October 07, (THEWILL) – Odia has a story about his tailor once holding him to ransom. Known for his sartorial preference of using the same fabric for dashiki, sokoto and cap for which some chaps in his former neighbourhood at Oregun dubbed him “up and down,” he has remained faithful to his tailor of many years.
For all of that time, the rules of engagement was pretty much defined and remained unchanged for both of them: Not necessarily having to meet in person for months, Odia sends choice bales to the tailor who already has his measurement with the understanding that he will sew according to Odia’s specification. This has been mutually beneficial to both parties until the designer suddenly changed his mind one day.
That day, according to Odia, the tailor told him pointblank he’d reviewed his charges and there was going to be an increment from what he used to pay. Why would the tailor do that? After all, Odia provides the materials himself with little or no elaborate embroideries by the tailor. That is all very true, the tailor agreed. But then, he went on to say he used to see “Oga” on television. In his reckoning therefore, Odia must be a “big man” and so should pay accordingly. The poet had a good laugh.
With an enduring reputation for never giving up in verbal confrontations big or small, Odia was, for once, at a loss for words. Here was his tailor insisting (with no option of the poet defending himself or refuting the claim) he has to shell out a fistful of more money for his bespoke, uniquely distinct traditional dresses and why he should. For a man who has a solid reputation for deploying words in his numerous verses, in his keen and analytical essays on past and current political events in Nigeria or in dispensing with an opponent’s views in public debates, words failed Odia in that one encounter with an ordinary Lagos tailor. The poet capitulated. The tailor got his money.
For about three hours from midmorning of Thursday, September 28, more than four dozen male and female guests converged on the top floor of Right House on Adeniyi Jones Avenue, Ikeja for the same man but not to ransom him. Instead, scholars including half a dozen professors, a former vice chancellor, politicians, lawyers, human rights activists, the literary smart set and journalists had come together to celebrate Odia Ofeimun on the occasion of a book presentation about the literary icon.
Sharing the podium with him was Reuben Abati, senior journalist, columnist, anchorman for ARISE TV and onetime spokesman for President Goodluck Jonathan; Martins Oloja MD of The Guardian newspaper and Molara Woods, journalist, writer and culture activist. There were Professors Kayode Soremekun, former Vice Chancellor Federal University, Oye-Ekiti; Mike Ikhariale, former Dean Faculty of Law Lagos State University, Ojo and Akin Onigbinde. Two Senior Advocates of Nigeria Femi Falana and Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika sat close by with Senator Yunus Akintunde. Though not present from the start, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, former governor of Osun state and ex-Minister of Internal Affairs, strolled in casually.
In a sense, you could say Odia himself has been a bit of the very different professionals at the book presentation. He is a notable Nigerian scholar, human rights crusader, poet, editorialist and guerilla journalist who battled military dictatorships to a standstill back in the nineties. He is also a politician and publisher having set up Hornbill House with an award-winning epic poem The Sahara Testaments by Tade Ipadeola which won first prize for poetry category of the Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2013 sponsored by Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas. Another title of Hornbill House Grits by Obari Gomba has now made the three final shortlist of the drama category of the same prize.
If Grits wins, then it will be a testament to the thoroughness and professionalism of those at the head of a nascent publishing concern lacking the resources of older and bigger ones in Nigeria.
Those who know Odia intimately say books have been part of his life from his preteens when he started keeping company with world classics in his uncle’s library at Iruekpen in Edo state. From then till now, Odia and books have never really parted ways, forming some kind of symbiotic relationship in the process. Famously, his very first meeting with Wole Soyinka was on account of a sheaf of poems Odia had written and presented to Nigeria’s future Nobel laureate for vetting back in the seventies.
Odia’s emergence as a rising poet among a constellation of Nigeria’s literary stars was on account of The Poet Lied published in 1980. There have been several publications ever since with the poet himself famously writing, publishing and publicly presenting sometimes as many as 14 or 15 on the same day! Ranging across genres, there is, for instance, Taking Nigeria Seriously 2003, Lagos of the Poets 2010, In Search of Ogun: Soyinka In Spite of Nietzsche 2014 and quite a number of dance dramas: A Feast of Return, Under African Skies and so on.
And such is the legend of Odia’s fascination with books that when, in September 2018, he relocated from 20 Sanyaolu Street Oregun to his present residence somewhere in the heart of Ikeja, cartons and cartons of books constituted more than 80 percent of his belongings.
