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Photos: A Journey To The Humble Beginning of Godwin Emefiele

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Photos: A Journey To The Humble Beginning of Godwin Emefiele

Photos: A Journey To The Humble Beginning of Godwin Emefiele
October 07
18:01 2021

Very few people had seen Godwin Emefiele without his characteristic charisma and flair. Then he clocked 60, and imagery of his adolescence and youth surfaced in social space, courtesy of a special media feature on him.

The images transmit mental portraits of his childhood, bearing them like colourful carnations of the past to perfume his present.

From the adorable photo of him as a minor swaddled in a white diaper to snapshots of his evolution as an adolescent, teenager, and young adult, the CBN governor cut the image of a soul that had lived through various phases of growth.

There is no gainsaying the pictures collectively manifest like a time capsule into his past; they reflect among other things, his humble beginnings. And nostalgic moments spent with his adorable wife and children.

His storied and sensational life would make many of his peers go green in envy, and make them feel like they came to the world at the wrong time.

These rare portraits of the CBN governor also revealed that his life had been a journey spanning both flat miles and seemingly impassable terrains.

Growing up through the maze of life’s dark woods, Emefiele snapped off a long branch and picked his way by its mutter. Stumbling through life’s expanse, his wandering feet got entangled in thickets of experience and roots that ran deeper than his years. The unfamiliar scent of manhood stung his nostrils and kept him on track along with the profound domains of experience.

But determinedly, he kept to the trail, guided by the whiff and promise of a better tomorrow.

As a gangly teen, Emefiele was wiser than his years. He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. He understood that life wasn’t completely a frightening encounter with genuine menace; he also learnt that as a young adult, he must learn to navigate the brute nudge of manhood and all its desperate years.

The vast expanse of his curiosity and an incredible degree of freedom in thought and responsibility fostered his maturation through the challenges and grotto of manhood. His fears vanished into thin air. An enviable and very significant shift in his maturation has occurred since then.

The bliss of childhood was gone likewise the days of adventure. That fabled land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, was in large part, taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by harsh, brutish reality.

But Emefiele was up to the task. He had already evolved into a full man. And his family, the CBN, and Nigeria are the better for it. Against all odds, Mr. Godwin Ifeanyi Emefiele was nominated for the job of the CBN Governor’s position on February 20, 2014. Having put up an impressive performance at his screening before the Committee and thereafter the entire Senate on March 26, 2014, his appointment as the 11th (and 10th indigenous) Governor of the CBN was confirmed and he assumed the position on June 3, 2014.

And since his appointment, Emefiele has held his own against the ravage of attrition characteristic of the Nigerian political scene; he has maintained his spot in a clime where public officers are ousted or given the boot at the expiration of the tenure of the principal that appointed them, especially when an opposition party takes over political power.

Emefiele, however, survived all plots to oust him when the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government took over and even went ahead to become the first CBN Governor to get a second term since 1999, following his reappointment in 2019.

There is no gainsaying the Ika-born banker has lived a remarkable and eventful life. Despite rising from humble beginnings to assume leadership of the nation’s apex banking institution, he has remained humble and uncompromising of his values.

He has maintained a culture of unflinching uprightness, and unwavering commitment to the collective good. He has remained a staunch patriot and advocate of the common man. This, among others, guarantees his place in the pantheon of Nigeria’s finest citizens.

Pictures credit: ThisDay

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Opeyemi

Opeyemi

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