20 Years Without Chima Ubani
By Abdul Mahmud
Twenty years ago, the radical world I knew shifted. Death came suddenly. It came too close. It took away a friend, a brother, and a comrade, Chima Ubani. The news was like a stone thrown into still water. It rippled through our circles of comrades and activists. It rippled through Lagos, Abuja, Jos, Benin-City, Owerri, Enugu, and even Lanzhou, where I was attending an international conference at the time. The news travelled across continents, carrying with it the same weight of disbelief. Yet the ripples did not make sense to me. They felt as strange and ungraspable as the ripples of the Yangtze River that cut through the heart of that Chinese city, restless, ceaseless, but offering no answers. I watched the river move, wide and indifferent, and wondered how life could flow on so easily when a life so full of meaning had just been stilled. It rippled through the human rights community, through families, through history. I placed frantic calls to Lagos and Abuja, clinging to the hope that it was all a mistake, until Abdul Oroh’s confirmation struck with the force of a thunderbolt. Yet, for me, it did something else. It pierced. It entered. It refused to leave.
Chima was not just another name in the long roll of our fallen activists. To me, he was the measure of what it meant to live for a cause larger than oneself. He embodied the courage I aspired to, the clarity of thought I envied, and the quiet humility and simplicity I longed to cultivate. In him, I saw not only a comrade but also a mirror reflecting the kind of activist I wanted to become. His life was a lesson in discipline, in sacrifice, in the rare art of holding convictions without losing tenderness. To walk in his footsteps was to learn that activism was not performance; but patient fidelity to truth, and that the true work of a comrade was not in loud declarations but in the daily, often unseen, labour of standing with the oppressed. We lived side by side, along with Omolade Adunbi, and the late Bamidele Aturu. We argued, laughed, and dreamed under the same leaking roofs of Lagos hideouts when the dark forces of the state were out with their hammer and hemlock. We worked shoulder to shoulder at the Civil Liberties Organisation, CLO. We drank late into the night after meetings that stretched till dawn.
I knew his family in Lagos as intimately as I knew his larger family in Obete-Umuoha in Obingwa local government area of Abia State, and in turn, his family knew me as one of their own. Chima was not just an activist; he was a soul aflame with conviction, a man whose laughter could dissolve tension even in the gravest of times, and whose courage reminded us that fear was only natural, but surrender was unforgivable. All these were attributes he inherited from his late father, a man of quiet strength who once stood his ground against the traditional ruler of their community when communal lands were seized and appropriated. Even after I secured his release in 1995, following trumped-up charges instigated by that same ruler, he treated the ordeal with remarkable calm, laughing it off in the very manner Chima himself would often dismiss adversity with grace, humour, and an unshaken spirit. He knew my extended family well, and when he and his wife, Ochuwa, came to my wedding in Auchi in late 2001, they were received with the warmth and embrace reserved only for one of our own. And so, when death came for him, it was not abstract. It was not distant. It was not history happening to someone else. It was personal. It was a wound that cut deep. Chima was one of the most committed fighters of my generation. That is not a cliché. It is the plain truth. He had fire in his bones. Yet, he was not consumed by bitterness. He carried conviction without arrogance. He lived with courage, but also with kindness.
We often imagine activists as men of stone. Chima was not stone. He was flesh, blood, laughter, and warmth. He could joke in the middle of danger. He could disarm a tense room with his smile. He carried burdens but refused to pass them on to others. That was his gift. That was his humanity. Two decades later, I still remember the sound of his voice. Calm. Steady. Unhurried. I still remember his way of speaking. He was never dramatic, never loud. Whenever he disagreed with my point of view, he would throw back his head and exclaim, “Mahmudism!”, not in anger; but with a gentle teasing that softened the edge of debate and left us both laughing. He spoke as one who knew that truth did not need embellishment. It only needed to be spoken.
