By Nseabasi S. J. King
Growing up as a child, it was advisable that you become mindful of what you shared with me, because I was bound to return to my father to ask if what you said was true. I believed he knew everything. He was my Encyclopaedia Britannica, because he always had an answer for every question that I ever asked.
On this particular day, I had returned home from school to inform my dad that our class teacher had been moved to another class, and that she told me she would miss me when I followed her to the door. “Daddy, is it true that she would miss me?” I enquired of my oracle.
“Yes, she will if she said so,” he answered with a smirk on his face. I smiled and tried to keep calm. I stood there for a while saying nothing, and he was still looking in my direction, maybe he was expecting a follow-up question. But it didn’t come. Instead, I started walking away towards the door like the seconds hand of the clock, before I remembered something and turned back, “Daddy, does that mean I will miss her, too?”
Instantly, there was an uproar in the room and the adjoining study, everyone including the housekeeper who was clearing his table broke out laughing. She almost dropped the glasses. Clearly, and without being told, everybody believed that question was for me to answer. But I still think they should have allowed him to attempt the question. To this day, I am of the conviction that my dad knew the right answer, after all, it is written, “…I know my sheep and my sheep know me.”
Elsewhere, somewhere around the Mainland in Lagos, another family had a father who remembered everything. I mean everything. He could recall the exact date and time that Princess Alexandra of Kent departed Nigeria after her official visit in 1960 where she presented the Freedom Charter to Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa. And would not miss a detail.
Should you need to be reminded, he can oblige you how you met your husband, unless you never told him. He never forgot a thing.
Friends, family, every kith and kin, always returned to him for reference whenever they were unsure of old events and dates. And he never disappointed. He recounted the past with such clarity and validation that awakened your memory. “He was a custodian of history in our family,” Mrs. Sylvia Edem Eyo, a respectable family member affirmed.
Lawrence Okokon Ekanem had a great memory and a mind that could process a lot at a time. “Don’t make the mistake of not giving him his correct change after he sent you on an errand,” his son, Odiong Ekanem, said of his father while walking down memory lane with nostalgia.
According to Elder Caroline Genius Abansinsi, he had always been good with numbers right from his school days and handled difficult calculations with ease, so well that his classmates teased him with the name, Chike Obi, in reference to the Nigerian mathematician and pioneer in nonlinear differential equations research.
“He is gone with so much wealth of knowledge,” his cousin, Engr. Bassey Ekanem, sums up the departure of the fine officer of the Nigerian Customs Service and Prince of the Royal Odiong Ancestry.
Instructively, the one who once remembered everything, today, can only be remembered. Only Remembered.
He loved music. He was very protective. His friends called him Bob Law. He always said let’s carry everybody along. I have read many exciting fun facts in the outpouring of love, affection, and fond memories as many who knew him walk down memory lane.
But it was when Mrs. Gloria Ntienyong-Akpan broke down in tears in the middle of an interview to document the life and times of the departed octogenarian that I made up my mind to write about this natural leader.
“In Lagos, everyone thought I was his little sister. We were cousins. Brother was very accommodating and every member of the larger Odiong family always found his way back to his house,” she recounted while fighting back tears.
Vintage me, I wouldn’t let this testimonial go unnoticed, because I know leaders whose rise in life or successes does not rub off directly on the larger family. Some have served bread but would only butter their children’s side of the bread. In other instances, visitors were served chilled table water while visiting relatives got sachet water at the porch. This is some people’s sad reality.
I’ve met family members who felt like strangers in the homes of the leading lights of their family. So when the sister, Mabel Ekanem, said, “He never segregated,” corroborating the earlier account of the cousin when I spoke with her in a separate interaction, I knew the Odiongs were lucky.
Dr. Stella Inyang, another proud cousin wrote, “He mingled and lived among us with a quiet dignity.” She said dignity. And that is what this is all about. The celebration of a life well lived.
For those of us who approach life as a competition, hear this, “If being the best brother were a competition, he would win every time,” Deaconess Uduak Etim assessing her departed relative. But it is not. And this may be why Deacon Lawrence Okokon Ekanem held back nothing from his own and everyone who came around him. I once said to our guests at my wife’s 40th birthday, “The only thing that I have not given to you tonight, is what I do not have.”
Life is no competition. So live and let’s live. It is never about who is the greatest among us. The Lord Jesus said this much. At the end of it all, our exploits in school, my dedication at work, your time in public office, and what have you, suddenly fade away and coalesce as a mere memory, only worth remembering if dignity and honour ever formed part of your walk here on earth.
As the Odiongs bid a glorious farewell to their patriarch and the one who remembered everything in a service to be conducted by the Four Square Gospel Church, Uyo District HQ, on Friday, January 16, 2026, the recurring question for me remains, “How will you be remembered?”
Merry Christmas!
