By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye
Professor Olatunji Dare makes writing a tribute to him enormously easy. In an interview he granted this newspaper’s, Olakunle Abimbola, last Sunday, no topic was off limits. He spoke about himself, his apprehensions, his body, his mind, his family, and any other thing a reporter would ordinarily be chary about asking, wondering whether it would not amount to an insolent invasion of his privacy. The genial mass communication professor, journalist, mentor and teacher, is completely comfortable in his own skin. He turns 80 today, having replicated many of his values in numberless mentees who have rolled out the drums to celebrate a great human being, intellectual and mentor. By being comfortable in his own skin, in a curious and disarming manner, he makes it pleasurable to talk about him and pen a tribute to him.
By global life expectancy standard, Prof. Dare has been very fortunate in a world where old people die on average at a little under 74 years using 2023 figures. In specific terms, however, he belongs to any number of 43 countries where life expectancy is 80 years upward, with Hong Kong and Macao leading with a little over 85 years for both sexes. For male life expectancy, the highest global average is about 70.8 years, with Hong Kong and Macao still leading at about 83. As far as longevity is concerned, Prof Dare has had a great and fulfilling adventure. He has fulfilled most of the goals he set for himself, except perhaps one, but unsure whether he still has the strength or time to apply himself to the demanding rigours of that unresolved assignment. It is possible to celebrate an exceptional person who achieved fame but died early, but it is to the credit of Prof. Dare that he excelled at his vocations of teaching and practicing journalism well into advanced age. As one sage said with a gutsy sense of irony, outlasting one’s enemies is the ultimate revenge.
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But much more than his longevity, most of those who celebrate and idolise Prof. Dare do so mainly because of his exceptional writing skills, his felicitous use of language, his incomparable turn of phrase. He knows this without a shred of doubt. He has been complimented more than a thousand times since he penned his first newspaper piece, his academic distinction presaging his years of excellence in newspapering and even journalism teaching. He says he squirms in discomfort when complimented, but he knows he is not being flattered. Many decades after, he still leaves his readers wondering how on earth he strings his words together, how immensely comfortable he is with the written word, such that if you were not told, you could not tell whether his writings are a product of diligent learning or they are intrinsic, or whether his essays are written by someone for whom English is mother tongue or second language.
Some writings are improved or redeemed by the sheer degree of intellectualism brought into them; others stand impeccably wholesome, resplendent and unaffected, like a full-bodied wine that leaves a lingering taste in the mouths of connoisseurs. Prof. Dare’s writings are a product of the latter. After all, “Of all those arts in which the wise excel,” wrote John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, “Nature’s chief masterpiece is writing well.” Oddly enough, the Duke of Buckingham was author of Essay on Satire.
However, for me whom the professor had mentored as if from a distance, his greatest appeal rests on the principles and values that undergird his life and vocation. That is where the example he bequeaths us lies; that is why his appeal has never waned. Had he possessed twice the skills attributed to him without the character that sets him apart, it is unlikely he would be as celebrated today as he has been. He relishes the archetypal story of his disengagement from The Guardian newspaper in 1995 during the military dictatorship of Gen. Sani Abacha. He had been asked to accompany Publisher Alex Ibru and a few other top managers of the paper to importune Gen. Abacha who had shut the paper since 1994, and obviously to also consequently abnegate the editorial independence and sanctity of the paper to the whims and caprices of the country’s military leadership. His farsighted son, he recalls, warned him of the immolating consequences of begging the dictator. But there would also be repercussions of breaking ranks with the publisher, he had told his son, especially seeing that they resided in official quarters. Two days after The Guardian team conciliated the military, Prof. Dare resigned his appointment, and walked into the wilderness with eyes wide open. Knowing him for who he is, he would still have resigned even if his family had balked and his official residence had not become a bargaining chip. That is his appeal. He may exude geniality of a very profound kind, but he is as implacable as they come when it comes to matters of principles and character. He has not changed a whit. Despite his seeming readiness to consult his son or family on far-reaching challenges, he consults only with himself when it comes to matters of principles, regardless of the cost. It is a rare gift, a great example to imitate, an indication that beyond the fascination with prose or satire, not to say multiple awards, the man and essayist has substance and mettle.
In the referenced interview with this newspaper, he comes across as incomparably candid and self-effacing. He acknowledges that age has taken a toll on him, and that his gait may not be as ramrod and steady as before. He even confesses that he has been fortunate not to have suffered “appreciable loss in cognition or mental functioning”. Except I err greatly, and having read him consistently over decades, I confess I can find no trace of the little loss in cognition he so self-effacingly speaks about. One of my brothers, a medical practitioner, read him again a few months ago and enthused that Olatunji Dare remained as stylistically vibrant as he had known him since he last read him, which was some years back. What is clear to me is that he will remain a lucid thinker and great stylist well into his late 80s. What might fail him, and nature has been kind to give him some notice having come under the knife a few times, is his body. Fortunately, for so bold and candid a man, he is not apocalyptic talking about his twilight years. I may, therefore, take the liberty to say that, yes, there will probably be some dissonance between his body and his mind as the years wear on, but he should take solace in the fact that what he has gifted us and will leave with us is the brilliance of his mind and the effervescence of his prose, not the texture of his ageing body.
That is the essence of the man we will keep, the memory we will take with us, a great and unquenchable mind, a career much garlanded and appreciated by his publics, readers and scholars alike.
His life and examples, including his battles and triumphs, not to say his defeats and regrets, all of which are potent enough to have made him a misanthrope, teach a philosophy of life and living that cannot be given or received in a classroom.
Here is wishing the great encourager and exemplar, whose poised approach to existence is truly remarkable, a happy 80th.