By Odimegwu Onwumere
Greetings. I was astounded when I saw your picture at the beginning of the national conference, where you are a delegate. I was distressed to the marrow. I was thinking of what has happened to the once glowing Dora. You …were a woman whose beauty was the envy of any man.
Dora Akunyili looks sick while making a presentation during the ongoing national conference
Dora Akunyili looks sick while making a presentation during the ongoing national conference
Many entreaties were made to understand why you were a silhouette of your old self. I wept when I found out that you are suffering from a life-threatening ailment. Some say, it is cancer. Others say, it is diabetes. But whatever it is, my sympathy!
When I thought that you were getting better, therefore came the news of your death many times. If not for one Mr. Isaac Umunna who stands as your media aide, keeping us informed of your situation, many people, by their stance and the weight they cast in circulating the purportedly news of your death, would have buried you before your real death might come. They make your sickness to look and sound like a crime.
However, I’ve not stood by you in term of politics, but I’m standing by you in this period of difficulties. The pains you are going through are a summary of our existence on earth that living is dicey. The person here today may be away tomorrow. The spaces with the time I’m always thinking about you are not growing longer. I’m missing your once smiles, your scintillating and radiating beauty, your agility and outspokenness.
Although, I’ve not seen you in person, but with the era of technology, you are not far. You are leaving me in this ailment a heartache which only your recovery can heal, because Nigerians believe that you are a personality no one can pilfer.
I wish you well wherever you may be right now and hope that you are wishing yourself well and considering your fate through confidence that even though that life has shown its double-living to you, you are strong all the same. In the event that tomorrow does not come, please understand that part of ourselves have been lost.
Take care.
Odimegwu Onwumere, a poet/writer, writes from Port Harcourt, Rivers state.
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