Gbemiga Ogunleye – Of Resurrection And Insurrections

Gbemiga Ogunleye – Of Resurrection And Insurrections

By 

Mike Asuquo 

Dear Gbemiga,

We had – presumably – considered your absence from the platform of WHEN THE FLAGSHIP LED as one of those things.

The Flagship platform is not a full-time engagement. It is a virtual club where we use our pens – or the sundry approximations – to monitor what the more active members are doing by charting the direction of the conversations with their posts and comments.

It is a rather semi-formal forum, where the exchanges of pleasantries are wont to be seen as an abuse of privilege – if nothing else.

This way, we had grown further apart – even in our vaunted proximity!

Before I continue, let me put a little premise to the context – so that the non- members of our cherished platform who have cause to read this piece, may not think this man had dalliance with a whiff of Igbo or its more invidious liquid cousin – KOLOS or the other sundry variant of the brain Turner – or Tuner!

Gbemiga Ogunleye had joined us on the Features Desk at The Guardian in the early 1990s or thereabout – as as a rookie with muscular ambition and the large heart of pro-journalist. It was at a time when young journalists needed to survive the TEST – a period of trial without pay as a rookie, when one had to prove one’s mettle with publishable assignments and scripts before one’s letter of employment could be formally handed over to him or her on merit. Call it a probation – or whatever you wished. It was a period that young and fired up Nigerians hungered for The Guardian dream and proved themselves with their mettle, grit and perseverance to join the flagship!

Gbemiga came with his own dreams and drive and purpose. Shortly after, some of us moved on – and away – to greener pasture and Gbemiga Ogulneye, Emmanuel Efeni, Collins Obibi and Nike Sotade – the only female in the line up – and others rose up to the challenge.

When the time came, Gbemiga also moved on as did others too with a desire to raise their wallets and add colour and sheen to their ceevees. Gbemiga went to the PUNCH newspaper and rose to be Editor of the stable and more. He played on the top notch of the media industry before branching off – and away – from the media to become a lawyer – with that thrilling appellation that title-crazy Nigerians adore – BARRISTER! Pardon the lengthy background!

Gbemiga was doing well – by Nigeria’s non-graded system until we read his first-hand report about a trip to Neverland – with a bouquet to garnish the tale!

We were jolted by the deathly miss of a brother and his miraculous “resurrection”! In fact, his Second Coming!

We thank the good Lord for His grace and mercy; for giving you a second chance at life – and living.

We can feel your days of dread and the haunting spectre of your helplessness!

Helpless in the face of the laryngeal affliction. Helpless in the face-off with our multitude of “mere consulting clinics”. Helpless in the face of glaring personal financial ills and incapacities. Helpless in the face of the dreadful status quo as the poverty capital of the world. Helpless in the breakdown of our once thriving family bonds and the creeping overlord of the nuclear family – which grossly exposes the faulty foundation of our brazen individualism and its shallow roots! Helpless in the face of patent misgovernance where those in charge of our healthcare are the first in line to sprint abroad at the slightest hint of illness! How do you even vocalise the pain and anguish when the chord ceases to obey the instructions of the throat? How do you even cry – to exorcise the pain trapped within and to share your helplessness even with your loved ones. Pity!

I count you among the blessed in our country – for so many people even with less burdensome ailments never enjoyed the grace of resurrection post-surgery!

Yours is a story with a graceful ending – worthy of an Owambe as a fitting crown or gem. Even less fortunate brothers have gone the miles to display their gratitude for surviving such a medical feat in our shambolic healthcare industry.

While we join the heavens to rejoice for the extra time deservedly added to your
eventful life, most of us who read your own ill-health odyssey will hold you out as a favoured son of the almighty – in this time and clime!

For you “resurrected” about five hours after the surgery! The more popular resurrection – came after three days and a crucifixion when Judas betrayed Jesus Christ to the Jews! The reverberations and the subsequent chain reactions are still here with us after 2000 years!

But your own resurrection is remarkable because it has come amidst the sundry insurrections taking our dear land hostage.

Remember the dreadful warning of the famed English playwright, William Shakespeare that when sorrows come, they come not in single file but in battalion! Our insurrection appears to have burst the dam and is now flooding the unprotected lands beyond the artificial embankment!

In time past, our insurrections were associated with coupists, mutineers, militants and factions of the standing army or other paramilitary entities. No so again.

Now, the insurrections in our midst have taken on a more invidious and non-human forms. They are virtual ghosts and evil spirits attacking not only the physical being but erecting road blocks to trap the desperate and fleeing hordes from the main theatre of the social bombardments!

