For Whom the Bell Tolls!

As I waited to join Mr. Peter Obi to attend the burial of the late Arise News journalist, Somtochukwu Christelle Maduagwu, who died recently in Abuja, my thoughts drifted to death – that ancient mystery which humbles both kings and commoners. In that stillness of waiting, I remembered the immortal words of John Donne.

In Donne’s England, church bells were rung to announce a death or a funeral. Reflecting on this solemn ritual, he wrote that when we hear the bell toll, we should not ask for whom it rings -for, symbolically, it tolls for us all. Every death, he observed, diminishes humanity, for we are bound together by invisible threads of being. His meditation remains one of the most profound ever written on human solidarity, mortality, and empathy.

I was almost “Donne-Johnic” in spirit as I pondered the passing of Somtochukwu – a young woman radiant with promise, whose voice once brightened our screens, now stilled by the final silence. Her death reminded me, painfully, that life, however luminous, is fragile; and that each sunrise carries, within its splendour, the shadow of twilight.

That reflection took me back to my days at Lagos State University (LASU) in the nineties – a time when death, too, hovered around us. The University was in turmoil. We had a running battle with cultists, to the extent that the Students’ Union, led by my classmate Owolabi, declared open war against them. Each day came with fresh stories of shootings and blood.

The atmosphere was so charged that Barrister Felix Ashimhole, who love observing the furore caused by his rampage, once detonated a “knockout” inside Okonuga Hall – in perfect agreement with the mood of the times. You needed to witness the eruption that followed!

Owolabi became so deeply involved in the anti-cult struggle that he was marked for death. Things grew tense; in class, no one wanted to sit near him for fear of stray bullets. Around that period, a cultist was killed on campus by the newly formed OPC. LASU became a hotbed of cultism and retaliation.

While I tried to remain neutral, Felix – ever the radical idealist – rallied a few others to protest the killing. To him, apprehending cultists was acceptable, but extrajudicial murder was not.

As one of his admirers, I called him aside and advised that, since we had come all the way from the East to study, we should not allow cultism to derail us. But Felix argued, with characteristic passion, that every human life was sacred, and that no group had the moral right to take the law into its own hands. I disagreed then — but time proved him right.

Moved by that experience, I turned to the only weapon I possessed – my pen. I began to write articles condemning cultism and pleading for sanity on campus. One of those early essays, “Musa’s Failure,” I hope to republish soon.

Years later, long after graduation, I discovered that the cultist who was killed in front of the Arts Block – the very one Felix had defended – was actually from my hometown. In that moment, Donne’s words came alive again: “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

The foregoing reflection aligns perfectly with Mr. Peter Obi’s disposition. His tweet on Somtochukwu’s death was not mere condolence; it was poetry – every line a dirge. He wrote with the tenderness of a father mourning a daughter. When I eventually told him that Somto was from Agulu, his countenance changed; his grief deepened, as though the bell had tolled in his very courtyard.

Her death was truly unfortunate – a poignant reminder of life’s frailty and the unfathomable mystery of divine providence. Yet, while we mourn her, we cannot equate her passing with the self-inflicted tragedies of those who walk the dark path of cultism. The deaths of cultists, though pitiful, serve as moral admonitions rather than communal losses; for they spring from a wilful descent into violence and self-destruction.

What does it profit a student to gain admission into a university, that sanctuary of enlightenment, only to join a secret cult and ruin his destiny?

During my years at LASU, I never had any direct contact with cultists. My good friend, Barrister Robinson Alaekwe, was the one who would whisper, whenever we passed certain groups smoking or loitering, “Val, that one belongs to this or that cult.” If not that I knew Robinson well, I might have sworn he was one of them. Robinson had wings for many flights, but when it came to the flight of cultism, his wings were weak, immovable – that was Robinson for you.

I remember my last public article as a student, titled “A Parting Look.” It was a frank review of our classmates – factual, but raw. Some of those I criticised conspired to punish me. Robinson, a member of the Campus Naval Cadet, quietly informed me that a few planned to beat and strip me naked after our final paper.

The warning signs were already there: one of them, now a judge in Lagos, flung a sachet of water at me as we waited for exam time; another lady hurled pebbles. Robinson cautioned me not to react, explaining that they wished to provoke a fight before executing their plan.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Write your paper in one hour instead of two,” he advised.

I did exactly that – submitted early and vanished before anyone else. Later, Robinson confirmed that they had indeed been looking for me.

When we returned to campus for our Law School forms, the tension had subsided. Robinson then narrated the full story. We even met some of the conspirators, sitting together and smoking; they laughed, confessed their plans, and we all ended up sharing drinks and cigars. Such is the irony of youth – fierce in passion, yet fleeting in wisdom.

Looking back, those days at LASU taught me that life is sacred, no matter the circumstance. Whether in Donne’s England or in our contemporary Nigeria, every death – of a journalist, a student, or a stranger – diminishes us all. The bell never tolls for one person alone; it tolls for every soul bound by our shared humanity.

I have to stop as we enter the church for Somto’s funeral mass at Agulu. And come to think of it. Obi just returned from the UK this morning!