We lived in dangerous times. The late 1980s and 1990s were not gentle to dissenters. The state was suspicious of anyone who dared to raise their head above the parapet. Arrests, detentions, and constant surveillance were normal. We knew fear. But Chima taught us that fear was natural, while surrender was unforgivable. He believed that justice was not a theory. It was not an argument. It was life itself. It was about how people lived, what they ate, what they could say, and whether they could breathe free. He lived and died believing that justice was worth the risk. I think often about how easily it could have been me. Death in those years was never far away. Many of us carried our bags ready for arrest. Many of us slept in different beds each week. Many of us whispered in underground hideouts, waiting for dawn. And yet, when death finally struck, it took Chima.
That is why his loss came too close. It was like watching a mirror crack. It showed me what could have been. It showed me how fragile we were. Loss has many faces. For the public, Chima’s death was the loss of a fearless activist. For me, it was the loss of a brother who once shared my bread. For his family, it was the loss of a son, a husband, a father. Each loss layered on the other. Each pain was its own. Twenty years have gone by. But time does not erase memory. Time only dulls the sting. Memory remains. Memory resists erasure. Memory insists on remembering.
I remember how he carried himself: modest, unassuming, yet firm. He had no taste for theatrics. He did not chase headlines. He did not chase power. He believed that activism was not performance. It was duty. It was life. I sometimes ask myself: what would Chima have said today, looking at the country we now live in? I think he would have been disappointed, but not defeated. He would have seen the corruption, the poverty, the violence. He would have seen the way the state still treats its citizens as expendable. And he would still have believed that change is possible. Chima lived by example. He reminded us that it was not enough to talk about justice. One had to live it. He lived simply. He did not hoard. He did not posture. He stood with the poor, the voiceless, the invisible. He gave them his time, his voice, his life. He died in the very heart of resistance, of standing against President Obasanjo’s anti-poor policy of fuel subsidy removal; a policy that deepened the suffering of the people he had always fought to defend.
I cannot help but think of his family. His wife. His children. They bore the greatest cost of all. For them, the activist was also husband and father. For them, memory is not only political. It is intimate. It is the memory of an empty chair, of birthdays uncelebrated, of milestones missed. We who call him comrade must never forget that their grief was the heaviest. When I think of Chima, I do not only think of struggle. I think of small things. I think of him pouring larger into a glass cup. I think of him folding papers with neat care. I think of his habit of writing late into the night, pen scratching across the page while Lagos slept. These are the images that linger. These are the things that remind me that loss is not abstract.
We often tell ourselves that time heals. But time does not heal. It only teaches us how to carry pain differently. Some days the weight is light. Some days it is heavy. But it never goes away. Twenty years is a long time. Yet, it feels like yesterday. The phone call. The shock. The silence that followed. The feeling of something tearing inside. These things are not forgotten. They live in the marrow of memory. I write this not only to mourn Chima. I write this to remind us that the lives of men like him are testimonies. They are not just stories of the past. They are the guiderails for the present. They tell us what courage looks like. They tell us what it means to hold fast when the ground beneath us shakes. In remembering him, I also confront myself. What have I done with the years that have passed? How faithful have I been to the values we once held together? These are questions that memory demands. They are uncomfortable questions. But they are necessary.
I remember him saying during a cell meeting I hosted at my home, with that calm conviction that was his trademark: “The struggle is not about us. It is about those who come after us”. He was right. Today, twenty years after his passing, we owe it to him to continue. We owe it to him to live lives that bear witness. We owe it to him to refuse despair. Sleep on, Chima. You are not forgotten. You remain in the stories we tell. You remain in the lives you touched. You remain in the quiet moments when memory returns like a shadow at dusk. Though twenty years is a long time; but, memory keeps you near. Though death claimed you, you live still – in us, with us, among us, in peace and in power.
Sleep on, dear native of my person.
Abdul Mahmud, President of Public Interest Lawyers League (PILL), writes from Abuja.
