Death has been unfair to this 10th Senate,” Akpabio laments at Ezea tribute night
by: Oluwaseun M. Lawal
The hall at the National Ecumenical Centre in Abuja was quiet, almost heavy, on Tuesday night. No campaign noise. No politics-as-usual. Just candles, hymns, and the soft echo of footsteps as senators, family members and old friends filed in to say goodbye to Senator Okechukwu Ezea, the man who carried Enugu North’s mandate but did not live to finish even one full term.
When Senate President Godswill Akpabio rose to speak, he didn’t sound like the usual presiding officer with the gavel. He sounded tired. A bit wounded. “Death has been unkind to the 10th Senate,” he said, and you could tell it was not just a line for the microphone. In less than two years, three serving senators have gone – Ifeanyi Ubah from Anambra South, Godiya Akwashiki of Nasarawa, and now Okechukwu Ezea. Too many funerals. Too soon.
Akpabio spoke of how the chamber keeps losing “men of intellect, courage and vision,” almost back-to-back. Each obituary, he said, is a reminder that the red carpet and high office are temporary things. That power, title, convoy – all of it – can end in one phone call in the middle of the night. He remembered one late colleague who always came early, always asked questions, always pushed debates. The type who never just warmed the seat. “These are the images that refuse to disappear from our minds,” he said quietly.
He recalled that Ezea’s death came just hours to the New Year, like a door slamming shut when everybody was already looking ahead. A cruel timing, he called it. Still, he reminded the audience that, for people of faith, there is a season fixed for everything – a time to arrive on earth and a time to be called back home, no matter the office you are holding.
From there, his tone shifted from mourning to warning. What truly lasts, he told them, is not the position, the motorcade, or the number of motions moved. It is the kindness we show, the bridges we build, the lives we lift. Politics, he warned, must never strip us of our basic humanity. “We must look out for each other, raise our children with love, sow peace among our people and refuse to be broken into hostile camps,” he said, almost like he was talking to himself as much as to the crowd.
Others took the microphone too. The Interim National Chairman of the Labour Party, Senator Nenadi Usman, painted Ezea as a man of stubborn principle. When some colleagues elected on the Labour Party ticket quietly crossed over to other parties, chasing comfort or calculation, he refused to move. He stayed where voters had placed him. According to her, many only discovered after his death that his journey with Labour didn’t start with the 2023 “wave”. He had carried the party’s governorship flag in Enugu as far back as 2007, when it was not fashionable at all. That, she said, was the measure of his loyalty.
Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, also stood to speak. His words were brief, more for the children than for the cameras. He told them that their father left something many powerful men never manage to keep – a decent name. A record of service that, in time, will matter more than the number of years he sat in the Senate.
All around the hall sat faces from different political seasons: former Senate President Ken Nnamani, Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele, Senator Victor Umeh, former VON DG Osita Okechukwu, and many others who had crossed paths with Ezea in one way or another. For one night, party lines blurred a little. Rivalries felt small. What remained was a shared sense that the 10th Senate has been visited too often by the same dark guest, and that those who are left must serve faster, cleaner, and with more heart – because nobody really knows when the roll call will come to them.
