Charles Ayede: Saying goodbye to a gentleman

The news is bad. It can hardly be worse. And it left me in a state of speechless incredulity. That Charles Ayede is dead, not natural death through an illness, but by an application of violence by happy-trigger hoodlums is not only perturbing and painful, but also perplexing. If a soothsayer had predicted to me […]

The news is bad. It can hardly be worse. And it left me in a state of speechless incredulity. That Charles Ayede is dead, not natural death through an illness, but by an application of violence by happy-trigger hoodlums is not only perturbing and painful, but also perplexing.

If a soothsayer had predicted to me that Ayede was going to die in the next 20 years, I would have suggested that the soothsayer’s head be examined by a neurologist because Ayede was always bubbling with life.

Charles and I met over four decades ago in Jos in our quest for higher education. He was admitted for the two-year Higher School Certificate course to St. Louis College while I was equally admitted to then Provincial Secondary School, Kuru, now renamed Science School, Kuru for same course. Throughout the two-year duration, in the Jos environ, we were meeting regularly and deliberating on our future life.

We temporarily lost contact after our HSC Course, because while I was employed by the then Benue Plateau Ministry of Education to teach at the Technical College, Bukuru, in January 1972, I did not know where Ayede went to in 1972 immediately we dropped our pens after the examination in December 1971. However, the period of our separation did not last long because through his sister’s husband, Chief Simon Shango, I was employed by the standard in Jos, in July 1972 as a reporter.

This provided opportunity for us to reunite. We often reflect on our youthful days at the higher schools. And as providence would have it, both of us were in the media, (he was in the NTA and was chairman of NUJ in Benue State and retired from the National Orientation Agency recently), our paths necessarily crossed several times and it was always a joy to meet Ayede. In fact, our general attitude to life was so similar; God had deliberately planned that we should always meet. For example, he attended the same University of Lagos which I also attended and both of us read the same course at the Department of Mass Communications; he specialized in Electronic Media, while I in Print.

As we grew older and the vicissitudes and realities of life began to dawn on us, our meetings became less frequent but each time Ayede saw any of my articles in a national newspaper or a radio commentary on FRCN, he would call me an quip- “You no de tire!’, and would add rather cynically that he would write a rejoinder especially if any of those articles had to do with either state or Federal Government.

Late in 2010, Ayede called and told me that he was not comfortable with what was happening in our state, that he believed a change was necessary. I gave my counsel but it appeared to me that he had gone too far on the path he had chosen for any retreat.

Later, he asked me for a meeting at which he lectured me for several hours and before we knew, it was already midnight.

Even though he lived in Abuja and was comfortable by any stretch of the word, he spent the most part of this year in his native area of Kwande, but until recently, I had always thought that Ayede was from the Gboko axis.

A month to the governorship election, he called to ask me to join the group so that “we could have a new Benue” and added that though the ACN had no money, the party would win the election. I believe his optimism was buoyed by the opinion poll in the THISDAY newspaper which gave the election to ACN by over 80 percent rating.

A gentleman to the core, he was not dejected by the setback when the INEC announced the PDP as winner of the gubernatorial election in the state. Two weeks before he died, I called and he told me that he was in Abuja but that he was too busy to see me, but suggested that I could go with him to his village for a weekend if it was convenient for me. Since I had nothing doing at the time, I mused over the idea but later buried the thought especially as I had returned from Makurdi where I spent over four days the previous week he had invited me.

But whatever may be the motive of the people who murdered him, Ayede might not have been  on  that road on that day if he  had not been in pursuit of the ideals he had chosen for himself.

Like Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “it would have been so with me,” if I had been there” in that car.

His sudden death continues to pose challenges to mankind. For us, Christians in particular, nobody should question the will of God, but are all deaths, especially the violent ones necessarily the handiwork of God?

Shakespeare says in King Lear that “as flies to the wanton boys, so are we to the gods; they kill us for sport”. In other words, do the gods kill us for sport just as little children smite flies for the fun of it? And his death brings to the fore, the element of fate in our daily lives. Are certain people destined for certain ends and situations and like some would say, ‘there is no armor against fate’ because,  it seems no matter how we try, fate would always play a cruel trick on us. If Ayede had not been on that road at that particular time, would he have died? Philosophers are called here.

Throughout the over 40 years of our association, I never once saw him in a combative mood. The furtherest Ayede would go in his disagreement with your views is to say, “You are not serious”. He typified the attributes of an average Tiv man, kind, hospitable, but resolute. This hospitable side of a Tiv man is sometimes misinterpreted by visitors to their abodes. The million dollar question many political watchers are asking is whether his death is redemptive and possibly marks the turning point in the political landscape of the state

Those who killed Ayede must have done what they did by mistake. They probably did not know him, for if they had known that he was a hospitable, kind and a gentleman to the core, they probably would have thought  twice before pumping those lead into his heart and head. They did not know that at the time they killed this patriot, he was sponsoring so many orphans in schools, colleges and universities.

These innocent orphans would certainly cry to high heaven and God almighty who says He will never abandon orphans and widows will certainly avenge his death when these children cry to Him.

To his children, relations, friends and numerous admirers, I know that it is often difficult to write a tribute of this nature that touches the right vein of sympathy, but they should be consoled that Charles lived a fulfilled life and he was a good man. I know that he is  on the right hand of God and that God has received  and blessed his gentle soul.

I can only here add, “Amen”

Adams, a retired Deputy Director in the Federal Civil Service, wrote from Abuja