Five years without Brother Sam

Five years. That’s 1,825 days. Sixty months. But when I think about December 11, 2020, it feels like it happened last week. Sometimes it feels like it happened five minutes ago.

You know what’s strange? I can remember exactly where I was standing when my brother Emma called and said, “Brother Sam is gone, chairman is gone.” I remember the weight of the phone in my hand. I remember going numb. Grief does that. It warps time. Makes five years feel like five days and five days feel like five years.

Last weekend we went back to Keffi for my elder sister, Mrs Mary Owoyele’s 30th wedding anniversary celebration.

Thirty years. That’s a milestone. That’s something to celebrate. And we did celebrate. But the whole time I kept thinking about five years ago when we were there for her 25th anniversary.

Brother Sam was there that day. Sitting in a chair in my sister’s house. Laughing. Talking. Being Brother Sam. That was the last time many of us in the family saw him alive. We didn’t know it then. You never know it’s the last time until it’s too late.
I remember that chair. I can see it right now if I close my eyes. I can see Brother Sam sitting there like he owned the place, like he always did. That easy confidence he carried everywhere.

This past weekend, I kept looking at that same chair. A different person is sitting in it now. But all I could see was Brother Sam five years ago, full of life, full of plans, full of tomorrow.

Five years ago, we were celebrating 25 years of marriage. Now it’s 30 years. Brother Sam missed the last five years of anniversaries. He’ll miss the next five. And the next five after that. That’s what death does. It creates these permanent absences. Empty chairs at celebrations. Missing voices in family discussions. The person who should be there but isn’t.

I wished so badly that Brother Sam could’ve been sitting in that chair again last weekend. Just one more time. One more celebration. One more family gathering.
But wishing doesn’t bring people back. I’ve learned that the hard way.

If losing Brother Sam broke our family, losing our mother less than two years later shattered whatever pieces were left trying to hold together.

Mrs Eunice Ndanusa Isaiah, our matriarch, couldn’t cope. How do you survive watching your firstborn son – the one you carried for nine months, nursed, raised, watched build an empire – how do you survive watching him die before you?
You don’t. Not really.

People say time heals all wounds, but that’s Grade A bullshit. Time doesn’t heal anything. You just learn to walk with a limp. You learn to breathe around the pain. You learn to function even when part of you is missing.

Our family is taking baby steps. That’s all we can manage. Baby steps.

Since Brother Sam left, we’ve had three additions to the family – three nieces who will never meet their uncle. Anna, Elmira, and Vania.

They’ll never see him surrounded by towers of books everywhere he goes.

They’ll grow up hearing stories about a man who sounds almost mythical. “Your Uncle Sam built LEADERSHIP from nothing.” “Your Uncle Sam helped hundreds of people pay school fees.” “Your Uncle Sam believed in young people before anyone else did.”How do you explain someone that big to children who’ll never meet him?I believe Brother Sam watches them from heaven. I have to believe that. Otherwise, what’s the point?

“If Chairman Was Here…”Walk into LEADERSHIP’s office today and you’ll still hear it.“If chairman was here, this wouldn’t have happened.”“Chairman would not have tolerated this nonsense.”“Remember when chairman said…”

The staff who worked under him – they talk about Brother Sam like he just stepped out for a meeting and might walk back in any moment. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time.

His presence still looms large over that company. Not in a suffocating way, but in the way a strong foundation supports a building. The values he instilled, the standards he set, the belief in young talent regardless of tribe or religion – that’s all still there.

LEADERSHIP Media Group is doing well. Not because we’re trying to preserve some museum, but because Brother Sam built something with strong bones. He didn’t just create a newspaper. He created an institution. And institutions outlive individuals.

That was always his gift. He thought in decades while most of us think in quarters.

Sometimes I wonder what Brother Sam would make of today’s Nigeria.

He was deeply involved with the All Progressives Congress (APC). I think he would’ve played a significant role in the current administration if he’d lived. Would he be disappointed? Encouraged? Furious? Hopeful?

I honestly don’t know.

