By OLayinka Oyegbile
Though we tremble before uncertain futures / may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength / may we dance in the face of our fears – Gloria E. AnzaldĂșa
The death of the writer Dillibe Onyeama was announced without any fanfare. It was announced as if it was just like any other death, but to many of us, especially in the arts and literary world, his death came and hit us like a thunderbolt. He was such a man who was unassuming and very quiet but boisterous in his writings.
I had read his book Nigger at Eton as a secondary school boy. In my school then we had an informal reading club. The job of the club, although we never sat down any day to hold a formal meeting, but one thing that held us all together was reading, abiding interest in reading and sharing ideas and books read. If any of us read a book and he/she felt good about such book, he/she either bring the book to school or talks about it and the hunt begins from there to find the book to read.
It has been decades ago now so I cannot readily say who it was that brought our attention to Nigger at Eton. All I remember was that the book was brought to the school and we all read it until it became dog-eared. In fact, many read it many times over. As of then, the word racism had not gained currency. So, as secondary school boys, we never thought of it as anything strange. However, we enjoyed the narrative and felt that it was a good diary of a boy finding himself in a school he was not familiar with the environment. I remember after reading the book, a few of us also felt that we could try our hands at writing about our own experiences then.
At that time many of us who were in my secondary school were going out of our âcomfort zoneâ for the first time. We were born in the north and had lived all our lives there in the north. Coming to school in Kwara State was the farthest we had ever travelled out of the north. I cannot now remember whether the country had been delineated as it is now which casts Kwara as North central. However, for us some of the experiences we were witnessing then resonated strangely with us. We had never had such before in the far and near north where we came from.
So, reading Onyeamaâs book was for us like a window to our mind to express ourselves in writing too. His story as told in that book was for us a light into the other world that he had experienced which we felt we could also relate to our own even though ours was local because we were having ours with our own people.
What of the experience of being referred to as âOmo Hausaâ or âGambariâ simply because you grew up in the north and could converse in a language your other colleagues couldnât? We considered ourselves better than them because we had a third language we could converse with whereas they only had two. We could converse in their presence without them understanding what we were saying whereas they couldnât because they could only speak two languages â English and Yoruba- which we all had in common. Our advantage was the Hausa language which we could speak in their presence without them understanding a jot of what we were saying. They could only talk about us out of earshot or behind us. But we could jolly well be discussing them right in their presence without them understanding or knowing we were talking about them.
This gave us ideas that we could also write essays if not books about our experiences. Thanks to Onyeama. He gave us that confidence and idea. That was how strong his influence was on us. His book circulated among us so well that we looked for other things he wrote even after leaving secondary school and followed him because he was part of our childhood and adulthood.
This was the memory that flooded my mind on the weekend I read about his demise. In 1988 when I went to old Anambra State for the national youth service, I was happy to have been posted to the coal city. Before then Onyeama had established Delta Publications, a publishing firm which brought to light some of the great authors of today. Among these, I clearly remember he published Chris Abaniâs first novel Masters of the Board, which won the publishing firms award for Best Book of 1983. He was also the publisher of Abubakar Gimba and a host of others. While doing my youth service in Enugu then I remember paying several visits to the office of Delta Publications because I wanted to meet him in person. Unfortunately, most of the times I went there he was always away on official functions and I never met him in person till I left Enugu nor till he died last week. However, despite not meeting him in person, we met many times over in his books and the impact he made in the publishing industry in Nigeria and the world.
He, through his books brought to the world the naked world of racism that existed in Britainâs elite schools which many had experienced but had refused to talk or write about. But as a writer, he felt compelled to expose these hidden facts which led to his being banned from the school until it was lifted last year and his book published by a mainstream British publisher under a new title. But new title or not, the truth and reality he pointed out are permanent. I read that book as a teenager and I hope I will one day lay my hands on it again and read it all over again.
To our illustrious Dillibe Onyeama, you have played your part well. Bon voyage.
..And for Biyi Bandele
I take this opportunity to say a few words about Biyi Bandele. I have found it difficult to write about his death because it is not fitting for you to write about the death of a person younger than you. I felt the same way writing about Prof Pius Adesanmi who also died a few years back.
Biyi had been a writer I love and respect. He broke boundaries and made good films, took excellent pictures and made such sterling contributions to the arts sector that one would have thought he lived longer than 54!
In the last few years, he had taken pictures of scenes in the Lagos metropolis that are inspiring and creative. He turned ordinary daily events into pictures that made one marvel and appreciate his works. He had quietly taken up the challenge of turning great books into films. Think of Half of a Yellow Sun and now Death and the Kingâs Horseman. The big question is: who is that person that would brave this great project after Biyi? Egun nla lo nigbale. Sun re, aburo.
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