Seasoned lawyer, politician and administrator, Senator Emma Nwaka, has opened up on how late former Military Administrator of Lagos and Imo states, Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu (Rtd) saved his job at the defunct African Continental Bank (ACB). He also spoke of the bond they shared together as kinsmen – both men being from the same community: Isuikwuato in Abia State.

“There’s this bond I share with our brother, R. Adm NG Kanu, may God rest his soul,” Nwaka wrote on an Isuikwuato WhatsApp forum hours after Kanu’s death at 78, yesterday morning, Wednesday, January 13, 2021.

Revealing how the late famed military officer and activist save his job years ago, Nwaka wrote: “When as a young man I was appointed to the Board of African Continental Bank, some big shots resisted it simply because they felt I was too young. I decided to take my case to him. While I was in his office, he made a few calls and handed a recommendation letter to me which he did not seal, the idea being for me to know that he wasn’t saying one thing and doing something else. To be sure, his intervention went a long way in resolving the matter in my favour. He was such an open person, no airs, no petty social lines, ever supportive of any good cause. I still recall my last discussion with him which centred on how to assist another Isuikwuato son to attain his legitimate aspiration.

“Indeed, we’ve lost a good man. So painful, to say the least.

“Ogbuhere uzo Isuikwuato, that’s what I call His Excellency, R. Adm NG Kanu. It’s painful to hear that he’s no more. We’ve lost a Colossus, a down to earth man. What a tragedy.”

News Express reports that late Ndubuisi Kanu, who died in a Lagos hospital after a brief sickness, is being mourned throughout Nigeria and beyond, with President Muhammdu Buhari leading the rain of tributes.

Kanu, who celebrated his 78th birthday last November, was Military Governor of old Imo State in 1975 and of Lagos State in 1976.

He broke the glass ceiling as the only Igbo appointed into the then ruling Supreme Military Council before General Olusegun Obasanjo dissolved it when he assumed office as Head of State in 1976.

A Biafra war veteran, Kanu was reabsorbed into the Nigerian military at the end of the war in 1970. He built a new reputation as a dogged human rights and pro-democracy activist upon his retirement from the military. A staunch member of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) which spearheaded the struggle for the actualisation of the late Moshood Abiola’s annulled June 12, 1993 presidential mandate, Kanu was among those who signed an ultimatum for the General Sani Abacha regime to revalidate Abiola’s mandate and hand over power to him.

He was the chairman of NADECO’s Action Committee, which organised and participated in protest marches and public sensitisation activities.