Saturday, March 3 2012 was a day to remember in Kaiama, Headquarters of Kolokuma Opokuma Local Government Area. It marked the final funeral rites and interment of one of the giants of KOLGA, Dr Pianto Idonbagha Egberipou MB BS (Lagos); FRCS, FWACS, MHR, MNIM, JP. Friends and family from far and wide flocked to Kaiama to pay their last respects to a great man. Old friends from his alma mater, Okrika Grammar School, colleagues from the Nigerian Medical Association, erstwhile legislators all came to an open air service at his compound at Kaiama to pay tribute to a wonderful friend and illustrious associate. Former Minister of Science and Technology Professor Turner Isoun came in the group of Okrika Grammar School Old Boys to the funeral service. The ceremony was graced by the cream of Bayelsa and Rivers State societies and indeed from all over Nigeria.
Speaking at the ceremony the President of Okrika Grammar School Old Boys Professor Emmanuel Opuwaribo recalled how Pianto then a young school boy at OGS introduced the great linguist Prof Kay Williamson (then at the beginning of her illustrious career) to Kaiama at the beginning of her language research. This chance event brought the Kolokuma dialect of the Izon language into prominence through her research.
The Diriyai family of Kaiama has indeed a lost a beacon, a true guiding light. Dr. Pianto Egberipou was a great Nigerian, vast in the history and culture of his people, even though a trained medical scientist, he was a renowned traditional historian. He was the chairman of Kaiama Historical Society. He was indeed a bridge between the young and the old. His death therefore marks the end of an era.
As an infant, and even as a small boy who looked ever fragile and sickly from birth, Pianto was never given any chance to survive childhood; he was consigned to the death row by everyone in Kaiama (his home town) except his dear mother, Mienaki who kept not only faith with God but even told all who cared to listen that her only child would not only live but he will end up a medical doctor!!
Pianto confounded both old and young by living up to and even beyond the biblical three scores and ten! He then went on to fulfill his mother's profound prophesy by becoming the first medical doctor from his paternal and maternal clans of Kolokuma/Opokuma in 1969; before capping it all with a Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (1976). In 1988 he was honoured with the award of Fellowship of the West African College of Surgeons (FWACS).
The child doomed to die from birth lived to practice medicine and surgery from 1969 and even had the time and energy to veer into the hectic and topsy-turvy politics of Nigeria. He was in the Federal House of Assembly in 1979 till 1983 when he returned to full time medical practice till his death in January this year .
In honour of his mother who did not live to see her dream come true, Pianto named his first child and daughter MIENAKI after her. She read the only lesson from the bible at his funeral service.
Pianto did not stop with Mienaki; he created ELEVEN others in his image to populate the DIRIYAI FAMILY. The last of them, Zuofa Egberipou is a final year medical student at the University of Benin Medical School.
His age mates, especially General Wanka Maxwell Appah, his family, especially General Stanley Womotimi Diriyai and the entire Kolokuma Opokuma will miss Pianto, the mobile encyclopaedia, the strategist, the sweet story-teller, the historian and the great humorist!
When shall another like him come to us again as his class rapidly depletes!
O God , Accept his Gentle Soul in your Bosom!
Filed by Ekpein Appah and Izonebi Rodger Obubo
