Lessons of Life: Chief Francis Arthur Nzeribe

This is the once powerful Senator Francis Arthur Nzeribe, the controversial politician from Oguta in Imo State.

Variously described in many publications as Chief, Senator, Ogbuagu Damanze, Oshiji, this is what is left of the powerful Oguta arms dealer, who allegedly sold arms to Biafra and Nigeria during the country’s civil war.

How fleeting life can be.

Eccentric, erratic and a maverick two time senator of the Nigerian Senate, Nzeribe now on a wheel chair was once a flamboyant politician and grassroots mobilizer, businessman of note.

He is now only a vegetable, a shadow of his former self. Man is but brief on earth. Life is indeed fleeting. If only we could live forever, as one tweeter user puts it.

But reacting to his photograph which has gone viral in the social media, Nzeribe, in a statement released by his Chief Press Secretary, one Mr. Collins Ughala, said he is “hale and hearty and not struck by stroke, as being suggested in some quarters.”

Here’s the press statement: “The attention of Chief Senator Francis Arthur Nzeribe has been drawn to the hateful speeches going on against him in the media, especially the social media, including the unfounded rumour that he has a stroke.

“Chief Nzeribe should have ignored this hateful rumour, but to set the record straight, this brief response is offered to the effect that the rumour is false, as I don’t have a stroke.

“At 79 years old, I am hale and hearty and not suffering from a stroke. I am not in my community, Oguta, in Imo State. I am resting in my house in Abuja. And I thank God for keeping me healthy and allowing me see old age.

“Life and death are in God’s hands, and God willing, I will remain hale and hearty and not suffer a stroke until such a time when God calls me home. And no amount of hateful speech can change or alter God’s plans for me or anyone else.

“I am not suffering from stroke and I cannot wish anyone to suffer stroke. But to those manufacturing and spreading this hateful speech against me, I wish them the best.

“God has deemed it fit for me to see old age in good health, and there is nothing more to ask from God.”