I know for a man just back from such a long and arduous journey to the great beyond, it sounds rather uncharitable to remind you of the stifling circumstances that goaded you into the unfortunate medical sojourn! How can I shy away from sharing the truth of our existential threats – the sort that created the empirical situation that would have been avoidable in saner climes. You already have first-hand experiences in the Medicaid hub but who knows if it’s the news of your affliction that seem to have driven our elephantine-footed NAFDAC to go after the kidnappers in the drug dens and markets! But even this move has acquired a patent-medicine shop approach to their grand intentions. Now, the drug markets in Lagos, undoubtedly one of the biggest on our West Coast, has been closed for months. Without any declared entry strategy, you can’t expect a tidy exit strategy as the black market drug takes on a form which – like everything else Nigerian – would become another monster with the drug enforcement officials living large as the sick and the vulnerable become fodder to the death industry.

Tell me my brother, is unemployment not up in arms? What about food, transportation and housing? Where are the vaunted remedial state interventions following Jagaban’s “subsidy is gone” declarations with brazen finality! Tell me about any of the promises that Asiwaju made while on the hustings that have been fulfilled – in the positive way!

I hope surviving the medical magic in Kaduna will not come with its own Shylock’s request for a pound of flesh near the heart? I hope one of the post-surgery requirements may not be a semi-permanent re-location to the north – while all the attendant kidnappings, Fulani herders invasion, banditry and militancy add to the norm of extortion by sundry uniform men – and women! And the fiddlers in Aso Rock who fret while Nigeria burns!

Some of us are now living in dread of life as our common grounds have been seized by the medical epidemic in our midst as the sirens blow to announce with pared decorations about the quantum of the invading force from the gods of the old age and their county councils!

Most of us now go about with Dutch courage about the perils that await our daily grind!

You were not alone when you continually mustered “not my portion” during your ordeal as you invoked the spiritual guards to stave off a seeming fait accompli with the conquering conquistadors of the after world. We know you had nothing to do with the Mexicans and their Aztec roots, but when our beings are overwhelmed and we can’t cope with the odds that are heavily stacked against us and our families and our loved ones and our communities, its normal to seek help from forces we deemed mightier than the one we know and can contemplate.

Welcome back to life dear brother!

Now, no need to remind you about tidying up the little affairs that seem to have added to your regrets as the final eclipse seem set to draw the curtain on your eventful earthly Nollywood epic as the surgeon’s knife hovered like the guillotine!

We are happy you overcame death – in such a dramatic fashion. We thank the Lord that your voice has found its chord and the tunes and vibes can shout HALLELULUIA without any restraint!

You’re a most blessed dude. Few men in our country can lay claim to the goodness of the Lord in our lives as exemplified by your miraculous second coming.

As I read the story of your survival and its morbid import, my mind raced to our days at the Features Desk of The Guardian and your doggedness to overcome the chore and to excel. I remembered the crew of the extended family – Edwin Baiye, Felix Abugu, Sina Ogunbambo, Emmanuel Efeni, Collins Obibi, Nike Sotade and, of course, the god mother, Harriet Lawrence and how she would have received the bad news concerning your goodself! There are other stars I must have left out from the galaxy. I know most of us would have been hit terribly!

Say us well to the tot whose cries to the heaven obviously contributed to the mercy that pulled you back from the brink of life – or death.

I guess that triumphal recall – to be in our midst – is a fitting reminder that you have some unfinished business of fellowship with your family – the nuclear and extended – your community and the world.

Keep your purpose in view dear brother and continue chipping at it.

Some of us may have to come to you for consultation – if we can’t afford your consultancy about the dark pathways after our sleep! We can’t deny that the queue is real and as our woes in the country continue to deteriorate.

You’re a living metaphor that God reigns – and reigns supremely – for who can contest His goodness and grace when all the forces that should rise to your aid in your time of greatest need become impotent and helpless as our government and its healthcare system and even the people who confess their greatest love and affection?

I can’t stop myself from joining in the chorale to praise the divine grace that pulled you from the brink and gave you life after life – and the fortitude to pen your odyssey to the land that the ancient Great greats never returned to regale us of their exploits!

HAPPY NEW LIFE MY DEAR BROTHER!

MAY THE BLESSINGS OF GOD REIGN IN YOUR LIFE AND THE EXPANDING FRONTIERS OF YOUR OWN LINEAGE!

Bless you and yours and ALL!
MIKE ASUQUO

(for and on behalf of the family of the FEATURES DESK of THE GUARDIAN of the days that are difficult to forget!).