I feel the need to report to my readers one or two aspects of my earache, and the rounds of treatment, I underwent to the extent that I almost became an audiologist – even of the near amateur variety. I was my than determined to not allow the purloiner of my healthy ear, my “beautiful camel” (IBK’S “high and transcendent” reverence for it), to be purloined.
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Indeed, no purloiner, and nothing, and no one, should purloin my auditory power – or better said, my galloping auditory imagination. Thus, I must share with my readers my coconut oil as well as my magic leaf therapy. Who knows how many of you will need this therapy in some distant or not distant time and day? The power of coconut oil and magic of a mystery plant – how more real than the power of reality that is stranger than fiction that it is more powerful than!

Before I share this with you, let me reproduce here with pure pleasure words of passion from representative readers and diverse sources whose prose that is better than prose helped to play their parts in the obliteration of my depression and solitude when they asserted themselves with unimaginable intensity in me.

Barrister Rotimi-John Alade
Good read, this essay!
I am reminded that when a work of literature functions successfully, the two “notes” of pleasure, and utility not only coexist but coalesce. Your essay combines both essences. One is forced to locate the seriousness of your situation in the mass of the moral and social lessons the essay conveys even though you made light of it.

This is one variety of social criticism you are popularising by which we attribute our art to some use properly to itself. It is an amalgam of philosophy, history, imagery, etc.
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Sorry about your plight. I have a young Professor friend at the Medical University in Ondo who may be of useful help. He is a foremost ENT expert on this continent. If you care, we may contact him on your behalf.

Dr Clement Eleghosa Odia
Good afternoon Prof. Your column screams loud against the systematic collapse of drug administration and the corruption eating every fibre of dignity in it. I am glad you survived the ear infection. As you recognised, many poor people in our society have paid with their lives for less. This shameful experience must not be allowed to continue.

Professor Owojecho Omoha
Reading you on a morning like this stirs the mind. You have gone into emotion studies and back again, to philosophy. Waiting to hear what IBK says of your aching ear, your literary ear, your philosophical ear; the ears of Nigerians are waiting, our great TA.
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Dr Albert Onobhayedo
These are words on marble. First-hand information about one’s health, willingly volunteered for the benefit of society, is rare in our part of the world. In a way, it is salvific because of its implications for the good of others. For the historian, it is a priceless primary source of information. It can only come from a mind that has waxed strong in truthfulness and philosophical inclinations. Thank you very much, Prof.

Professor Sonny Awheadada
Just done with my reading of your column. The health care situation in Nigeria is frightening. We pray not to fall sick. The hospitals are not hospitals and most of the medical personnel are dispensers of affliction. We pray for speedy recovery, sir.

Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano
Prof. T.A., I shared your piece in The Guardian on many platforms. One response was that you and I are just playing with English expressions, that your ear-ache was a fiction invented by you and I to create an occasion for you (and later I) to philosophise about the human organ called the Ear, and you especially because your Kakaesque musings about ear pharmaceuticals gave the game away! One special response, from my daughter, a medical student, is that you didn’t have any ear ache but an eye infection but which migrated to the place you’ve all along taken for granted —- your ear. And once the infection spread to the ear, it stimulated (your) huge grammatological productions. In short, her view is that your immune system would cure the infection but not your “semantic excesses” —- your energetic need to produce a creative profusion of strange syntactical combinations in the English language.
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My medical student daughter said that ear-infected-pained people, mostly professors, became much more scholarly, much more academic, and much more intimidatingly philosophical. Indeed, her view is that most patients of phantom or real ear problems are professors, mostly humanistic and social science professors. Her view, finally, is that there’s a link between high scholarly erudition and ear infection.

Furthermore, Prof. TA, your marvellous ear-ached essay/column and my camellogic response helped many people to briefly forget their T-pains in the ear, the eye, and the neck. My little daughter (JSS3, St. Louis See School, Kano) came to my room this morning to ask; “daddy, you and the Prof. [TA] are bastardising the English language and polluting/ruining my efforts to learn proper WAEC English.” Her next query is “Daddy and the Prof, were you writing modern English or Old English?” Ha!

Dr Paul Onomuakpokpo
Good morning, Prof. I’ve read your piece and Prof. IBK’s intellectualsing and literalising your ear affliction. It is painfully sublime. Your well-wrought piece on your health predicament, and Prof. IBK’s response to it threw into bold relief the uncanny capacity of the writer to turn pain into a source of pleasure not only for himself but also for his readers. We thank God you have been healed.

Dr. Clement Odia
Good morning, Prof. I am just done reading the second part of “My ear…” I read the piece giggling, laughing and holding my belly with gusto because of the heavy dose of innuendoes contained in the text. This is a true definition of a masterpiece crafted by two literary masters of letters. Well done, Prof.
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Professor Owejecho Omoha
I have read part two of your glorious essay. That’s all IBK could say, and that’s all your ear could hear, and your eyes could read of IBK and your aching ears. This IBK’s philosophy is enough to cure any aching ears in Nigeria, but who is ready for the clinical cures? The head is involved. The whole human trunk carrying the head is to blame for the aches in Nigeria.

Dan Chima Amadi
May God not allow us see ear defect. Thank you professor for the piece. Fine as ever and memorable. God bless you.

Professor Omajuwa Igho Natufe
Thank God, your ear-ache is healed or is healing. Don’t know if it was due to IBK’s literary treatment or your ENT specialist.

Professor Sonny Awheafeada
Good evening Sir! Prof. IBK theorised your ear-pain in a literary cum entertaining manner. We thank God that the ear has healed. Well done sir.

Saint Louis
Beautiful, beautiful; your ear article raises profound philosophical questions, leveraging ear infections, as a poignant catalyst… and the far-reaching implications.

Professor Dan Amadi
A good one. IBK played well on the ailment. I am happy you are improving, and pray you get completely healed. Regards.

Mr Excel Rabiu
“IBK’s letter framed essay consists of the rhetoric of grandeur of the grandiloquence of incongruous incongruence.” Wordsmith! You are at it again. Chai! Great analyst, how is your ear now, marvellous writer? Hope you are getting better? And IBK? How is he?

To be continued next week.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
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