TODAY IN HISTORY: The Life of Senator Brigidi as we marks 2-years of his demise. Samuel Enyan writes;
INSIGHTS
On that frosty, soft breezy morning of Sunday, 30th September 2018 at 4am, Doctors at the Guys Cancer Centre, London, pronounced the once burly West African Politician and former Nigerian lawmaker, Senator David Cobbinah Brigidi dead.
At just 56 years of age, he yielded to cancer of the liver which he battled from August 2018, when it was first diagnosed. Few days earlier prior to the first case recorded, one of the doctors who is a ranking oncologist had walked up to the hospital bed and pronounced, and whispered quietly ominously: Mr Brigidi, you are quite ill and I’m afraid I can’t stop the cancer or reverse it.”
Very sad, how helpless all felt, if one of the most brilliant medical scientist in the world, just reaffirmed our simple human limitations.Indeed it threw our memories back to the Roman Consul, Pontius Pilate, who simply washed his hands off the case of the Lord Jesus Christ which was before.
HIS PROFILE
His birth and nestling days were in the coconut land of Beyin, the traditional capital of Jomoro Traditional council in the Jomoro Municipality on the Atlantic Coast of Ghana’s Western Region.
As he profile grew, Senator Brigidi opened a new page in life by devoting time to consolidate the fraternal ties between Nigeria and Ghana. In particular, between the Ijaw people and the Nzema people, who in the first place provided healthy fishing grounds for many Nigerians to settle in Ghana in the 1930’s to 1950’s. The story goes that, it was during that period that the young, tall, handsome wrestling champion, Pata Saigha met the Nzema Princess, then Beatrice Ama Whyte.
Like the great Pan Africanist, Kwame Nkrumah, also a son of Nzema extraction. Kabenla as he called by his local people had Ghanaian mother ( Beatrice Whyte) and Nigerian father ( Pata Saigha Brigidi) all of blessed memories.
So for the people of Nzema ethnicity, an indigenous Akan sub-group stranding Ghana and Cote d’lviore southernmost boarder regions, the young David, offered great promise of renewed political relevance for this relatively minority group.
He was not able to top his class at every stage of primary and secondary education both at Beyin Catholic school, Nsien SHS and Huni Valley Secondary way back in 1960’s but always topped as leader of all good and common causes of his peers.
Rather than continue his upwards movement in the comfort of his maternal grandfathers influence as a revered Nzema traditional ruler, David took the decision to relocate and reconnect with his father, Chief Saigha Brigidi, who had returned to Nigeria much earlier.
This came just after he disenrolled from Sixth Form at the prestigious Presbyterian Boys School in the city of Legon.
HIS POLITICAL LIFE
David Brigidi rejected and moved to Nigerian to spend his adolescent years in the swampy village of Kaiyanbiri. He spoke Ijaw at the time, but soon became youth leader in the immediate communities of Bomo clan.
He began to show brilliance and an unquenchable penchant for excellence and upward movement. Before long, he gained admission to study Law at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology in Port- Harcourt, the garden city of Nigeria. He quickly became an authentic “Port-Harcourt” boy emerging as a leader of several youth fraternities. With his completion of legal studies and called to the Nigeria Bar, he plunged into a proper presence in River state and Bayelsa politics.
Senator Brigidi was then represented Balyelsa Central at the Senate House in Abuja at the youthful age of thirty- eight ruling from 1998 to 2008. He chaired some many committees especially Petroleum, mineral and Independent Electoral Commission under the tutelage of Ex President Olusegu Obamsanjo administration.
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WHAT KILLED HIM
The world cancer comes from the Greek “karkinos” to describe the Tumors which it creates. This was by the physician Hippocrates, who is regarded as the father of the medical sciences. As a matter of fact, that word translates as, crab of creeping ulcer, just like the limbs of a crab.
It is against this backdrop that, Senator David also succumbed to the dreaded disease rather prematurely and died on Sunday 30th September 2018 in London. He had previously battled the disease in Ghana and flown to London in August 2018 before his untimely death.
BURIAL SERVICE
His final interment held on Friday, 14th December 2018 in peaceful Kaiyanbiri village, in southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Balyelsa State.
Accessible only by water, this community is deep in the heart of the Ijaw nation and the Niger Delta.
He was given a state burial by the Balyelsa state governor.
HIS FOOTBALL LIFE
Today, his legacy is not just in the eight vibrant children he bore with his Ghana- Nigerian wives, but also in the Karela group of companies in Ghana that stand to testimony to his earthly endeavors.
An example of his Ghana footprints is the famous Karela United Football Club, in Nzema-Aiyinase, which he bought over in 2014 from Sekondi Metropolis Assembly as Metro SC.
It has since moved to the Ghana Premier League. On 11th April and 2nd May 2018, Karela defeated two glamorous and famous Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko which in the past terrorized other African sides and in 2000 won the Africa Club of the Century.
The word Karela itself is the name of his first daughter and mean in Ijaw language as “God has answered our prayers”.
“May your soul Rest In Peace, Sir.
Still in our Hearts, Senator David Cobbinah Brigidi.
Story: Samuel Enyan