Tribute to Chief Apollo Nnaji by Simon Iberosi.

Chai! Apollo is gone! How are the mighty fallen? O death, where is thy sting?

Growing up in our community, I always heard about Apollo. It wasn’t until around 2002, while I was serving as a Special Assistant to the Honorable Commissioner for Education, Dr. Obinna Duruji, that I had the pleasure of making his acquaintance.

Chief Apollo was a familiar figure and always had a welcome presence at the commissioner’s office in Owerri. I admired his sagacity, his deep love for politics, and his instinct for strategy. In 2007, not long after my father’s burial, he surprised me by leading a delegation of Umuaka political figures—including Hon. Chief Chuma Nnaji—to pay me a condolence visit. I was both honored and humbled by the gesture.

Since then, whenever he heard I was home, he would stop by on his motorbike to catch up, share political updates, and engage in our usual banter. We developed a bond of mutual respect and fondness. Even during my extended time away from home, we remained in touch—thanks to the gift of modern communication like WhatsApp.

When he lost his beloved wife, he added me to the COF WhatsApp group for her funeral. After the burial, we spoke. He shared, in a tone tinged with sorrow, how deeply the loss had affected him. “It’s like I’ve lost both legs and arms,” he said. He wondered aloud if the grief might hasten his own end. I did my best to offer comfort.

Earlier this year, around February—after he had just marked his wife’s memorial in December and was grappling with the loss of his elder brother—I noticed I had missed a few WhatsApp calls from him. I tried calling back but couldn’t reach him. I left a message, expressing regret about our missed calls. Later, I received a text from him. Instead of replying directly, I chose to act on what the message implied, expecting he would follow up. But no response came.

I kept intending to call back in the following days, just to be sure he was okay. But days became weeks, and weeks turned into months. I procrastinated, thinking there would always be time. And now… the news has come. Chief Apollo is gone. The finality of it is both sad and shocking.

Life is so fleeting, so ephemeral. Yet death—so certain—always carries with it, as a dear friend once put it, the weight of “unfinished business.”