Fowler :Ameyo Adadevoh : A national heroine Irene Fowler AMEYO, you were always special. I cast my mind back to our primary school days and “Augusto close, Surulere”, where we were next door neighbours. Indeed, that was a charmed time of innocence and insouciance. A time of endless laughter and seemingly endless carefree days, bathed in pure joy and sunshine. Your infectious laughter was matched by the ever present sparkle in your eyes, which were pools of warmth and love and yes – mischief. There were no scary or perilous threats to mar our idyllic afternoons or to serve as unwelcome sentinels of paradise lost. Those days were “paradise gained” and you could have been the poster child of the “happy, laughing child.” Little did I know the role “Augusto close” would play in shaping and defining your life and death. For it was home to stalwarts of the medical profession working at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. Members of that tight knit community included your father, Prof. Adadevoh, my father, Prof. Fowler, Prof. Dada, Prof. Nana Foulkes-Crabbe, Prof. Johnson and Prof. Akinosi amongst others. Ours was a special community that typified core sterling values of trust, selflessness, sincerity, unfeigned charity and self-sacrifice. Even though I was not to know the impact your childhood environment would have on you at this time, I was not surprised in later years to learn that you chose to pursue a career in the medical profession, as it would have been the only métier for you to truly express your love of life, by saving lives and improving the quality of life for many. You touched so many lives and in doing so you left an indelible mark on society at large and on our national psyche. It is no conundrum that you risked your life to help preserve the life of Mr. Patrick Sawyer, as you could never deny your true nature as a caring, nurturing, passionate and compassionate soul. Everyone will agree with me that Nigeria is facing turmoil on every conceivable level and is a nation in crisis. The most unfortunate aspect of this sad state of affairs is that there is a lamentable dearth of role models for us to look up to. A genuine role model should have universal appeal and cut across boundaries such as, ethnicity, religion, age and socio-economic factors. Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh is a genuine role model, who paid the ultimate price in self-sacrifice by giving her life in service to humanity. As a nation, we failed her in her most pressing hour of need. Her life and death must not be in vain! It is now time for us to collectively rise up and recognise her invaluable and incalculable contributions to health care services in Nigeria. She is a national heroine and deserves to be posthumously awarded every national honour and accolade that exists. Anything short of that will cement the notion that Nigeria is a nation without a soul. A soul less nation has lost its raison d’etre. Give us who knew, loved and genuinely mourn her untimely death, a reason to say we are proud to be Nigerians. In doing so, we are throwing a life line to countless numbers of Nigerians who have given up on the future of this country. Not to mention our youth, to whom we will all be accountable when the chips are down. Inaction will be callous and will only serve to compound the tragedy. Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh must be nationally memorialized in a visible and tangible manner. A national monument of a statue in her likeness should be erected as a perpetual reminder to all Nigerians that we are “all called to serve and protect”. Perhaps, this will be the wakeup call on the conscious and subliminal level that we have all been waiting for! Her sacrificial exploits must also be an integral part of civics for primary and secondary school text books in this country, to help reclaim our present youth and future generations from the brink of the abyss we find ourselves in. As Nigerians, we often find ourselves on the receiving end of international scorn and derision. This could change if we start to place a premium on human life and establish our position in the community of nations as a self-respecting entity. We all mourned the loss of Mr. Nelson Mandela, a global icon and we all lauded the ground breaking and earth shattering accomplishments of President Barack Obama. Yet, we seem to have an uphill battle to encourage and recognise “greatness within” forgetting that heroes are not born, they are made! Nigeria needs to “man up”. In the words of the greatest man to have ever lived, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” - 1 Corinthians 13:11 RIP Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh • Ms. Irene Fowler LL.B B.L LL.M (Harvard)
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 05:28:31 +0000
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