JOS, where the late Prof Jonah Isawa Elaigwu lived much of his life, took time to bid him farewell Oct 14th, 2025. The ‘Service of Songs’ turned into a multiple performance and the attendance a ‘who-is-who’ of that environment.
The list available to Intervention stretches from about five former governors (among them Rear Admiral, S. B. Atukum, Mr. Joshua Dariye and Jonah Jang), a former Speaker of the Plateau State House of Assembly, (Rt Hon Titus Alams who stood in for Governor Mutfwang of Plateau State), three Vice-Chancellors (Prof Shedrack Best, VC Plateau State University, Bokkos; VC Kalkum University, Prof. Audu Gambo), retired ambassadors and former students of Elaigwu who have themselves become professors such as Prof. Ogo Alubo, Umar Musa (NIPSS Director of Research), etc. There were leading public servants such as Mr. Gideon Barde. Muslims were at the ‘Service of Songs’ just as animists and atheists, not to talk of Christians who predominated.
Gen. Geoffrey Ejiga, the informal head of the retired Idoma military constituency, was also at the event although he didn’t speak. “It was a quality crowd”, made more so by an MC who turned poetic, commented an attendee.
A sample of statements at the event follows below although in no sequence.
Group Captain Jonah Jang was not exactly disloyal but was critical of the Babangida regime. It went up to a point that he didn’t mind if Babangida would post him back to the barracks because he wasn’t going to stop criticizing.
Of course, it got to Babangida who complained to Elaigwu who understood that to be an invitation to him (Elaigwu) to step in. That was what Elaigwu did by asking Jang to go with him to see Babangida. Babangida, according to Jang, began by calling him ‘Shege yaro” an Hausa expression which in this circumstance, did not mean a bastard but more like a ‘dissident’ or a rebel. The three went into an executive conversation. In the end, Babangida told Jang to go on with criticizing. That he understood him (Jang) to mean well for the government under him.
Whether Babangida was speaking a coded language or not, it didn’t matter at that point because there was an Elaigwu to pour water wherever water was needed. Jang told the story to illustrate the strategic, fence mending interventions Prof Elaigwu was carrying out behind the scenes. He spoke about Elaigwu’s courage and pin-straight approach.
Joshua Dariye, from whom Jang took over as civilian governor of Plateau State, would want one of Elaigwu’s children to step into Elaigwu’s shoes. In other words, it shouldn’t just be that everything ends with Elaigwu’s burial. He credits Elaigwu with great interest in peace in Plateau State, declaring him a Plateau person but without robbing Benue State of him. He would only be satisfied if there is a fundamental memorialisation of the late prof whom he called a phenomenal individual.
Prof Ogo Alubo echoed Chief John Ochoga’s tribute earlier in Abuja crediting Elaigwu with originating the process that produced the ‘Red and Black’ Idoma national clothe as well as the idea of Idoma Day. Alubo, a leading medical Sociologist, spoke of Elaigwu’s sense of humour, kindness and capacity for hard work.
But it was ASUU President, Prof Chris Piwuna, who was most sensational. First of all, he turned up in a T-Shirt, signifying a rofo-rofo battle mood. For him, the challenge is to transcend merely praising Elaigwu without doing what Elaigwu would have done. Education, health and other vital arteries of society were collapsing, he said, arguing that failure to overhaul the entire system was not what Elaigwu would have accepted. In other words, he was chastising the system managers for not standing up aggressively and transparently to the challenge of holistic repair.
NIPSS Director of Research, Prof Musa Umar, told the story of what Prof Elaigwu did to three of them when he (Elaigwu) could see that the team was about to fail to produce a report to beat a deadline. It was a Friday. The late Prof arrived, literarily arrested all three of them, took them to a hotel, forbade them from taking alcohol but gave instructions that they could eat whatever they wanted and left them. In other words, he didn’t want to hear that any distractions such as NEPA failure or whatever made them not to beat the Monday deadline.
According to Prof Umar, they had to buckle up and beat the deadline because Prof Elaigwu would be uncontainable if otherwise. Such was his strictness with duty.
From the ambassadorial crew came Amb. Jane Ndem’s testimony. In her own case, she came into Elaigwu’s panoptic coverage quite early, being the first female student of the Dept of Political Science where Elaigwu was the pioneer Head.
It didn’t take long before she realised that any infraction on her part would attract heavy moral sanction from the Prof, more so that, as an indigent student, she had to stay in Elaigwu’s Boy’s Quarter. But it was when she became a career ambassador in the old Eastern Europe that Elaigwu was even more helpful to her. And it was to the point that she enjoyed privileges other ambassadors did not at post. Nothing was beyond Elaigwu’s framing competence, be it in politics, government or diplomacy, said Amb Ndem. “You cannot come to him and leave empty or unhappy”, she said.
The ecclesiastical testimony of Daniel Agbese, the Methodist Bishop of Jos, was thus a fitting conclusion to the sample of voices heard at the ‘Service of Songs’ for Prof Elaigwu on October 14th, 2025 in Jos.
Bishop Agbese said there are different types of death; that death, for some persons, is the beginning of living. Prof Elaigwu is his example of where death is a new beginning because Elaigwu has, in his view, impacted everywhere on a phenomenal scale.
He too came down hard in knocking the system. Prof Elaigwu, he said, was being called ‘Mister Federalism’. The nickname, he says, encompasses a lot of salient issues but which, from his observation, are not being adequately attended to.
Intervention’s eyes and ears at the Jos event are arguing that a video of the event ought to be produced because those who spoke left instructive remarks for everyone about the late Prof Elaigwu. Everyone stayed till the end, Intervention was told.
With the Jos event and, before it, the ‘Evening of Tributes’ (in Abuja) that three former Heads of State and two former presidents of the Senate spoke, the stage is now set for his burial on October 24, 2025 at Otukpo in Benue State.
This article is culled from online platform, Intervention
