By Adams Bouddih (Originally published in The Sun)
It might have been wishful thinking when BB sang the dirge of the dictators around him in Requiem for the last Kaiser. Ironically, the Kaisers are still around and would learn of BB’s requiem with guessable pleasure.
When BB an outspoken critic wrote The Most Cruel Death of the Talkative Zombie, about the dehumanised race (the living dead or zombies) that he and his kith and kin had been reduced to; or is it the talkative zombies they have become, he didn’t think he would die in the cruel way he did. BB was talkative – or better still, penkative - as his pen never stopped flowing while bemoaning the plight of the downtrodden. But he didn’t know he would die in so cruel a way. Indeed, “What a way to die?” - to borrow from another prolific writer and teacher, Dr. Linus Asong.
Though BB differed with the way the Anglophone struggle was led or handled, he never wished it away. He highlighted the issues each time he had the opportunity. In fact, one can say, it was one of the outstanding themes in most of his works. From the day he proclaimed his tigritude in the Writer as Tiger until the tiger was mowed down in the cruelest way on March 8, he upheld the Anglophone struggle.
A social critic, BB was an anti-status-quo man. Once when told by this scribbler that he has moved from a literary critic to a social critic, BB gave a raucous laughter and in his usually hoarse and staccato speech declared: “Literature is life, literature is society.”
As a prolific writer, literary icon or role model, a biography of BB would have had to come some time, may be after retirement. And the best person to do that would have been his ‘best pupil’ who was referred to as ‘BB’s clone,’ Dr. Hilarious Ambe. Ambe so admired his mentor that he talked and acted like BB. Many are those who used to recognise BB’s, high pitch voice, same emphasis on particular words, and would hilariously conclude: “BB is here,” only to get there and find a darker younger person, talking and acting like BB.
Was it then foresight on the part of BB that Ambe might not live long to write his biography? BB went ahead to write and publish his Autobiographical Narcissus with titled “Disgrace.” Disgrace, indeed, for one to die at the same time as his clone or the one who wanted to immortalise him by adopting his manner of speaking and acting.
Someone Tell Soyinka BB Is No More
BB was a great admirer of the Great Wole Soyinka, his mentor. Each time an interlocutor mentioned Soyinka, BB would celebrate one way or the other: by offering a round or jumping to his feet to perform a feat of the Obasinjom dance.
Each time one mentioned “obscurantist writing,” even if directed at someone else, BB would get erratic. “Everybody has their style!” I remember him barking at me once. BB used to guzzle beer and draw on cigarettes with his friends and contemporaries. He, out of some sort of atavism, stopped smoking. Was this so that he could live long? He even stopped swigging beer; and then started sipping wine - once in a blue while. This, BB told us, was so that he could take control of his life.
But his death by some other means than carelessness with his life, has demystified, or is it simplified death.
BB feared no one. And was ever quick to remind you of that. Operating within a dictatorial system like ours, where opponents and people with opposition sentiments have their deaths arranged or were simply smouldered, BB seemed not to have been afraid of death.
But BB’s death with Ambe and Kwasen Gwangwa’a, came through someone who did not know him and couldn’t have wished him dead. Why did the slaughter timber truck driver couldn’t have stooped somewhere to buy the delicacies offered by Edea locals; like “mitumba,” cocoanuts or smoked fish? Why did BB and co not stop somewhere to miss that split second when the truck would crash into their hired car?
Now we are compelled to ask stupid questions like: “BB, why didn’t you call the US embassy to book for your visa?” “Why could you not change your appointment time by just a phone call?, and so on and so on. But the Divine Designer, the almighty God, the master of life and death might have so designed it.
UB Again
After Charles Namma, John Ebanja, Endeley, all in quick succession, when the death of Prof. Njiki was announced, many echoed: Who is next? While at The Post newspaper, and since it began, BB insisted I read his poems and other write-ups before they are published. “From the way you write, I sense you did Literature,” he averred. When I dropped my feeble attempts at poetry, he told me I had failed in my attempt at poetry. I then started referring to myself as an attempted or failed poet at which he would laugh heartily.
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