I have always heard people say that "the good die young", but never really bothered to give it a thought. Maybe being a young person, I feel that one should not be slowed down by the fear of death. However, the death of two very close young people is beginning to make me think, that maybe after all the good die young.

  The first was my immediate younger brother Obinna who was full of life and laughter. Unfortunately, he was gruesomely murdered in a ghastly accident and the cause is traceable to government contractors and public officers that left Enugu-Portharcourt expressway a death trap after making away with several billions of supposedly public funds. Then last week, Ogbonna Ike, my friend of almost two decades who slept and did not wake to see the next day while in service of the Government of Enugu state as Honourable Commissioner for Lands.

  My brother's death I have learnt to live with though our family friends and neighbours still mourn him. He was the cheerful face of the house for them while all the others (including me) are branded too serious looking and unwelcoming. But the loss of "Buwee" as we fondly called Ogbonna Ike will be surely difficult for me to cope with. While I grieve for my friend whose dreams and plans were abruptly truncated, my biggest burden has been how to console Uloma, his wife and soul mate.

  I became friends with Ogbonna not by chance but for the common background we shared. His father Late Ignatius Ogbodo Ike was a Chartered Accountant and served in the old Anambra state where he retired as Permanent Secretary and my father also a Chartered accountant worked under Late Ike at the Ministry of Finance where he later retired as Accountant General. We were both children of civil servant chartered accountants that served government with all their energies but only have their impeccable record (and of course us) to show for it. By the accident of birth we were both expected to be accounting whiz kids since it was already in the gene. But more than what people expected, we often imagined with mischief, that our lives could have had more luxury if our fathers worked in private practice or the corporate world given the hot demand for chartered accountants in the late sixties and early seventies.

  We became friends by this common faith and had tremendous respect for each other not minding our individual idiosyncrasies. Some of the things we shared are not for the pages of the newspaper but I remember that at a time some of our classmates started feeling like stars because we were young and a bit nonchalant about grades and we both plotted and dislodged them from the top tier of the class. We studied together and shared our challenges; the result was obvious in our last two years at University of Nigeria. They were his best academically and mine too.

  After school he went to serve in Jigawa while a couple of us came to Lagos and joined the corporate world. Being bright and determined, he arrived Lagos after youth service and soon got a place at Price Waterhouse, the top accounting firm that also offered me the first full time employment after youth service. The urge to quickly do my qualifying examination and proceed to graduate school made me to stay back at Fidelity where I did my youth service.  Unlike me, Ogbonna was a patient person and willing to abide by the reputable firm's rule of allowing only one professional examination yearly for Trainee Accountants. His patience was rewarded with adequate preparation and an ICAN prize in the PE 1 examination.

  We were then in our early twenties and trying to chart a professional career in Babangida's and later Abacha's Nigeria. Though we desired to be in top graduate business schools abroad, the commonwealth ban on Nigeria and our civil service background put paid to such expensive projects. We exchanged frequent weekend visits and kept in close contact. I was either at his Majaro Street, Yaba abode or he came over to my place at Ikeja.

  He was a very serious person and a practicing catholic, a faith we both profess. So it was not surprising to me when he came over to lunch at our office one afternoon and informed me that he was joining the Opus Dei. I was worried and afraid of losing a friend who may perceive me as less righteous for association, but Ogbonna was not the type. He ensured that I was invited to all open functions of the order, from the Pat Utomi lectures at the Centre in Yaba to the annual commemoration mass in honour of the founder Jose Maria Escrivia. I owe him the gratitude of taking me to my first Christian retreat at Iroto, Ogun State, which I found spiritually rewarding. He worked tirelessly to remind his friends about God and the good work. He never left us to the usual sin of the young and upwardly mobile. Between about five of us there was a special kind of friendship, which for some had it roots from primary school days and continued through our professional lives.

  Ogbonna was the peacemaker at turbulent times in our friendship. I recall a particular case when one of us made a personal decision that brought emotional pain to another person in our group and we took sides but Ogbonna continued to calm all the parties. He came across quite frankly with his friends in a joking manner, meant to soothe the hard truth that always came from him. He could be quite critical but his good intentions were never in doubt.

  Ogbonna believed in the good work i.e. service to humanity through doing your work well. Buwee was very strong willed and anyone that has been around him would attest to that. He was a knowledge man and loved books. Most times he read my books even before I had the time to look at them. We shared common interest in African renaissance and development. His insatiable appetite for knowledge was such that despite his hectic schedule he was working on his Doctorate thesis at a university in South Africa.