A father’s dream, a son’s journey: mission accomplished, by Osita Chidoka

I graduated with a degree in Business Management and reported for National Youth Service in November 1995. A year later, at our passing out parade, General Useni graced the occasion. He offered automatic employment to award winners — and I was among the fortunate few. That single moment would set my life on a trajectory I could never have plotted on my own.

Yet sometimes I wonder: what if I had studied law? I would have graduated in 1996, proceeded to Law School in 1997, and then to Youth Service in 1998. By 1998 — as fate would still have it — I was already serving as Personal Assistant to the Minister of State for Works and Housing.

In March 1998, aboard the ADC flight that carried Pope John Paul II from Abuja to Enugu, that a moment of astonishing clarity came over me. As the aircraft lifted off and I gazed out over the sparse skyline of Abuja, a silent prayer rose from deep within: How did a 26-year-old boy from Achara Layout, Enugu and Akowonjo, Lagos come to share airspace with His Holiness? How did I end up here?

In that instant, I grasped that my graduation year in 1996 was no accident. My path to that plane seat was not engineered by my own hand. I was merely an arrow, drawn back and released by God.

After that Papal visit, my life unfolded with a force I could hardly comprehend. My career surged, opening doors I did not even know existed. Through it all, two men rejoiced at my progress but held on to a hope that I might still find my way to the law: my father, and Barrister Rob Iweka, a mentor who became a second father to me.

Uncle Rob — once Attorney General of old Anambra State under Jim Nwobodo and later a Senior Advocate of Nigeria — was a man of rare discernment. His wisdom ran deep; his grasp of human nature, profound; his commitment to principle, unwavering.

Together with his luminous wife, Antie Iweka who carried an irrepressible joy into every room, they embraced me like a son.

After each of our long, searching conversations, Uncle Rob would invariably say, “Osita, you must still study law.” Even when I wore the uniform of Corps Marshal or sat in the high councils of state as Minister, he held fast to that gentle admonition.

My father shared that same quiet yearning. His pride in my journey never masked his deeper wish. In my boyhood, he brought me books, returned from travels with stacks of foreign newspapers. When President Obasanjo wrote Nzeogwu and held a signing at Choice Bookshop in Ikeja, my father took me by the hand to buy a copy, to meet the General, to collect his autograph.

He dreamed of me as a lawyer and politician and invested in that dream with the dedication only a father knows.

When I finally walked into the Federal Executive Council Chambers in 2014 to take the Oath of Office, my parents stood proud, their hearts full. After the day’s celebration, my father still found space to ask if I might someday return to the study of law. He was happy for me, yet somewhere in his spirit, he felt something remained unfinished.

Then came 2015. The PDP lost the presidential election. I found myself in unexpected early retirement, with a rich menu of options before me. But one path stood out. My life to that point had been full beyond my imagination; politics still beckoned.

Yet I felt a tug, to honour my father’s investment in his hope of being a lawyer’s father. And so I enrolled at Baze University to study law.

My father, who will turn 99 this November, lives with me in Abuja, after my mother’s passing will wake up to his first lawyer among his children

Today, he will receive my certificates, watch me don my wig and gown, and witness my Call to the Bar. Despite all I have done, despite my age and offices held, I still yearn for that glint of pride in his eye.

As I stand before him, robed in the black and white of the legal profession, the ancient commandment echoes through every fibre of my being: Honour your father and your mother.

This one is for Ogbueshi Ben Chidoka, whose dreams today come true and whose hopes will see me to the next pinnacle.

Mission accomplished.

–Chidoka now a brand new lawyer served as Minister of Aviation in Jonathan administration