THIS Thursday, May 25, 2017, would have been another birthday milestone in the abridged life of renowned and celebrated English language therapist, Baba Solomon Adebayo Oguntunase, who slipped fatally at his Ikorodu, Lagos, Romanesque home on Sunday, April 23, 2017, and by Friday that same week, April 28, 2017, pitch darkness and the grim hands of death eclipsed our subject—a great lover of books.
On that ill-fated day, Pa Oguntunase, a reputed journalism teacher, had gone to the newsstand, as usual, bought his choice newspapers and returned (not “returned back”) to his veranda from where he went to the sitting-room to take a jotter and a biro for routine dissection of the publications for his weekly column in this medium, Mind Your Language, published every Thursday. On his way back to the veranda, this language activist slipped from immediate ghastliness to ultimate fatalistic descent!
The question mark on our health facilities still hangs perilously which explains why medical tourism has become a thriving and elitist pastime. Instead of our leaders and moneybags to address this challenge, they prefer to externalize their health management over the years. This summarily underscores why Pa Oguntunase, a septuagenarian, had to be lethargically moved all the way from the Ikorodu General Hospital to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, amid profuse loss of blood through nasal bleeding. And to compound issues, there was nobody in the house to assist him or remedy the emergency situation minimally before hospitalization.
The long distance between Ikorodu and Idi-Araba coupled with typical traffic bottlenecks in the city even with an ambulance must have aggravated, if not largely responsible for, the tragedy. Only those familiar with the terrain here will appreciate the fatalistic trip from Ikorodu to Idi-Araba.
Once I get my official copies of newspapers for Thursday, the first thing I do is to excitedly flip to Pa Oguntunase’s column, Mind Your Language, usually on Page 30 before even scanning the front-page headlines and stories and other sections of the edition. Dateline: Thursday, May 4—my teacher’s column was replaced with a half-page advertisement, signaling that the “owner” of that space had joined the saints! For the records, the last column appearance of Baba was on April 27, 2017, with a serial entry entitled “A Change Mantra: Correcting English Made In Nigeria”, by a man, who, amazingly, studied German!
For the first time, I went through that edition three times to reassure myself that yes, indeed, the language therapist (to lift the expression copyrighted by Otunba Femi Adesina for me) had really exited this existential architecture of uncertainties and serial tragedies! How would this impeccable English engineer have known that he had signed off on his column?
Apparently the last bunch of newspapers he bought and eventually did not get to read would have provided the scripts for his next column of May 4, 2017, that never was! Baba—a man of amiability, gaiety, scholarship, friendship and purity of mind— died in pursuit of grammatical quintessence and language excellence. If he had not gone to buy those newspapers…perhaps, perhaps, perhaps we would have been converging on his home in Ikorodu to dine and wine, merry and hug one another this Thursday.
He would have insisted I go the next day after satiating me with palm wine and other gastronomical condiments! Can God bring Baba back just for one day and paradise him thereafter?
Friday, April 28, 2017, put a full-stop to the aborted birthday conviviality as the bibliomaniac joined his ancestors at LUTH after upscale, but unsuccessful, intervention by specialist medics. I have a very strong feeling that if Pa Oguntunase had received prompt, efficient and therapeutic medical attention, the story could have been different. This feeling of mine now belongs to the realm of conjecture since I am not the Chief Medical Director of LUTH or its public relations officer, who would have been briefed by the hospital’s management ahead of internal and external inquisitions.
My lachrymal disposition since the shocking transition of this man who meant so much to me scholastically is not that he died or that 79 years’ life span is not ripe enough for thanksgiving and celebration in this age of existential abortion with women and men having life spans of 55 and 48 years on the average, respectively, but the circumstantial underpinnings and the finality of this reality that keep appearing to me like a mirage. Who, now, will create in me a voracious appetite for collection and poring over of multi-disciplinary books as Baba, an avid reader and emotive lover of all sorts of books, did pleasurably?
Was it possible for us to have met for the last time and exchange blessings, notions and promises? Certainly, all that is dreary and dreamy without realism of any shred! This man, who completed his secondary education in 1962 before I was born, was full of life in spite of his age to have died now—worsened by the way and manner he passed on.
If he had been ill for a while due to protracted health challenges, I would not feel this pang as much as I will do for the rest of my life, but to suddenly and fatalistically slump is irredeemably devastating to me.
We must weep for the loss of our dear ones irrespective of their ages. It is not the fact of death that matters, but the realization that there would never be any interaction again until rapture, possibly. In the case of Pa Oguntunase, a parting session and final lexical exchanges would have diminished my inconsolable and interminable anguish.
I can never forget Baba for copious reasons the most important being the commitment he showed towards the publication of my latest book entitled “Media Gaffes and Essays”. Pa Oguntunase, who began his illuminative “Mind Your Language” series in the defunct National Concord in 1984—a year preceding my own introduction of “Wordsworth” in the old Daily Times— painstakingly went through all the manuscripts for the 850-page book. With this kind of humungous pagination, you can imagine how many A-4 copies he must have perused line by line for months! Unfortunately, he could not see the final product because of logistical drawbacks: the local printer I constrainedly used messed up the book. Right now, I am in the fresh process of reprinting on remediation of all diseased fundamentals. My only consolation in Baba’s translation is the irrevocable fact that wherever the consummate bibliophile and language activist is, he sure knows how I feel and will continue to feel till the end of time over his abrupt passage.
I repeat: who will fill the vacuum that Baba has created in my knowledge, comprehension and appreciation of the English language? Nobody can do it authoritatively and with professorial panache as Pa Oguntunase did up till last month! Not even Prof. Adidi Uyo, Phrank Shuaibu, Martins Oloja, Dr. Stanley Nduagu, Ndaeyo Uko, Charles Iyoha, Sunny Agbontaen, Kola Danisa et al…who, who, who…with all due respect to these highly cerebral and grammatical friends of mine? If I had the power of resurrection, Pa Oguntunase, of course, will not spend a minute in the mortuary!
How I wish Baba had been alive to mark his 80th birthday next year amid pomp and circumstance! The rites for Pa Oguntunase hold on July 14 and 15, 2017, in Aiyedun, Ekiti, Ekiti State. May the soul of “oga mi” (as he used to fondly call me) rest in peace (not “perfect peace”)!
Anytime—and which is almost every time—I see the stupendous collection of brand-new books you gifted me at different times over the years on my desk in my mini-library in the expansive sitting-room, the feeling is indescribable! I lack words to describe our relationship, your love for me (and other people) and your exit. If you were alive, I could have run to you to provide the words!
Good night egbon mi, oga mi, teacher, friend, cousin and my English language compass and navigator. There can never be another Solomon Adebayo Oguntunase! For the second time, I wept and sobbed as I did this tribute.