He was just like any other member of FCT Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) to me until sometime in 2013 when the car he parked in front of Road Safety office in Zone 7 was stolen. It was not long he bought the stolen Honda car yet he was so casual in announcing the theft.

“I can’t see my car again o,” he noted in his usual calmness, adding: “I parked it here to attend an assignment inside the NFF Glass House. I did not even spend 10 minutes, only to come out and see that my car was gone,” he managed to say in an anguish-laden voice.
From that moment, he had pushed it behind him especially after all his frantic efforts to recover the car proved abortive. That was Hycinth Umeh for you! He was a man with a steal-skin thickness. He looked simple yet a man with iron and lion heart, the type they call liquid metal.

He was a man that buried his sorrow and anguish in silence. A man his friends and associates could easily find what is buried inside the bottom of an ocean than decipher what was in his mind. He was perhaps a man who hardly believed that sorrow shared is sorrow lessened.
The more you tried to understand Hycinth, the more complicated he was. I had known Umeh for more than nine years before his death last month, but he was a mystery too difficult to unravel. I supposed he must have gone into the grave with so much secrets.

Listening to the moving tributes paid him during the candlelight procession at the NUJ FCT last Thursday; I could not but tearfully ask how much a big load a man could carry.
To his pastor, Shadrach Obasa, Hycinth, was among those reputed to have negotiated his death with God but unlike the Biblical Hezekiah, he had opted for death. “Even when we had almost raised the N1 million target for his medical assistance, Hycinth had requested that we take him to the village to die.”
“He was a man of sorrow and I was opportune to be present at the hospital when he lost his pregnant wife and baby during delivery. He was somebody that will not allow anything come between him and anybody. In fact, I had seen him got angry only once in church for over several years I knew him. He was very radical when it comes to sin,” the preacher man exulted him to high heaven.

Umeh, as I fondly called him, was really secretive to a fault and in confirming that, he shocked many when he first pressed the panic button in June, requesting financial assistance to undergo the series of dialysis. He left many of us bewildered with his disclosure that he had managed the kidney problem for more than six years. Six years, Umeh, without friends and colleagues knowing?

But, call it destiny, call it medical negligence, Hycinth actually opted for an everlasting rest; otherwise the various activated helplines to keep him alive through transplant were only few inches away when he died.
For the NUJ FCT Council, Emma Ogbeche, a cheque was raised that same morning to support his medical bills in the efforts to rescue him from the clutches of death.
Also, the social media was almost buzzing with requests to raise funds for him. Colleagues in the sports fraternity and journalism circle had responded in syndicating the helplines before he finally gave up.

As Ogbeche succinctly put it; “the Council has been inundated with one form of request for assistance or the other. I must confess that I didn’t know Hycinth in person and that is why we always appeal to members not to stay away for too long or wait until either security agents or office challenge force them to identify with the Council. In Hycinth’s case, I don’t know whether I should say our lateness in offering help was responsible or just the will of God,” he asked rhetorically.

But, the preacher man had answer to the conundrum when he appealed that although his death was apparently as a result of the negligence of medical personnel, the hour has however come for Hycinth.
“Otherwise, how do you explain it that at the time he started having crisis, two hospitals rejected him due to lack of bed space, including the one responsible for the error that cost him his life? However, whether it was the delay in the helpline or medical negligence, Hycinth had seen that there is better than here,” he quipped.

Sometime in 2018, unbeknownst of what he was passing through, I had ignorantly jokingly chided Umeh not to talk when men are talking since he was not man enough to marry and have children. But after some threats, he pushed the expensive joke behind him especially after the intervention of Victor Iroele.
I had earnestly desired to be part of his final journey home, traveling to his village for his interment yesterday and possibly to unravel the secret behind his secretiveness, but the hasty arrangement could not warrant me.
Umeh was a liberal-minded person to a fault. He was a dedicated, thorough bred professional journalist ready to sacrifice anything to get the report. He was too good that he could not imbibe the prevalent mercantile approach of his former employer in his professional dealings. Umeh was so humane and humble and could work with even a devil as a colleague in the office and/or firing line.

Reading his message during his birthday two weeks ago, it was obvious that he would prefer this home rest than going through the excruciating crisis of kidney problem. He can now continue to rest where there is no pain, no hustle, no how market, no racket target, no anger, and no betrayal.

Umeh, goodbye and goodnight

By Romanus Ugwu of The Sun