This weekend,  her remains will be laid to rest at their Agulu, Anambra State, res­idence. A brief text mes­sage sent by her husband, Dr. Chike Akunyili, to relations, fam­ily, friends and associates provid­ed a glimpse of the programme of the funeral activities, begin­ning at the Abuja International Conference Centre on August 25, 2014, and climaxing with a burial mass at the Holy Ghost Catholic Cathedral, Agulu, on August 28, 2014.
I read Dr. Akunyili’s text message a couple of times and tears welled up in my eyes. So, she is truly dead, I mut­tered under my breath? The finality of death drew closer to me, perhaps, more than when the news first broke, that she had died. Now, her final journey to her maker is here. The journey of no return. The journey every being must embark on, at one point or another.
I then began to reflect on Prof. Dora Nkem Akunyili’s life and time. I be­came in a way comforted: Even though her obsequies would begin this week, climaxing in her remains being in­terred, Prof. Dora was not truly dead. Great humans like her, who impacted so much on humanity, who lived her life in the service of community and hu­manity never truly die, even when they transit this physical space. They live in the hearts of their countrymen and women, perhaps, forever. Their names bring fond memories of uncommon life of courage, commitment, dedication, passion and exemplary devotion to the tasks they were saddled. The late Dora Akunyili was one such person.
I knew her. I met her several times at her Zone 7, Abuja office of the Na­tional Agency for Food and Drugs Ad­ministration, NAFDAC, where we had long informal sessions on the state of the nation, governance and Nigerians in general.
First, she loved her country: Warts and all. This reflected in her passion to deliver the best in her line of duty. In that regard, she became a ‘terror’ to criminals and daredevil Nigerians, who believed that the only way they could make money was to kill their fellow citizens, through the sale of adulterated and fake drugs. It didn’t matter if many of them in that line of dirty business were allegedly people of her ethnic stock or from any other part of the coun­try. To her, the people involved were simply bloody criminals with hearts of evil, who had to be flushed out from the society. Either they stopped their nefari­ous activities or they would meet her on the streets, with her angry law enforce­ment officers attached to NAFDAC, dealing them deadly blows.  Many ended up in the law courts to answer for their perfidy while others had their drugs of death confiscated and destroyed.
In a country where government of­ficials oftentimes see their privileged positions as avenues to ‘chop our own’, the amazon at NAFDAC saw her job as a call to duty, to serve her country with all her heart and might. On national televi­sion, radio and the newspapers, Dora’s eyeballs bulged, her voice rang out and her hands gesticulated, as she spoke ve­hemently against the criminal nature of fake drugs and the mass murder their ac­tivities had the potential of unleashing if left unchecked.
Of course, she had scars to show for her battles: Not only was she verbally and physically assaulted, she was shot at by the desperate merchants of death, es­caping by the whiskers. A dogged fighter for justice, she had the intended killers docked and followed the matter to the last, before her last breath.
Another point to note: She believed in the inherent goodness of the average Ni­gerian. Yes, we have bad eggs here and there, and rotten government officials, who think nothing of privatising the public till. We have citizens in agencies and departments of state and public ser­vice, who wear the shameless garment of corruption, as they drive on the fast lane of life. But to the late Prof. Akuny­ili, that didn’t qualify anybody or nation, to generalise,  by dubbing all Nigerians ‘corrupt or criminal!’ So, she came up with the ingenious branding concept of “Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation.” It was a vision statement. A powerful statement meant to rebrand our country and people. Even when some of us dis­agreed with her on the concept of calling our ravaged country ‘great nation,’ none could argue with the visionary lady, that we are inherently good people, too good almost to the point of docility. She drove the rebranding project with the typical Dora passion and tenacity. She was pur­poseful at the Ministry of Information as she was at NAFDAC. For the late Prof .Akunyili, service was her passion; love for her nation, almost an obsession. That could have been her motivation to be at the just-concluded National Conference, despite her apparently ill-health. She died in the service of her nation.
And Nigerians can never really, truly, forget that: Dora Akunyili was here! That was the reason I started by saying Dora Akunyili was not dead, in spite of the fact that her remains would be in­terred this weekend. Truly, as the sage says, “to live in the hearts of those we love is not to die.” Another famous saying goes: “To die completely, a per­son must not only forget, he must be forgotten. He who is not forgotten is not dead.” True.
And when a Dora Akunyili lives and serves passionately and conscientious­ly in a nation where service delivery, especially at the topmost rung, is al­most at its lowest; a nation in search of authentic heroes, where the lure of the filthy lucre is high, where government work is nobody’s work, you can’t but celebrate this amazing amazon, a true heroine of our time, a super patriot, an uncommon Nigerian, who so loved her country and gave her all to serve her!
Like Dora Akunyili, like Dr. Stella Adadevoh. Adadevoh did not occupy any top government position. She was a medical doctor in a Lagos hos­pital, quietly but diligently doing her work. Then, one day, a crazy fellow by name, Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American, was brought to her place of work, down with the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease. Adadevoh promptly attended to Sawyer, even when she had the option of abandoning him at the mention of Ebola. Even though Sawyer’s case was hopeless, the man was determined to spread the highly contagious disease. He first attempted to discharge himself and then alleg­edly began to urinate on the doctor and everywhere, when he was stopped from leaving the hospital and infecting other Nigerians on the streets. Adade­voh’s brave action in stopping the sui­cidal and criminal Sawyer from killing other Nigerians certainly sets her apart from others. She etched her name in gold and the pantheon of heroines of our nation. She is truly a patriot and heroine of our time, who should be honoured. It is easy to say she was just doing the job for which she was being paid by her employers.  But she went beyond the call of duty, by preventing the spread of the EVD and the devas­tating implication for our country. By her courageous action, she saved our nation from agony and deaths through Ebola. She has her place in our hearts and history!

A tale of two heroines