The man who chose peace when war was easier.
Some people talk about peace. Chief TeghTegh Stephen Shaakaa lives it.
He is the peacemaker who refused to take sides.
For decades, Chief Shaakaa has stood in the middle of Nigeria’s deepest divides, holding the line between conflict and coexistence.
He built a bridge across divided land. From the Tiv to the Jukun to the Fulani, he has turned boundaries into meeting points and kept the past alive as a guide for the future.
At 77, Chief Tegh Tegh Stephen Shaakaa stands as proof that unity is built, not wished for and that history’s lessons are only as strong as those willing to carry them.
He was the peacemaker who stood in the middle and held the line.
In Nigeria, peace is not a given it is a prize wrestled from the jaws of mistrust, history, and pain. For decades, the Tiv, Jukun, and Fulani have shared land but not always peace. Many have chosen to stand with their own and against others. Chief TeghTegh Stephen Shaakaa chose a different path, to stand in the middle and hold the line.
I have watched him in moments when lesser men would have walked away. I have seen him sit in circles where tension hung heavy enough to cut. Tiv elders, Jukun leaders, Fulani representatives, each with their own grievances, each certain of their rightness. And yet, somehow, Chief Shaakaa’s presence would shift the atmosphere. He didn’t shout. He didn’t posture. He asked questions no one else was asking
What will happen to our children if we continue like this? What will remain of our land if we keep fighting over it?
In one particularly tense mediation, after hours of heated words, it was Chief Shaakaa who suggested a simple but radical step, a joint harvest between Tiv and Jukun farmers, on a disputed farmland, under a public agreement to share proceeds equally. Skeptics laughed. But weeks later, they were side by side in the fields. The land that could have been stained with blood that season yielded yams instead.
This is the peace he believes in not paper agreements that dissolve in the rain, but practical, lived solutions that remind people of their shared humanity. He knows that reconciliation isn’t sealed in conference halls, it’s proven in the marketplace, in the farm, at the well.
Yet his role is not limited to conflict resolution. Chief Shaakaa is an ambassador of history a man who insists that the present is only possible because of the past. There is no today without yesterday, he often says, and he means it. In his eyes, tradition is not something quaint, it is a living compass. Heritage, culture, and values are not museum pieces, they are the roots that hold us steady in storms.
He carries stories like a master craftsman carries his tools always ready to build understanding, always ready to fix what is broken. Sit with him long enough and you will hear the history of your people, not as dusty facts, but as living lessons. How we lived before the fences, how we traded before the borders, how we danced before the drums were silenced by war.
At 77, Chief Tegh Tegh Stephen Shaakaa’s life stands as a direct challenge to our times. Too many leaders today gain power by widening the cracks between communities, he has spent his influence filling them in. Too many treat culture as a slogan, he treats it as an inheritance to be guarded and passed on. Too many claim to fight for the next generation, he has been protecting it in real, tangible ways.
Honoring him today is more than marking another year. It is a call to remember that peace is not passive, it is work. It is a discipline that must be practiced even when it costs something. And it is the only kind of legacy that truly outlives us.
Chief Shaakaa is not just a man of his time. He is a man for all time. The bridges he has built will outlast the storms, and the seeds of peace he has planted will bear fruit long after he has left the field.
At 77, we celebrate more than his years. We celebrate the fact that, in a world too quick to forget its own lessons, he has been both the keeper of memory and the builder of tomorrow.
From the Tiv to the Jukun to the Fulani,I have watched my father turn boundaries into meeting points and kept the past alive as a guide for the future, teaching me and anyone willing to listen that people are never as far apart as the lines between them suggest.
Stephanie Shaakaa (Daughter)
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