It is almost impossible to write about Professor Dora Nkem Akunyili in the past tense.
She’s arguably the most celebrated Nigerian public servant of the modern times. Plaques in her honour ardon walls from Abuja to Lagos and Agulu, her hometown in Anambra State.
In short, Dora Akunyili can never truly die.
Some prosaic characters would have expected me to be writing on “Tears for” instead of “Tears of” Don’t cry for our Dora. She still lives!
The Dora I have chosen to pay homage to can be seen in the beautiful shape and size of the infectiously bubbly darling who sent me a copy of her book, The War Against Counterfeit Medicine: My Story, alongside a birthday greeting card – and some cash – with which to celebrate my birthday.
I have to admit before I make further progress that but for the ever rendering benevolence of Dora and like-minds a man like me who practices “voluntary poverty” would have been lost in Lagos long since.
It’s all so soul-lifting that I have just recovered Dora’s dispatch in a corner of the drawer whilst I was searching for another object entirely.
Now here’s what Dora wrote to me: “Dear Uzor, I would have bought you a gift but, then, I don’t know what you may like. I have, therefore, decided to send you a token so that you may buy whatever it can afford.”
Trust me, I promptly told everybody in my then Ikeja GRA office that I would use Dora’s money to buy and drink “alcohol that has no NAFDAC number!”
Of course everybody knows that obeying rules does not agree with my constitution.
It’s so much in Dora’s caring nature to always take account of the under-privileged, as exemplified by one story I heard from the mouth of Dora herself.
There is an uncelebrated character simply named Godwin lurking in the shadows whose fate can only etch Dora’s magnanimity and success in bold relief.
In most citations on Dora it is always written that she was a precocious child who always took the first position in her classes.
The truth of the matter is that while in primary school at St. Patrick’s Isuofia, Aguata LGA, Anambra State – that’s my mother’s hometown, by the way – Dora had it tough keeping pace with a very brilliant contender.
In a remarkable display of candour, Dora reveals that there was a certain Godwin who used to snatch the first position from her back then. Godwin was such a genius that he did not need to work as hard as Dora to supply answers for very difficult questions.
As things stood, Dora needed to work twice as hard as Godwin to keep pace with the wunderkind.
After elementary school, Dora and Godwin went their different ways.
Dora excelled in secondary school and was admitted into the prestigious Pharmacy department of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
She continued with her brilliant ways, and then in her third year, she had to come face-to-face with the reality of the dichotomy of fate.
Dora was about to board a vehicle in Onitsha for her journey back to the University when a certain scruffy fellow ran up to her and was screaming: “Dora b’anyi!” which translates to “Our own Dora” or “Dora of our home.”
It was Godwin. He was now a motor-park tout!
After the exchange of pleasantries, as it were, Dora told Godwin she was going back to the University to complete her studies in Pharmacy.
Godwin stressed that Dora had no business studying Pharmacy; that she ought to be studying Medicine because of her brilliance.
Poor Godwin owned up to the fact that his parents had no money and could not send him to secondary school. He had to make do with a variety of menial jobs until finally settling for motor-park touting.
Godwin bought two loaves of bread which he gave to Dora, and bid her farewell as the vehicle revved up for the journey to Nsukka.
Dora broke down in tears and wept for Godwin all the way from the Upper Iweka Park in Onitsha to Nsukka.
All her co-passengers could not understand why such a healthy and good-looking young lady gave vent to tears. Even worse, they could not get her to stop crying or to divulge her reason for weeping so openly.
The passengers had to conclude amongst themselves that she must be suffering from unwanted pregnancy!
“E be like say dem don give am belle!” said one passenger.
“One man fit don break her heart,” joined the other passenger.
“These campus girls too dey waka-waka sef,” said yet another passenger.
Dora offered no reply, only more tears.
Dora’s tears over what Godwin could have become if his circumstances were a bit more favourable could not have been better juxtaposed than with the high achievements of the Amazon of NAFDAC.