By Tony Afejuku

The gleaner-glimpser-glitterer continues what he considers a unique conversation with a fervent reader, whom he also regards as a uniquely critical judge – serially speaking – of this column. It was his pious wish not to disclose his identity, but the charmingly fearless reader thought otherwise – for the reasons already richly stated.

Gleaner: I trust that you are ready and free now to let me have more than a glimpse of your treasure as an efficient journalist or ex-journalist and as an effective scholar. Or do you still need to request the gleaner to extend your time-out?

Reader: Oliver will not mind asking for more….

Gleaner: Ha! Ha! Ha! Oliver, please don’t…. let’s get this done with now… after our thirty six hours adjournment…. Give us rich and elaborate thoughts on your journalism years and experience, your journalism theory, and your scholastic experience or any specific commentary on your accomplishment as a scholar, as a professor. Employ rich and elaborate imagery as you deem fit.

Reader: You want me to dig deep to convince you and your audience, I mean our audience, that I have a life worth examining, and two professions that will ever be worthy of our audience’s estimation without fantasies that would threaten to diminish or destroy their essence, the very essence of what they stand for as key figures and images of our growth and development as a people and as a nation.

Gleaner: Interpret my request how you will, but present a charmingly ingenuous portrait, a compelling portrait of the young man as a journalist who left journalism for academia, and who should amplify his perceptions and theories (or theory) of both worlds. Of course, I expect the influence and role of IBB in all that you have seen and experienced as part of what I expect you to offer. I hope this reference to IBB will not sting you out of your theoretical or practical wits. And what do I know about you and IBB? How does IBB come into the picture out of the blue now? Why should he? Another reader has prompted me to put what I am saying now before you; after reading the earlier series. Am I attempting to crush as many birds as possible with one stone?

The gleaner asks you pointedly: What relationship do you or did you share with IBB? How has he influenced or affected your trajectory or career? And why is he suddenly coming into the picture, into this conversation, now? These are re-statements. Not repetitions. It is the gleaner-glimpser-glitterer’s pious desire, his piously wholesome desire, to hear you, to hear your voice, your journalistic and writerly voice, set your answer honestly and magnanimously.

Reader: I will do so honestly and faithfully. Now let me state unflatteringly that as a Reporter, I was assigned to cover the visit of IBB to Benue State in1988. That was my closest media relationship with IBB. As a military President, IBB leveraged, specialised in, military psychology. He studied the minds of Nigerians and like in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah, he discovered that it was not the type of government that was Nigeria’s problem. Nigeria’s problem had been and has continued to be leadership. That was why DFRRI or Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure under IBB was the most famous of his programmes. Literature is my primary discipline and psychology is my special interest and focus. My areas of scholarly research are madness, emotion, memory and attention studies in literature; literature and medicine, and literature and law. In a way, therefore, I share cognitive abilities with IBB.

IBB was called “Maradona” for his cognitive abilities to discern individual minds. If my escape or surviving the many traps set for me, from journalism to academia, is what you mean or imply by sharing some attributes with IBB, you are not too far from the truth.

Gleaner: It must be remarked here that you want our audience to see you as a being who has a strikingly deceptive personality similar to that of IBB, the master dribbler, whose political actions were more often than not those of a pre-eminent manipulator – and dissembler. Am I right to remark that this conversation is revealing you as such in journalism and academia?

Reader: No, no, no. My frankness and candidness are qualities that vicious characters in life and in fiction never accept and tolerate. They always want to destroy, eliminate, all owners and possessors of such virtuous qualities. All persons of truth are viciously treated everywhere in life or in fiction. You are more, far more, experienced than me in these matters as a scholar, poet-prophet and columnist-prophet of penetrating truth – that you are, gleaner-glimpser-glitterer. I was thrown out of journalism because of my truthfulness. Or, better, I jumped out of journalism because of my truthfulness. The traps there could not trap me. In academia I have equally refused to be “a prey to fortune-hunters….”, to employ your words.

Gleaner: Remember that the gleaner wants full disclosure…. Or is it not part of your calculation any more?

Reader: How can I forget to fulfil my promise to give the gleaner a good deal of disclosure? I am enjoying the conversation, and feeling getting carried away….

Gleaner: Maybe you are getting carried away by the garden-like or orchard-like quality of the conversation.

Reader: Fully yes. Now let me fully disclose – and glitteringly so perhaps in the manner of the glitterer – why I left journalism for academia where my mettle has stood me and itself in good stead over the years “despite the gross viciousness everywhere in our academia,” as you put it in your straight words in the course of our happy conversation so far. I won’t fail or disappoint you, gleaner-glimpser-glitterer in whom all of us your readers are well pleased, or must be well pleased. “Professor Owojecho Omoha is here speaking for them”. I cannot stop quoting you. I cannot stop borrowing your linguistic mannerism.

To be concluded next week.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.