Against that backdrop, it was hardly any surprise the gathering at Right House was as much about the poet and a seminal publication on him Odia Ofeimun: In Search of a Common Morality – Essays, Tributes and Conversations edited by Wumi Raji, Sylvester Odion-Akhaine and Akin Adesokan. It was the result of a public lecture by some of the best and brightest of Odia’s generation and his contemporaries on the occasion of his 70th birthday on March 16 2020.
Compiled from a public lecture on the occasion of Odia’s 70th birthday on March 16 2020, the book features joint interviews with some of the best and brightest of his generation (late Harry Garuba, Biodun Jeyifo, Ben Okri, Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare, Modupe Olaogun) and reflections by those that came after (Adesokan, Ogaga Ifowodo, Tade Ipadeola, Owei Lakemfa, Omowunmi Segun, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu.)
Though in black & white, the accompanying photographs also tell their own story about the man Odia and his journey through the arts, politics and as a journalist. A photograph on page 48, for instance, shows Odia as a member of the Editorial Board of The Guardian in an interview with General Muhammadu Buhari at State House Dodan Barracks Obalende in 1984. Another is with a smiling Soyinka, one with Osundare in deep conversation at a literary conference maybe at Ibadan, a city that was known for producing and having more poets per square metre such that, according to local lore, if you threw a rock up anywhere it was likely to fall on a poet.
Of course, being an Awoist, another shot is of Obafemi Awolowo at the table with Odia and two others in the Awolowo household.
Organised by the Faculty of Arts University of Lagos, the publication is in recognition not only of Odia’s literary stature but his contribution to political and human rights causes in Nigeria. Scheduled to hold for two days which it did at Akoka three years ago, a viral pandemic by way of COVID-19 scuttled what would have been a grand celebration of the poet and man of letters. As a result, there was scanty attendance for obvious reasons. Even so, it did not diminish the quality of presentations by scholars across Nigerian universities and outside the country.
Individually, the contributors, starting with Adesokan’s “The Fragmented Poetics of a Common Morality,” paint a personal portrait of the man and his literary oeuvre for more than four decades. The result is of a man “of many parts, and substance too” as Nehru Ode of TheNews magazine rightly captured Odia’s essence in a report of October 2. “He may not have riches that are measured in monetary terms and property, but his wealth of ideas surpasses everything. He may not have the material trappings that many crave in a philistine society like ours, but his works are imprinted not just in the world of politics and literature but also in our minds and the sands of time.
“He may not have all that many believe defines a man in a materialist society, but his interventions in politics and literature have defined the ethos of this nation. Yet at 73 he is still a material any day, any time, still a voice for the oppressed and marginalized and showing no sign of buckling. This indeed is the intriguing story of Ofeimun, a writer who has given his all, and sacrificed so much, not just for literature but also for the betterment of the country.”
If you needed further proof of Odia’s versatility and courageous commitment to life and letters, Abati provided it in his review of the book. “Odia Ofeimun is one of the most impactful, productive, influential public intellectuals that Nigeria has produced in the past four decades, with his contributions to poetry, journalism, literary criticism, public affairs and stage presentations forming a formidable part of the canon.”
Moderated by one of the editors Odion-Akhaine, others had graceful words for Odia and, of course, the country he has worked so hard to make better. Olumide-Fusika who was chairman of the book presentation recalled hearing of Odia in 1979. Now a SAN, Olumide-Fusika was a 13-year-old then who used to browse newspapers father brought home. Odia is “worth celebrating,” the lawyer submitted. “He’s been celebrated and this is a continuation of that celebration. When I look around this hall today, I see us from the various divides of Nigeria – religion, ethnicity, age-wise. But we are all gathered here to celebrate a man of merit. So when we see merit, we recognize it.
“As we celebrate today, I think it is also an occasion for us to appreciate the enormity of our failure as individuals and as a country. When Professor Wole Soyinka described his own generation as a failed one, our own was thinking okay we would not fail, we would do better. But I think we can ask ourselves the question: how well have we done?”
Regardless of what Nigerians, especially the ruling elite from independence till date, have made of their country, Odia has done well for himself in his métier, a point echoed by speaker after speaker. For Ms. Woods, besides Odia’s contribution to literature on a national level, it is also personal. “He has contributed so much to me as a writer that I wouldn’t even know how to begin to describe it. And he has contributed so much, and I would like to just pay tribute for, without him, we would not have much of the writing, the literary production that we are having in this country. So, I am very honoured to be here.”
