Canada-based Nigerian lawyer, Ayokunle Odekunle, dies after battle with gastric cancer

A Canada-based Nigerian legal practitioner, Ayokunle Odekunle, has died years after battling gastric cancer.

Odekunle, who is a controversial social commentator on the Nigerian Twitter platform with username @oddy4real migrated to Edmonton, Canada in 2020, a time when it was too late for physicians to contain his ailment.

Even though he has a strong interest in writing, Odekunle studied law at the University of Ibadan, class of 2011, and was called to the Nigerian bar.

Last summer, he was also called to the bar in Alberta, Canada, a feat he attained even after learning his days were numbered.

 

In a 2009 letter to his unborn child, Mr Odekunle lamented his passion for writing, but said his parents’ interest in law persuaded him to enrol to become a lawyer at UI, which he described as “a once great university.” 

“Writing was my forte I told daddy but daddy felt otherwise,” he said, disclosing a nostalgia about how he was born to a middle-class family before fortunes depreciated rapidly for his father, who was a lawyer, when he was in high school.

The letter, reposted here in 2013, also showed Mr Odekunle’s self-awareness of how his detractors may characterise him. 

“While some would say I am actually playful and brilliant, others insist I am cocky, proud and arrogant,” he said. “While some love what I do, others see nothing good in it.”

Reacting to Odekunle’s death, the Lawmaker Representing Egbeda/Ona-Ara Federal Constituency, Oloye Akin Alabi, confirmed that he (Ayodele Odekunle) has been battling cancer for years.

“You fought really hard to beat the cancer @oddy4real. I was rooting for you. I take solace in the fact that you are free of pain. For years, you battled it. Kept on with your bar exams and law career while being a husband and a father. You didn’t seek for pity. Na man you be. RIP”.

Also consoling Odekunle family, former governor of Delta state and the 2023 vice presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ifeanyi Okowa, described the deceased as “a rare young man.

“The insightfulness of his tweets, the passion of his support for our party and myself, and the intentionality of his actions that he shared with us online, showed that he was a young man that was already doing great things and was destined to do even more.

“Sadly, that young, brilliant and promising life has been cut short by cancer. This is why, it is with great sadness, that my family and I send our heartfelt condolences to Oddy’s wife Halimah, their two beautiful children, and the PDP family.

“We pray that the Almighty God grants the family that he has left behind peace at this difficult time.

“He left behind his wife and two children, who live in Canada.”