By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
These are dangerous days of gross shamelessness in totalitarian Nigeria.
Pathetic flaunting of clannish power is all the rage, and a good number of supposedly modern-day Nigerians have thrown their brains into the primordial ring.
One pathetic character came to me the other day stressing that the only way I can prove to him that I am not an ethnic bigot is to write an article attacking Dele Momodu!
I could not make any head or tail of the bloke’s proposition because I did not understand how ethnic bigotry can come up in an issue concerning Dele Momodu and my poor self.
The dotty guy made the further elaboration that I stand accused of turning into a “philosopher of the right” instead of supporting the government of the day which belongs to the left!
A toast to Karl Marx in presidential jet and presidential yacht!
I nearly expired with laughter as I remembered how one fat kept man who spells his surname as “San” (for Senior Advocate of Nigeria – SAN) wrote a wretched piece on me as an ethnic bigot and compelled one boozy rascal that dubiously studied law in my time at Great Ife to put it on my Facebook wall!
The excited tribesmen of Nigerian democracy and their giddy slaves have been greased to use attack as the first aspect of defence by calling all dissenting voices “ethnic bigots” as balm on their rotted consciences.
The bloke urging me to attack Dele Momodu was saddened when he learnt that I regarded the Ovation publisher as “my brother”!
Even amid the strange doings in Nigeria of the moment I can still count on some famous brothers who have not denied me such as Senator Babafemi Ojudu who privileged me to read his soon-to-be-published memoir as a fellow Guerrilla Journalist, and the lionized actor Richard Mofe-Damijo (RMD) who while on a recent film project in faraway Canada made my professor cousin over there to know that “Uzor is my brother!”
It is now incumbent on me to tell the world of the day that Dele Momodu made me live above my means.
All the court jesters, toadies, fawners, bootlickers and ill-assorted jobbers and hirelings put together can never be renewed with enough palliatives to countermand my respect for Dele Momodu who once told our friend in London who was boasting that he was chased out of Nigeria by General Babangida because of his activism: “Babangida did not chase you out of Nigeria. You found love with an oyinbo woman and followed her to London. Leave Babangida out of the matter!”
Dele Momodu takes his writing seriously, and does let me have a look at his manuscripts – even the one written on his presidential campaign by his campaign manager.
Unlike most Nigerians who are given to half measures, Dele Momodu writes so well and insists on having different fresh eyes to look at his works.
It was a sunny day in Lagos that I got a call from the Ovation publisher that I should stand by to do some work on a biography he was about to publish.
He warned me that I have only one day to do the work, and I replied him that I was raring to go because I love impossible challenges.
The manuscript of the biography hit my email in fast seconds, and before I could say Bob Dee a fat alert burst my spare bank account!
Being a ragged-trousered philanthropist, a la the title of Robert Tressel’s proletarian novel, I protested to Dele that it’s only beer money I needed but, kind and ever rendering soul that he is, he would not hear of it.
I went to Lagos Country Club, Ikeja and sacked my young brother, Vitus Akudinobi, from his office in the club so that I can concentrate fully on the work.
Many phone calls came my way, and I told my friends to go to my divine watering-hole to wait for me there and eat and drink all that they wanted because “money is not my problem!”
More calls came from my guys and their groupies asking for all makes of booze, isiewu, nkwobi and the assorted lots, and I asked them to continue to have a ball in my absence, that I would join them later to pick up the bill!
The many friends of the poor poet were astonished at the new-fangled wealth and confidence of the new member of the idle rich class!
It was a beautiful read that Dele Momodu had on offer, and by late evening I had read the entire book, and done some minor editing here and there.
It was then up to me to conclude the task by doing routine editing – or adding “style” as Tom Sawyer would tell his buddy Huckleberry Finn in the eponymous adventure books of Mark Twain.
I chose the style option, and I was indeed in my elements, enjoying all aspects of the book until it was getting to ten in the night, and my partying friends were frantically calling for my appearance.
I was totally satisfied with my effort such that I felt proud pressing the “Send” button on my laptop for onward transmission to Dele Momodu’s email.
I then rushed to the restaurant where my friends were waiting for me, and I had hardly settled down when one of Dele’s assistants called to say that there were some issues with the script I sent!
I had to perforce reopen up my computer in the bar, and I could not immediately fathom which of the saved copies happened to be the real deal.
One then remembered that there were tell-tale signs when the computer kept warning that I was putting too much on the clipboard or whatever.
It’s such a downer that after feeling so high that one had done the best possible work only to be left with the words of James Hadley Chase in The Sucker Punch: “It’s only when a guy gets full of confidence that he’s wide open for the sucker punch.”
Lesson learnt: keep it simple – even if you have been made to live above your means by Dele Momodu!
To end, how can a wannabe state agent and government apologist, a hired askari, hope to get me to write an article against a brother who has done me no harm whatsoever? Mba!
I admire Dele Momodu immensely for his courage of conviction to tell truth to power.
Uzor MaximUzoatu is the author of God of Poetry
