The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Tatalo Alamu

  • An Illustrious scion of an illustrious clan

    An Illustrious scion of an illustrious clan

    The grim reaper continues its relentless harvesting among the best and brightest that this country has thrown up. The figures balloon daily. Sometimes, you can no longer tell who is actually living from who is truly dead. The mind and its mindless mischief take over. Sometimes, you see somebody in a crowd and you are about to hail them before suddenly realizing that they had already joined their maker. Sometimes, it is the intimidating array of dead and un-delisted people in your phone entries that wreak the havoc.

    Sometimes in a moment of madness you actually pick up the phone to call a dead person and it is their spouse who connects at the other end and you begin to stutter and mumble some mumbo-jumbo knowing fully well that you have been remiss in your duty and responsibility to both the living and the dead. Some of the people who had left were so remarkable and so colourful that you begin to imagine that they would have constituted themselves into a band of divine merry-makers in heaven. You would be glad to be there with them.

    Read Also: Ikole Union honours four illustrious indigenes

    If you graduated between 1970 and 1975 from one of our universities, you must have had many friends separated from the brood. The universities then were veritable platforms for elite bonding and we bonded very well, irrespective of clan, class or creed. The only thing we recognized was excellence and the aristocracy of the intellect. It was shortly after the civil war and it was time to reimagine Nigeria as a land fit for heroes and a haven for the Black person after two thousand years of wandering , dispersal, hiding in caves and ritual humiliation by other races.

      We mourn this morning, the departure of a great friend, Muftau Dapo Durosinmi-Etti of the notable Etti clan of Lagos. There are some friends you don’t get to meet often but when you do, it is as if you were together the previous evening. He was a man of immense charisma and mesmerizing personal magnetism. Amiable, personable and immensely likeable, so infectious was his bonhomie and the  goodwill his open personality radiated that you cannot fail to pick him out in a crowd as he cracked endless jokes and delivered bon mots in a devil may care omo Eko style. He had the gait and bravura of a natural prince.

       We met in London during the NADECO years in the home of a mutual friend who has since gone on to stratospheric heights in Nigerian politics. The parting of political ways between him and his friend did not diminish the fondness and affection. Not for once in the subsequent years did one catch him out saying an unkind word about his estranged friend or dropping an unworthy innuendo. He did not allow adversarial politics to sully his sunny disposition. The last time I met him, he had led a retinue of the Durosinmi-Etti clan to the Ikoyi home of our friend, the Odidimade himself, Chief Oladele Fajemirokun, the Baba Oba of Ifewara, to ask for the hand of his adorable daughter, Omolade in marriage to his nephew. It was a joyous and rousing occasion. It was the last snapshot. May his soul rest in peace.

  • The passing of a legend, Alagba Dele Odebiyi

    It is with a heavy heart that snooper announces the exit of his kinsman and former Chairman of the Lagos State Chapter of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Dele Odebiyi who joined the celestial procession this past week at the age of seventy eight. A remarkable village legend, gifted journalist, outstanding raconteur, talented footballer and mentor, Odebiyi was also an author of considerable repute and a teacher at several levels.

    A great dancer and formidable masquerade in his youth, the talented observer in this quiet and unassuming man would have noticed the great irony of having to exit in such a moment as the time of Coronavirus. He would have taken it in his stride, laughing at grief as his Roman noble visage mocked at adversity. He was a man in whom there was no guile or bile. There was no pettiness or nastiness about him.

    He took all the slings and outrageous arrows of misfortune in his stride. Despite the straitened circumstances of birth, he never allowed poverty or the poor cards dealt him by fate to slow him down in his quest to become somebody in the society. What he would not take was any attempt by anybody to put him down on account of the circumstances of birth or social berthing. He wore his childhood penury with elegance and an admirable elan.

    He was the quintessential self-made man, pushing his way through primary and secondary modern schools after which he combined teaching with studying to pass his Ordinary and Advanced Level examinations. At this point in time, his one-room abode was filled with so many private correspondence texts and tutorials that it felt and smelt like a cramped printing press. His extraordinary defiance inspired many. As an apprentice autodidact, yours sincerely should now.

    After gaining admission to the University of Lagos in the early seventies, he succumbed to the Owosho Virus in all its genocidal severity and had to beat a tactical retreat. But he rallied heroically never allowing the setback to destroy him. He returned almost a decade later to complete his degree. Such was the stuff of this exceptional man.

    Snooper recalls happier times in the bucolic village just before and after independence when we gathered at his feet as he regaled us with brilliant sports commentaries and tales of soccer derring-do from the cities. Despite being hard up himself, no session was complete without a remarkable gesture of hospitality. He was such a delightful elder to be with. Here was a genuine role model and mentor. May his soul rest in peace.