Late Dora Akunyili’s daughter, Chidiogo has penned an emotional tribute to her father who was slain by unknown gunmen on Tuesday.
Mrs Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr shared various pictures of herself and her father, Dr Chike Akunyili on her wedding day.
She recounted her last conversation with him on Monday describing how he bemoaned the state of the nation, not knowing that death stared him in the face.
According to chidiogo.akunyili
“Ubuntu – ‘I am because we are’. If this holds true, then the man who pulled the trigger twice is because we are — his anger, the injustice of his action, and his violence are because it is mirrored in the world around him.
“If ‘I am because we are’, then my father’s pain gasping for breath in his last moments is because we as a nation are in pain.”
The younger Akunyili then gave details of her last conversation with her father explaining how, “I spoke to him on Monday, just a day before another human wilfully took his life.
“He asked after his newest grandchild who he had given the name Mmesomma — ‘the one who does only beautiful things’. And above all, he bemoaned the state of things in the country.
As a surgeon, always frontline with the people’s suffering, he shared just how visible the current hardships were. Patients, he said, were no longer able to pay for care. It didn’t help, he added, that no one was safe.
“I asked him if he was being careful and he assured me that he was, going on to add that he never went out anymore and was sure to be home by 6. Convinced, I reminded him to be even more careful and to take care of himself.
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“If Ubuntu holds true, that he is — a son, a beloved father, a loving grandfather, a healer, a Papal knight, Agbalanze of Agulu, a friend, a brother, and so much more — then this is an invitation for us to find the good in is us.
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