In an emotional eulogy over the weekend, the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, described his elder brother, Charles who was laid to rest on Saturday as a “generous man.”
In his eulogy at a requiem mass for the deceased at St. Theresa Catholic Church, Ubima, his hometown in Rivers State, Amaechi said his brother made enormous sacrifices that saw him through the university.
The minister said he had been unable to handle the duties previously assumed by his late brother.
“I recall that in the struggle to get through the university, he made his own contributions, he wanted me to school overseas, unfortunately I didn’t, I had to school at the University of Port Harcourt,” he recalled.
“He’s done quite a lot for all of us and the most difficult aspect of it is that he kept the family together; and I’m not in a position to do that now that I’ve become the head of the family, but we’ll try.
“He has left us with a huge responsibility that I lack the capacity to discharge. Dede, as he was widely known, was generous to a fault. Dede was a name given to him by me in reverence to his ubiquitous care and fatherly role in our lives.
“He was everything to everybody and was full of life, he related with both the young and the old and got all his children educated. He protected all of us from the vagaries of the Nigerian society.
“He contributed to the payment of my school fees and ensured that we were not fatherless at the death of our father as he assumed the responsibilities of the family.
“He made my younger siblings complete their education and got them engaged in their different spheres of responsibilities.”
