TD In 1998, Emeka Morocco Mmaduka — Ozo Nweluibe na Ukwulu — released a heartwarming album called Asili 98.
The song that defined that album was born of something deeply personal: a petty and malicious rumour, whispered across the distance, that Morocco had died in Maiduguri while on musical tour.
That lie moved faster than the truth.
Rattled and alarmed, his battalion of friends rallied without hesitation, calls were made, doors were knocked, names were invoked until the living man was located and the rumour was put to rest.
Asili 98 was Morocco’s answer to that moment. It was not merely a song.
It was a roll call of honour; a man using the only instrument he knew to thank, by name, every soul who rose to the occasion and proved the depth of what friendship truly means.
Prominent among those so honoured were Eddy na Nawgu — (Obiridike aka na ani) — and Ngozika Okpagu, Omeluora na Nise.
Others include; Charlie Ezeodugu, Akunnia mot ana Ogidi, Blessed Sunny with blessed money.
What made Asili 98 transcend the personal and become a national legacy was precisely what it said about the world in which it was born.
In a clime where envy and unhealthy competition too often define human relations, here was a man who chose to celebrate loyalty.
The music, Morocco’s natural voice, the warmth in every syllable — all of it combined to place Asili 98 in a class entirely of its own.
To hear Morocco hail Ngozika Okpagu — ‘Ife emena Ngozi nwa Okpagu, oyim Omeluora na Nize, onye ukwu… Ife emena Onwa na etiliora na Ogidi, oyim Sam Mendu, okeosisi’ — is to receive something that no ordinary words can manufacture.
It is an elixir. It is the sound of a man testifying that his life was made richer by the people in it.
Today, Asili 98 is no longer a rumour. It is a requiem.
Morocco himself departed this earth a few years ago, carrying his voice and his grace to wherever the great ones go.
Onwa Ogidi followed.
And now, Omeluora na Nise has risen from among us to join them — in that celestial gathering where all who have been ransomed from the trials of mortality find rest before their Maker, and where friendship, it seems, is never really interrupted.
The gap they leave is the precise shape of their lives — and such shapes are never easy to fill.
Before their departure – I met with Morocco – Ngozika Okpagu shared some moment with them.
Let us hold Omeluora na Nise and the family he has left behind in our warmest and most earnest prayers.
And may God, in His infinite mercy, raise greater men in our midst — men of the same loyalty, the same warmth, the same irreplaceable quality — to begin, in time, to answer what this generation has lost.
