Published Tributes

Published in ThisDay Newspaper

Author: Sonnie Ekwowusi | Date: 25/03/2008

When the text message came, I had to re-read it several times as if my eyes were failing me. “Please pray for the repose of the soul of Catherine Hoomkwap who passed away last night. May she rest in peace”. It was a bright sunny Monday of the Holy Week. I had just entered the office and the least thing on my mind was death. But death always plays a fast one on us living mortals, especially when we least expect it. At any rate, that is our destiny as wayfarers. Any wonder the ancient poets have likened our lives to rivers flowing into the sea, the sea of death. Somebody may be bubbling in a good state of health today, but tomorrow he or she might be dead. A few weeks earlier I had spoken with Mrs. Kathryn Hauwa Hoomkwap (nee Bala) on phone. Her melodious and consoling voice did not betray any sign of a coming illness. I promised calling another time, but little did I know that I was speaking with her for the last time.

 But the great consolation is that Dame Kathryn, who clocked 60 last February, lived a useful life. Like ubiquitous polygon, she traversed the whole spectrum of human endeavour. She touched many lives. That’s the most important thing. Every other thing may be secondary. A person’s greatness transcends his/her material possessions or profession. A person is ontologically worth his/her dignity, the values he/she cherishes and the lives he/she has touched. Political scientist,  teacher, health educator, auditoress, consummate Christian humanist with a big heart, conscientious politician, women and children rights activist, international Conference women leader, consultor to  several international organizations, melodious speaker, peace maker and sweet  mother, Dame Kathryn dedicated her entire life to humanity through the promotion of many not-for-profit educational, cultural, social and religious projects.  She was an indefatigable champion of the rights of the world’s most vulnerable group- children. “All humanity, said Mahatma Gandhi in 1939, is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one us is responsibility for the misdeeds of others”. But unfortunately, world children are being expelled from the human family despite the fact that the United Nations Charter, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, ECOWAS Declaration and Plan of Action Trafficking in Person, The Child Prostitution and Pornography law(Nigeria), Children  and Young Person (Harmful Publications) Act (Nigeria), The Children and Young Person (Street Trading) law (Nigeria) etc recognize the inherent dignity, equality and inalienable rights of children as members of the human family. But paradoxically children are becoming victims of man’s inhumanity to man: victims of infanticide, Cyber-cafe pornography, condom-sex, rape, child labour, modern slave trade, and you name it. The Nigerian children, in particular, are becoming endangered species. They are brutalized, tortured and sold into slavery in different parts of Europe and America. Through the media and commerce, they are now exposed to a new culture of violence, sex and nudity. The other day the Punch newspaper published a shocking photograph of a young girl who had been illegally incarcerated for 10 years. A few weeks ago, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, publicly wept upon the startling revelation that Nigerian children are increasingly becoming victims of rape, torture and modern slave trade. THISDAY editorial (Thursday, March 6, 2008) elegantly recaptures it under the moving title: Protecting Nigerian Children.
 The names Kathryn Hauwa Hoomkwap have come to symbolize protector of Nigerian children in reminiscent of powerful women like Mary Slessor who stopped the killing of twins in Calabar. Lady Hoomkwap opposed the several attempts to legalize abortion in Nigeria. Specifically in 2006 she successfully led many Nigerian women to successfully oppose the sponsored bill seeking to legalize abortion in Nigeria. She condemned the controversial United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discriminations Against Women (CEDAW) as another destructive Western liberation of women unhelpful to Nigerian women. Asked by a journalist recently whether she was against the killing of children, she minced no words in lashing back at the journalist: “If your mother taught she made a mistake in conceiving you, will you be alive today? Similarly if my mother considered my conception a mistake, I wouldn’t have been here talking to you”.
 You can see the stuff in this woman. She was downright simple, moderate and urbane. I first met Mrs. Hoomkwap at one of the Public Hearings organized by the National Assembly a couple of years ago. At that Hearing she was unassuming, yet very firm and steadfast in holding glibly to principles. Before then I had read so much about her. She was one time Commissioner for Health in the old Plateau State, a member of Christopher Kolade Panel to review some of the corrupt contracts awarded during the military regimes of Sani Abacha and Abdulsalam. Alongside Fola Adeola, Ifueko Omogui, Asue Ighodalo and others, she set the dream of Fate Foundation rolling. Before death struck, she was the President of the Christian Health Association of Nigeria (CHAN), the oldest and strongest health NGO in Nigeria, now fighting for the eradication of Tuberculosis, AIDS and malaria in Nigeria.
 But it was in the emancipation of African women from ignorance, oppression and the brainwashing of the West that the quintessential Kathryn brightly shines out.  Recognizing that re-defining the family amounts to re-defining the world; that the family is where traditions are handed on, lady Hoomkwap stoutly advocated for protection of African family values and true dignity of womanhood at several international Conferences notably the Cairo Conference on Population and Development 1994 and Beijing Women Conference 1995. From Kathryn we learn that neither Cairo Conference nor Beijing Conference gave women the right to abortion. The so-called women’s reproductive right, a deceptive euphemism for abortion right, is yet to be endorsed as customary international law for lack of international consensus (international law can only bind upon consensus). But what has been happening over the years?  The United Nations Agencies like the UNFPA are creating abortion soft laws and imposing them on different nations as if they are international laws. But those soft laws are not international laws: international laws are mainly created through customs and treaties. 
 Mrs. Hoomkwap advocated that motherhood is a cherished African value.  At Being Conference she told a journalist that she was happy to be a mother. She further drew the attention of the world to the errors of radical feminism stressing how these errors continue to wreck the family.
 Dame Hoomkwap was pained by the high maternal deaths in Nigeria.  She believed that what Nigerian women needed to stay alive was not safe abortion, but good social security, good education, good employment, improved medical health services and improved  obstetric services associated with child birth in our hospitals and clinics.
 At death Mrs. Hoomkwap remains a role model for Nigerian women constantly searching for new meanings in their lives. Her exemplary life has shown that active public life can effectively blend with family responsibilities. Kathryn has shown that womanhood is not a derogatory term, that a woman should be proud to introduce herself as a mother, not as a liberated fun-seeker. In Kathryn’s advocacy, we learn that a country which kills its children is tottering on the brink of extinction.
 At the funeral of Kathryn, tears shall roll down the cheeks of many mourners upon the recognition that the remains of a great daughter of Plateau State is being wheeled out for burial. Powerful funeral orations will be delivered. But let those tears and orations give rise to resolutions, a resolution to promote the ideal which Kathryn lived for and died for.

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