A lecturer at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Sola Balogun in this tribute writes on the life and times of Prof Funke Ogunleye, nee Adesina, who died on December 26, 2015
Barely two hours to the new year, I received a text message from Emerson Golbert, a former senior colleague in the media, saying: While we woke up this morning, some other people were taking their last breath…we have cause to thank our God.
This short but instructive message at the twilight of 2015 immediately sent me thinking. I started meditating on the mystery of breathing in one moment, and that of losing the same breath in another moment. I concluded that it was natural for human beings to experience both living and dying, since there must be a time to live and another time to die. The implication of this natural phenomenon is that everyone who witnessed birth must also witness death, and that no one on earth can live forever.
Earlier on Saturday, December 26, last year, Prof Foluke Matilda Ogunleye, a renowned theatre practitioner, a don, scholar and media operator lost her breath suddenly. She died as a result of injuries she sustained in a ghastly auto crash, which occurred on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
Ogunleye was in company of three others, including her husband, Segun, her brother in-law and their driver. As fate would have it, sources said both Ogunleye and her brother in-law died, while her husband and the driver survived. It was reported that the two men who survived the crash are still receiving treatment at the University Teaching Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan.
Prior to this unfortunate incident, I had looked up to contacting the late professor on phone, mainly to welcome her to the country after a fairly long trip overseas. My mission was to make enquiries on the next edition of the biennial Ife International Film Festival which she single-handedly initiated in 2007. The festival has since recorded three successful editions (2007, 2009 and 2012 respectively) at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife. Today and, regrettably, I can no longer contact Ogunleye, except in the dream world.
Sadly, too, whatever dreams she might have had for the next edition of the festival may not be realised, except the university authority and the Department of Dramatic Arts where she trained and worked before her death continue from where she stopped.
A soft-spoken, quiet and unassuming scholar, the late Ogunleye was a rare achiever who blazed the trail in her chosen profession to record so many feats. She was also a devout Christian who used her media and theatre practice to serve her creator before moving on to the academia for a long and fulfilling career. She was able to reach the peak of her career at a relatively young age, as she crowned her academic profile with an inaugural lecture on Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at the age of 50.
As one of her major achievements, Ogunleye’s inaugural lecture titled: Thespians and cineates as engineers of the Nigerian soul, was the second of its type from the Dramatic Arts Department of the Obafemi Awolowo University. Her own lecture came 32 years after the first one; The Critics in Society: Barthes, Leftocracy and other Mythologies, which was delivered by Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka in 1980. As an attendee of the amazing lecture, which held at the Oduduwa Hall of the university, I noticed how Ogunleye celebrated the Theatre and Mass Media as functional tools of social change and nation building. She also used the lecture to disclose how sentimental or fallacious people can be whenever the profession of Theatre or Drama is being discussed.
Ogunleye confessed how much she held the same sentiment as far back as 1978 when she was newly admitted to study Drama, only to discover that the course was by far more than an exercise in acting, dancing and writing of plays. To her amazement, Ogunleye (who was then a teenager as Miss Foluke Adesina), soon discovered she would need to learn technical theatre which entailed learning something about other areas such as electricity, design, carpentry, lighting, set construction, management and directing.
As if these were not enough, Ogunleye hinted of how every Drama student was also required to know something about human anatomy- an area which ordinarily should be exclusive to Scientists or Medical students.
Upon graduation and cutting her teeth in her chosen profession, Ogunleye for many years combined her scholarly works with theatre and media practice. She wrote many drama scripts in addition to acting in many video films and producing quite a good number of plays on stage. In her efforts to sustain the Ife International Film Festival, Professor Ogunleye sought funds from local and international agencies, and went ahead to attract participants (filmmakers and scholars) from different parts of the globe, including United States, Britain, South Africa, Swaziland, France, Botswana, South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Ghana and Uganda. The festival has not only promoted sharing of knowledge among scholars and students of different backgrounds, it has equally served as a veritable teaching tool as well as an avenue for prospective scholars and researchers to regain their focus and direction in the fields of drama and film.
On a more important note, Ogunleye had hinted that the focus of her academic career was to use Drama, Theatre and Mass Media as veritable instruments to improve the society in general. In her robust academic career, Ogunleye was able to publish more than sixty articles in reputable academic journals and books, cutting across performing arts, the media and the society. In the same vein, the late professor published many plays and relevant textbooks on African Video Film. Some of these include The Innocent Victim (2003), A Little Attack of Pregnancy (2003), Nest in a Cage (2004), Transformation and Advancement: The Video Film in Africa(2012), African Film: Looking Back and Looking Forward (2012), Africa Through the Eye of the Video Camera (2008) and African Video Film Today (2003).
As a demonstration of her Christian principles, Ogunleye also wrote and produced many plays for religious education. She has in the process, helped in popularising Christian drama among film producers and theatre practitioners alike. The professor did not just limit herself to creative and scholarly work, she also practised journalism to a reasonable level, having co-edited the publications of the American Studies Association of Nigeria with other renowned academics. In 2003, she was appointed the substantive editor of the association. During her career, Ogunleye also received various grants, awards and distinguished international academic fellowship. Some of these are Fellowship of the African Humanities Institute (African-American Cinema) from the University of Legon, Ghana and Northwestern University, Chicago; Fellowship of the Visual Literacy Institute in Maputo, Mozambique and The Prince Claus Fund for Development for the sponsorship of the Ife International Film Festival.
Part of the mission of the late matriarch of Nigerian theatre was to use the arts to build the society. She had used many of her works and papers to preach the gospel of theatre or drama for social change. She insisted that art does not exist only for pleasure, but that it should perform a functional role with the objective of affecting man positively. To this end, she summed up the totality of her inaugural lecture in the following words: The rebuilding of the crumbled moral and socio-political base of modern Nigeria should, among other things, form the major concern of Nigerian Thespians and Cineastes…we must continue to utilize all resources and opportunities at our disposal in a more sustained fashion to engineer and re-engineer the souls of our nation and its people.
There is no doubt that Ogunleye would be missed by most Nigerians, particularly her family members and the theatre community which she left behind. As a distinguished professor of Theatre and Media Arts, Ogunleye has, undoubtedly, impacted positively on the academia, training students and churning out numerous research works that would be of immense benefits to many generations to come. In fact, she would be missed greatly on the global platform by the community of film scholars, critics and producers. May her gentle soul rest in the bosom of the lord.