So was Soremekun in his speech, recalling that he was “besieged with memories of the guerrilla days when he and Ofeimun were on the editorial board of AM NEWS.” He also praised Ofeimun “for his sense of commitment, his discipline and his determination to lead a Spartan life even when he had many opportunities to enrich himself.”
“We are here to celebrate a man who, I would say, runs against the grain in the sense that he is not a poor man, as Biodun Jeyifo said in this book. But that he has chosen to virtually impoverish himself. And that is rare in a society where material trappings count for much. Odia belongs to the fringe. If you’ve read Ayi Kwei Armah, Odia is more or less like that nameless man in Ayi Kwei Armah’s book The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. He epitomises that. How many people can be counted like that in this country?”
On his part, Falana thumbed up for the editors of In Search of a Common Morality “for honouring a man who deserves all the honour one can give him while he is alive,” and to hope for such sessions “to discuss our heroes as well as our country.”
What did the lawyer have to say about Nigeria? Cheerless news because “the dollarization of the Nigerian economy is telling on the masses, majority of whom don’t know how the American dollar looks like…the majority of Nigerians have nothing to do with foreign exchange. It’s the business of the elites. And so when you unleash violence on our people because you are looking for dollars, please think all the time that the majority of Nigerians have no contact with the dollar, and have never seen it in their lives.”
In a veiled counter to Falana’s assertion, Senator Akintunde blamed Nigerians in general “for the dollarization of the Nigerian economy” and not just the political elite in the FCT. “All of us are killing dollars,” Akintunde said. “If we desire to consume what we produce, naira would be strong enough. There is nowhere in the world where your production is in a weak currency and your consumption is in hard currency and the equation will balance up. It will never be. That’s the system here and we just have to realize that. All of us have to buy the idea that we have to grow this country together, whether someone is a lawyer or not. A lawyer would request for dollars because he too probably is paying for whatever he buys in dollars.”
For Ikhariele former Dean of Faculty of Law LASU, the name Ofeimun has a telling significance to the Esan tribe in Edo. It means “fearless one” which Odia has lived up to for his “uncommon boldness and courage in the face of mounting challenges.”
Though a late arrival to the event, Aregbesola left no one in doubt as to his relationship with and commitment to Odia. “My commitment to Odia is eternal, sacred and permanent. I said I must come because Odia must not find me wanting, wherever he is being celebrated. How he qualifies for that for me is simple. When I was in school, Odia was already tied to my own hero, Baba Obafemi Awolowo. So even at that time, I used to write Baba. Whether he got to him or not I wouldn’t know.
“But Odia was a constant face. The first day that we met and we talked it was a dream come true. And we have had a relationship ever since. So Odia is a toast to those of us who have had some interest in society and how to tweak it to be better. So, for those who are yet to know who he is, Odia represents the best in all of us, to chronicle what it is that we all adore and want for our nation.”
The contributors in the book also feel the same way as the politician, those who know Odia intimately – whether on the literary turf or his private life. At more than 300 pages, complete with citations and index, In Search of a Common Morality is an invaluable compendium on and about one of the most dynamic figures of contemporary Nigerian literature.
There are personal recollections and reflections on the man himself and scholarly analysis of his prodigious creative output. Quoting Odia in one of his essays, “Impossible Death of the African Author,” Adesokan posits thusly: “Odia Ofeimun writes of the Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah as one of Africa’s best, one of the most exciting, one of those, whether we like it or not, we will encounter deep into the coming centuries.”
For Adesokan, author of Roots in the Sky and Associate professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University Bloomington, there is no better way to describe Odia himself: “I can think of no better way to characterize Ofeimun’s own status as an African writer…than to say of him what he has said of Armah.”
And what did Odia himself say about the book presentation on and about him? “I’m glad to be in the midst of friends whom I don’t meet on an everyday basis,” the poet began, “but who, even when I don’t see, I can count upon. That is, people whose names I can swear by even when I don’t see them…I do wish that every friend of mine who is a contributor to the progress we are making in this society is defended by the anointing of the presences they offer to the rest of the world. Here, I’m not just anointing. I’m not just celebrating my friends because they have come to celebrate me. But I’m genuinely celebrating everybody because even when we do not meet, we know them wherever they are, even when they are not being heard by everybody.”
About the Author
Michael Jimoh is a Nigerian journalist with many years experience in print media. He is currently a Special Correspondent with THEWILL.
