My intention in the second part of this essay is to give further thought to, in fact, it is to give further insight into, Comrade Osagie Obayuwana’s impressively and elegantly delivered lecture that was lucidly and highly informative, to boot. As a mentee, a strong mentee, of the late Comrade Jonathan Ihonde, his lecture was infected positively with revolutionary politics.

Like his late mentor, he embraces at the same time the ideal and actuality of revolutionary politics with burning feeling of a rebel who seeks continuously for the masses justice, the kind of justice that will destroy the primary laws of the nature of the ruling rich who un-selflessly and ruthlessly do as they please with the people, especially the downtrodden, in the land. His central theme is his opposition to the feelings of awkwardness and wickedness of the powerfully rich.

Before I enter briefly or fully Comrade Obayuwana’s thematic mind (along the line of Comrade Jonathan Ihonde’s socialist thematisation in Hotel De Jordan) let me give attention to some readers who shared their thoughts on last week’s column which this present one is a continuation of – as already indicated aforesaid. Be patient with my suspense of you a-while, dear our readers.

Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano (Radical Structuralism/Post-structuralism Scholar)
Prof. TA, frontline scholar-columnist, I have read your interesting essay on the late Jonathan Ihonde, the labour leader and activist. I will, within the week, develop the idea that you are not terribly interested in the persona that was/is Mr Ihonde, but only, I will argue, in his function as a structural ploy that/which holds your narrative as an integrated piece. Years before your essay, Niccolo Machiavelli also used the concept of “The Prince” as a literary device to plot a narrative of cunning, power politics, and a new vision of ruler-ship in a treacherous political and cultural climate.

Prof. TA, typical of an erudite literary-critical professor, you deployed the “figure” of Dr “Imagined” Obayuwana as a “free indirect discourse” reflector-character in order to create a cunning memorial memorisation that’s just a fictional reflector-narrator your figurisation of the deceased, extinct “stream of consciousness-type” flat character. It seems to me  that you’re only figurally interested in Mr Ihonde as a corpse, a dead man locked safely in the crypt (that’s your narrativisation of The Dead Activist).

That is, you wouldn’t have been interested in him to that extent if he were alive. But isn’t that what literature is all about, as the metaphorical poet, Edward Tylor is apt to remind us? Your essay “speaks” on the condition that Mr. Ihonde is (safely) dead (for your essay to emerge and stake a coherent, well-written, and well-figurally created narrativist position. Anyway, I am still thinking through this perspective.
Professor Owojecho Omoha (“Anatomy of Myth” Scholar)

TA, whoever celebrates a friend alive re-awakes the humanities in Funeral Without Death – my thought and ANA 1991 Poetry Prize Shortlist. I took the title of the poetry collection from Idoma mythic tradition. Mythically, and to this moment that graves rise like stalking grains everywhere in my country, the funeral of the Idoma king (not the politician), is physically celebrated at the installation ceremonies. This informs our oral tradition that, at death, the king in Idoma is believed not to have died.

He undertakes a journey of no return. Whoever is drunk with the syndrome of a “befitting burial, for his/her father, mother, child and relations, should turn the once unbendable face back at the column of denials before the death. The “feelings and attitudes of physical intoxication” of their wealth arrogantly depict” their greed engendered (and still engendered up to now”) in this piece of writing – your writing, TA, that Obayuwana’s lecture generated.

Remembering Jonathan Ihonde, gleaner of poetics of memories, happily re-awakes my thoughts, your thoughts, our thoughts, of (and about) those who suffer, and will continue to suffer among us in our country unless something drastically is done – now or in no long time away.

Bob Majiri (Author, Journalist, Publisher) 
Very interesting, Very well put, sir. Most of us were in primary school then, and often hooked on Hotel De Jordan, relating with Chief Ajas, Gberegedegbeo, Bob Alan, Brefa, Casino Manager, Atatikolo, Dr Milo Muro, Chief Igho, Kokori and Idemudia – all the created characters – more than the writer of the series himself. It was often because we were mostly hooked and transfixed to the end, and to join in singing the theme song of Hotel De Jordan: “Poor man dey suffeer/monkey dey work/baboon dey chop…” In the end we chanced upon the name “Jonathan Ihonde….. Producer:  It is good, great Prof, that he has been remembered and honoured even posthumously, and his name put there in the proper perspective. Thanks to you, Dr Obayuwana, the family, associates, friends and all those, who were present at the event that you grandly captured. The suffering he actively opposed is still very much with us though. 

These respective thoughts of the listed readers shall at the appropriately auspicious time be re-visited. The gleaner shall do so bearing in mind the import of his gleanings. But that shall be after his giving vent to the causes which conspired to inspire Comrade Osagie Obayuwana’s un-erring judgment in his worthily full-proof Comrade Jonathan Ihonde’s first memorial lecture.

The gleaner hopes that Comrade Osagie Obayuwana will not in the end chafe at being thought of as the gleaner thinks of him. Then it shall also be known if he agrees or disagrees with the remarkably remarkable Prof. IBK who describes the gleaner’s sumptuously sumptuous style in this manner: “Your literary rhetorical waxings are powerfully strongish!” 

By the way, the Galactic Federation is increasingly incensed (and rebelliously so) with our country’s disaster-people of disastrous creations! Comrade Jonathan Ihonde in his grave cannot but understand this turn of phrase.  
To be continued. 
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.