Life is an enchanting mystery lived to the hilt by those who are not afraid of enchanting mystery. How can a person so full of zest, energy, vitality and enthusiasm and pizazz succumb so casually and without any warning? Snooper mourns the passing this past weekend of Mme Kemi Nelson, she of the surging and fanciful headgear and dancing dowager of many gathering of the high and the mighty.

An ardent fan and devoted reader of this column in its opening incarnation, the former commissioner in Lagos State, former APC Women leader in Lagos state and former Executive Director in Abuja,  was the nearest equivalent of what can be described as a woman of timber and calibre in politics.

Read Also; Requiem: Kemi Nelson (1956 – 2022)

She flourished where and when other women froze with fear or fright. Despite a playful mien, she had nerves of steel and could not be fazed by anything or anybody for that matter. She relished trading political tackles and like a female boxer, she gave as much as she got in the political ring.

A few inhibited and hindered women in the upper class bracket will dismiss this as brazen hustling but many aspiring women from the lower classes clawing their way up the craggy hills of social inequities will hail her as a heroine of female opportunities in a hard and harsh society where nobody offers you anything unless you demand for it. As they say, power is not served a la carte.

Snooper recalls that the late politician served on two committees that yours sincerely chaired. First was the Lagos State Electoral Reform Panel, 2008-2009; and the Governor’s Advisory Committee, 2009- 2015. She acquitted herself very well and with commendable zest and energy. She was often the soul of meetings with her loaded jokes and perceptive interventions.

Her brother, Sola Ladeinde, a quiet and urbane former Texaco top executive will miss her, and so will her husband, Yemi Nelson, an affable and impeccably well-bred retired Federal bureaucrat and scion of old Lagos money. May her soul rest in peace.