The first day of the year is never a good day to write about death and dying. Rotimi Akeredolu spent the last three or four years hard-headed on the frontline. As planted in his name, Akeredolu, he was a small man who nurtured himself to bigness on life’s battlefield. He was not my friend. Apart from one media engagement where I asked him two or three questions -one of which he answered with a frown, there was no direct meeting of our streams. But I later became his fan because…