt, be a befitting tribute.
Continue to rest in peace, Max.
