By Uzu Okagbue
Death has a way of restoring memory to its proper owner. In African thought, it is said that when a great tree falls, the forest becomes quiet; not out of reverence, but because every tree is counting its own days. Herbert Wigwe’s passing did not merely silence a life; it unsettled a community. In life, he was surrounded by noise, movement, and ritual closeness. In death, a different truth emerged. Presence dissolved, and what remained was revelation. The living were forced to confront not who he was, but who they had been in relation to him.
He was a man who understood that wealth without purpose is a wandering spirit. He built institutions, yes, but more importantly, he cultivated people. In African wisdom, a man is measured not by how high he climbs, but by how many footsteps he leaves behind for others to follow. Herbert Wigwe climbed deliberately, and he left many such footsteps. Power, to him, was not a drum beaten to announce oneself, but a bridge quietly extended so others could cross. Yet, as is often the case, once the bridge was no longer needed, the silence came.
Nothing reveals the weakness of human bonds like the moment usefulness departs. The warmth thins. Loyalty hesitates. Gratitude, once loud, becomes careful and conditional. This is not wickedness; it is the old human reflex. In our villages and our cities alike, people gather where the fire burns. When the fire goes out, they return to their huts, carrying the warmth only as memory. Death exposes how much of closeness is proximity to benefit, not proximity of soul.
The struggle over his estate has been among the most painful revelations. In African philosophy, inheritance is meant to be continuity, not contention; a passing of stewardship, not a contest of entitlement. Yet blood, so often idealized as sacred, revealed its other nature: competitive, anxious, unrestrained. The disputes and quiet rivalries expose a truth the living must confront: family is not automatically a refuge. It is a human institution, subject to fear, greed, and insecurity. To place unquestioned dependence on it is to surrender clarity. Love without structure invites disorder. Legacy without deliberate architecture leaves the living to quarrel over fragments of a man’s life rather than honour its meaning.
This moment forces a deeper reevaluation. Too many of the living invest emotional security, identity, and expectation almost entirely in family; believing blood alone guarantees loyalty, protection, or understanding. It is a comforting myth, but a dangerous one. Family, like every other human relationship, is fragile, conditional, and shaped by circumstance. To make it the sole anchor of one’s life is to build permanence on shifting soil. Wisdom lies not in abandonment of family, but in resisting unnecessary dependence on it for meaning, validation, or survival.
Friends and associates adjusted with unsettling speed. The calls slowed. The solemnity softened. Life recalibrated. This is the way of the world. Relationships, like markets, respond to relevance. When influence fades, attention follows. African wisdom warns that many hands gather to pound yam, but very few remain to wash the mortar. Herbert Wigwe’s absence has clarified who came for the pounding and who would have stayed for the quiet, unglamorous work of remembrance.
Perhaps most jarring has been the restraint from the church where he worshipped, a space that benefited immensely from his generosity, consistency, and faith. One would expect that the house of the spirit would remember its pillars loudly. Instead, there was caution. Silence. It is a reminder that institutions, even sacred ones, often celebrate presence more than sacrifice, giving more than belief. When the giver departs, memory sometimes becomes inconvenient.
Yet beyond these human failings stands a quieter, sturdier truth. Herbert Wigwe’s true monument is not stone or inscription; it is people. Across banking halls and business corridors are men and women whose trajectories changed because he chose to lift rather than block, to mentor rather than intimidate, to believe when belief carried personal risk. He invested not only capital, but credibility. In African understanding, the greatest wealth is the human being one enables to stand upright. By that measure, he was profoundly wealthy.
Still, even beneficiaries must sit with an uncomfortable mirror. How enduring is gratitude when the benefactor can no longer protect, promote, or provide? How deep is appreciation when it is no longer strategically necessary? These questions do not accuse; they instruct. They remind us that gratitude untested by absence is often convenience wearing the robes of affection.
Yet, it must be said, there are always a very few. Very few who remember without calculation. Very few who honour without expectation. Very few who understand that gratitude is not a transaction but a value. In the quiet dignity of such remembrance stands men like Stanley Uzochukwu of Stanel Group, who paused to acknowledge Herbert Wigwe’s posthumous birthday and publicly remembered the immense role he played in his business growth. Such gestures are rare not because they are difficult, but because they require character. They remind us that integrity, like greatness, is never crowded.
His death presses a final lesson the living must not ignore. Relationships: blood, friendship, or shared faith, are fragile vessels for meaning. This is not a call to isolation, but to clarity. Give generously, but know that giving does not guarantee remembrance. Love deeply, but structure wisely. Walk with people, but understand that every journey eventually becomes solitary.
In African philosophy, a man ultimately walks to the land of the ancestors alone, carrying only the weight of his deeds. What endures are the values he lived by, the systems he built, the lives he steadied, and the peace he cultivated within himself. Everything else is temporary allegiance, renegotiated by circumstance.
Herbert Wigwe lived boldly, gave deeply, and built intentionally. His passing reminds the living that greatness is often lonely, gratitude is fleeting, and legacy must be consciously designed, not emotionally assumed. Death does not change people. It merely removes the mask. And in that revelation, the wise learn to invest more carefully, love more intelligently, and anchor their lives in what will still matter when the forest grows quiet.
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