HONOUR, discipline, incorruptibility, patriotism and courage all ran, simultaneously, in her DNA, yes in DNA – Dora Nkem Akunyili. Reigning female world leaders like Angela Merkel of Germany, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Christina de Kirchner of Argentina and Helen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia are perhaps no match for her in all the indices. If all were individual sporting events in an Olympic Games, she would stand in pole position to clinch all gold medals!

Even the amazons that have come and gone would freeze with envy wherever they are, either here with us or in the great beyond. The combination of modern world’s first female head of government, Sirimavo Bandaranaike and her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka would have been hard put to it to match Dora’s grit and guts. The first and only woman in the world to defeat an incumbent president, Violeta Chamorro of Nicaragua would have bowed before her in the command of national and international attention.

The “Woman of the Millennium” after whom the largest university in the world was named, Indira Gandhi of India would have hardly ranked above Nkem in the command of mass appeal. Longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th Century, Margaret Thatcher and the grandmother of the Jewish people who nonetheless was “the best man in government,” Golda Meir of Israel (both of them custodians of the iconic title “Iron Lady”) would have taken from her priceless lessons in fearlessness and willpower. The other “Iron Lady” and charismatic symbol of woman empowerment, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan would have found her a difficult nut to crack in the deployment of initiative and demonstration of astuteness.

Time Person of the Year 1986 who stood out as the most prominent figure of the year’s People Power Revolution and country’s first President without any political experience, Corazon Acquino of the Philippines would not have outshined Akunyili in the ability to surmount and survive persistent attempts by evil plotters. The other Filipino amazon and Professor of Economics, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, would not have outclassed her in erudition and scholarship. All these women of “timber and calibre” who had at one time or the other held the destiny of their nations in their tender feminine hand would have had to be at their very best to match the moral, intellectual and administrative credentials of the best female president Nigeria never had.

In my “If Abiola were Igbo” of December, 2013, with specific reference to Prof Akunyili, I submitted that “Nigeria could boast of women of compelling attributes capable of rubbing shoulders with these global amazons and the most appealing examples at the moment are perhaps those of Igbo extraction!” As only a Director-General, not an executive president, the multiple international award winner demonstrated, conclusively, that the size of a nation was no bigger challenge than elsewhere in confronting the cankers and monsters inhibiting national development. She did at the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, what any head of government anywhere in the world, armed with the requisite political will, was supposed to be doing in their respective villas. Her inimitable courage in confronting even ruthless political god-fathers was a study in the ultimate in manliness.

Prof Akunyili was, more than a man, a terrorist – terrorist of a different brand. Unlike Abubakar Shekau, she terrorised the guilty and protected the innocent. As a suicide bomber who, unlike Shekau’s men and kid-women, never got blown up in action, she detonated bombs at the warehouses of fake drugs merchants and mopped up landmines laid by them at pharmacy stores for the poor innocent millions. The one who, unlike a glut of others, was truly and genuinely worthy of her national honour of OFR, typified a classical example of the kind of terrorist the civilized world in general and Nigeria in particular urgently require.

In the process, Nigeria’s own “best man in government” laid down a legacy for reigning and aspiring leaders at all levels in Nigeria and beyond by fearlessly confronting challenges and checkmating problems she did not create. Auntie Dora did not create the problem of fake drugs. That problem, most probably, had been there before she was born. But with her courageous and decisive actions, she demonstrated beyond question that if her duties on her beat were all about solving problems she created, there would be no need for here services in the first place.

Vintage Dora! Her DNA never synchronized with that of Nigeria’s political leaders who, reveling with flamboyance in criminal shamelessness, make curious and mind-boggling but heartily-embraced defections to soft-landing. The woman of courage whose sincerity and strong will propelled her, like Jerry Rawlings, to sparing no one including her own blood, would agonize at how any genuine war on the political and economic evils plaguing the country could be prosecuted in such dubious circumstances. While they play politics of no permanent friends and foes but permanent self-interest, she dedicated her entire life to permanent national interest. Her only enemies were the criminals and crime barons whose evil and blood “business” she terrorized.

DNA came, saw and conquered! She even conquered cancer and death, succumbing only to the conquest of her Creator, who, in His omniscience, only called her home before she would be done in by a nation most given to rubbishing her finest characters. She could have lost any election only because the country she found herself in was not ready for men and women of her tribe. Humanity has suffered no loss because incredibly virtuous mortals like her, by general rule, hardly ever live long.

Dele Akinola, a social critic, wrote from Lagos.