I’d returned home in the early hours of Sunday, March 10, because of the gubernatorial elections that took place across the country the previous day. I managed to crash to bed with the instruction to my family that I should be woken up at 8am to enable me prepare to attend that day’s church service. At the church, I struggled to stay awake throughout the service and even asked myself why I decided to put myself through the torture. Perhaps I should have forfeited going to church and slept knowing one cannot cheat nature.
It was in this insomniac position that I got back home after service and decided to go back to sleep. Around 4pm or so, I woke up to have the first meal of the day. I picked my phone to see if I’ve missed any calls. There was none. I turned to Facebook to see what was going on there. And there it was! My brother in the United States posted “Payo, how? No, it can’t be true. Why?” Payo, is the nickname we all call Prof Pius Adesanmi. I was confused. What can’t be? As of then, I’ve not heard about the crash of any airline. I scroll down to see what others were posting, then I saw Richard Ali, a friend and writer based in Abuja. Then a few others too, and I was praying it won’t be true and that it was just one of those Facebook fake postings. I then went to a news website and read about the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines. However, as of then there was no mention of names of those on board except their nationalities. I spotted that of a Nigerian who was described as a United Nations diplomat. Pius was not a diplomat, he was an academic. I heaved a sigh of relief. However, I know that he carried a Canadian passport, but I prayed he was not on board.
Not minding the time difference I decided to call my brother in the US who was closer to Pius than I was. Luckily, he picked the call and I went straight with a question on his posting and he confirmed my fear that Pius was on board and was carrying his Canadian passport! I was shattered.
Pius was such a lively and razor sharp intelligent guy. Our paths crossed in the 90s when he was a postgraduate student at the University of Ibadan. I was then at The Guardian. Every Saturday which was an off day for me was always spent criss-crossing Lagos metropolis in search of any art events. It was during one of those art escapades that I met him and a host of others. Right from then he was very vocal but not offensive nor obtrusive. His interventions were always insightful and profound. Those were the days when Saturdays in Lagos were full of fun, events and we end up at some watering holes debating the state of the country’s arts, politics and so on.
As it is said, twenty boys can never play together for twenty years. We all went our different ways. Thanks to the social media, we later reconnected. Last year, when a friend in the US contacted me to contribute a chapter to a book on Nigerians in the Diaspora, Pius was one of the first I contacted. I sent a message to his Facebook inbox and after about two weeks without any response I told Seun Akioye who had a few months back conducted an interview published in this newspaper with him.
He gave me his email and pronto I sent him a mail, which he replied shortly after. I was able to interview him online to meet the deadline for the book. His death exactly a week ago is still a shock to many of us. What else can one write? Throughout the week the social media have been inundated with so many tributes. There is nothing one can say that can bring back the dead. Pius was larger than life. He was everywhere and had strong views about many things and people ailing our country. He would be remembered as a sound mind who laboured through his rather short life span to rail at every bad thing.
Who would have thought that death was so near after escaping the same fate while travelling last year along the treacherous Oyo-Ogbomoso Road? What that treacherous road couldn’t do, the sky did. We shall never forget.
The title of this piece is an adaptation of one of his often used expletive (?) against our tormentors. I say iyalaya iku, shame unto death. We shall not grieve long over Pius because he lived a good life and affected many lives. These are his legacies and testimonies.
Sleep well, aburo. Eat what they eat up there and drink whatever they drink because you deserve the best because you’re one of our bests. God comfort you wife, daughter and aged mother.
Iyalaya iku…