Okowa Mourns Canada-based Nigerian Lawyer, Odekunle, Who Died After Battle With Cancer

By Daniel Dafe

Former Governor of Delta State, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa has mourned the death of Ayokunle Odekunle, saying he “was a rare young man.”

The former governor said this in a post on X.

His words: “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.”

Adding: “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.”

Okowa prayed that God grants the family that he left behind peace at this difficult time.

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Odekunle, a legal practitioner with extensive milieu in social commentary, was Nigerian-born and educated before later moving to Canada.

Odekunle discovered he had stomach cancer that was spreading fast and leaving too little time to contain when he arrived in Edmonton in 2020,

The cancer was stage four when he passed on Friday evening.

Mr 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 he was on his way out.

He particularly stood out for his take-no-prisoners approach to social media commentary, especially on the Nigerian cluster of micro-blogging platform X (former known as Twitter). YNaija, a culture magazine in Lagos, once listed him among its top Nigerian influencers in one of its compilations.