But here’s what I do know – Brother Sam had this almost supernatural ability to see potential where others saw problems. He could spot talent in a room full of mediocrity. He could envision solutions when everyone else was drowning in complaints.

Nigeria needs people like that. People who build instead of just criticising. People who create platforms for young people to excel. People who genuinely don’t care about your tribe or religion as long as you can deliver.

We have enough critics. God knows I’m one of them. But builders? Builders are rare.

A few weeks ago, my brother Solomon shared one of our late father, Clement Ndanusa Isaiah’s old columns from the New Nigerian Newspapers dated November 28, 1970, where he was lamenting the state of Nigerian football. Fifty-five years ago. 1970. You know what? He could’ve written that column yesterday. Word for word. The complaints are identical. The problems are the same. Only the names have changed.

I pulled out some of Brother Sam’s columns from 15-20 years ago. Same thing. Most of them could run today without changing a word. The debates about restructuring. The security challenges. The corruption. The ethnic tensions. The incompetent leadership.

Three generations of Isaiah men – our father, Brother Sam, and now me – writing essentially the same columns decades apart. It’s funny. Then it’s depressing. Then it’s funny again because if you don’t laugh, you’ll lose your mind.

Nigeria is like a patient with a curable disease who refuses to take the medicine. The prescription is right there on the table. We know what needs to be done. We just won’t do it.

And so we write the same columns generation after generation, hoping eventually someone will listen.

Maybe that’s the real legacy. Not that we solved anything, but that we refused to stop pointing at the problems. Refused to normalise the abnormal. Refused to accept “this is just how Nigeria is.”

Let me tell you about Brother Sam the way I knew him. Generous doesn’t begin to cover it. If you told Brother Sam you needed something – school fees, business capital, help with a problem – he’d give it without thinking twice. Literally without thinking twice. He’d hand you money and be onto the next thing before you could even say thank you properly.

He was a perfectionist. Getting praise from Brother Sam meant you’d actually done something worth praising. He didn’t throw compliments around like cheap candy. You earned them.

One of my proudest moments as a journalist was when he called to tell me some of his friends had read my column and praised it. He even shared it on our family WhatsApp group. I felt like I’d won the Pulitzer.

But he’d also call when he thought I’d gone too hard on someone in a column. “Jonathan, maybe that was a bit harsh.” Coming from him – a man who didn’t mince words – that meant I’d really crossed a line.

The man read everything. Family vacations meant Brother Sam would show up with two or three bags full of books. Not an exaggeration. Actual bags full of books. His offices in LEADERSHIP and at home looked like annexes of the National Library. Books everywhere. Stacked on desks, piled on floors, covering every surface.

And he actually read them. He didn’t just collect books for show. He consumed them. Devoured them.Applied them.

Five years later, and I still expect him to walk into a family gathering with that energy he had, that presence that made every room feel smaller. Then I remember.

The remembering is the hard part.

But here’s what I’ve learned – and maybe this will help someone else who’s lost someone too soon: You don’t “get over” losing someone like Brother Sam. That’s not how this works.

You learn to carry them differently. The weight doesn’t get lighter, but you get stronger at carrying it.

You learn to hear their voice in your head when you need guidance. You learn to honour their memory by trying to live up to the standards they set. You learn that love doesn’t end when someone dies. It just changes form.

My brother Sam Nda-Isaiah lived 58 years. Not nearly enough time. But in those 58 years, he built something that will outlast him by generations. He touched thousands of lives. He created opportunities for people who had none. He believed in talent over tribe, merit over mediocrity. That’s a legacy.

So yes, five years feels like forever and five minutes at the same time. Yes, we’re still healing. Yes, we miss him every single day. But Brother Sam’s babies – LEADERSHIP, the family, the values he instilled in all of us – they’re still here. Still growing. Still thriving. And maybe that’s how you outlive death. Not by living forever, but by building things that do.

Rest well, Brother Sam. We’re holding down the fort. Your legacy is in good hands. Even if we still can’t match your energy or carry three bags of books on vacation.