I recently had an urgent message for my father who passed away on June 21, 2009. While transmuting with a parapsychologist who was trying to help me contact him by telepathy, I came in contact with Gani Fawehinmi, who passed away on September 5, 2009. I had interviewed Gani twice. Once in 2000 while he was in London for medical check up. The other was at his home in Ikeja in 2002. I was excited to chat with him.
Dr. Damages: Were you disappointed that I am probably the only scribe who did not write a tribute to you?
Gani: Who are you?
Dr. Damages: It’s me, Dr. Damages.
Gani: Are you someone I should have known?
Dr. Damages: Yes. I interviewed you twice.
Gani: Ok.
Dr. Damages: I’m one of your admirers.
Gani: Join the line.
Dr. Damages: So you don’t remember me?
Gani: No.
Dr. Damages: So much for internet punditry.
Gani: You said what?
Dr. Damages: Never mind.
Gani: No, if you are someone I should know, please tell me.
Dr. Damages: Forget it.
Gani: If you say so.
Dr. Damages: Nigeria had not given anyone your kind of funeral since Zik’s death.
Gani: Whose fault is that?
Dr. Damages: Did you see how it turned into a spectacle?
Gani: I had left the building before it happened.
Dr. Damages: People were falling over each other trying to find a suitable adjective with which to qualify you.
Gani: The masses cannot live on adjectives.
Dr. Damages: How did that make you feel?
Gani: Nothing makes a man as helpless as death.
Dr. Damages: What would you have done?
Gani: There were people I would have loved to smack with my shoe for what they said.
Dr. Damages: People like Ibrahim Babangida?
Gani: People like you and many others.
Dr. Damages: You were buried in a gold-plated casket. Just like Michael Jackson.
Gani: It was not my wish.
Dr. Damages: What was your wish?
Gani: Something simple.
Dr. Damages: But you picked your coffin.
Gani: The glass coffin.
Dr. Damages: Why glass?
Gani: So that everyone can see.
Dr. Damages: That you’re really dead?
Gani: Just like you too will die one day.
Dr. Damages: God forbid.
Gani: God forbid what?
Dr. Damages: Me dying.
Gani: Will you live forever?
Dr. Damages: I’m the one doing the interviewing.
Gani: Please yourself.
Dr. Damages: How did you get into the gold-plated coffin?
Gani: That’s what happens when the government gets involved.
Dr. Damages: You even changed clothes many times.
Gani: I did?
Dr. Damages: Yes.
Gani: And you were not scared?
Dr. Damages: I wasn’t there.
Gani: Oh, I thought you saw me changing clothes.
Dr. Damages: Did you want the Obafemi Awolowo University to have your body?
Gani: I had wanted anybody who could put it to good use.
Dr. Damages: What kind of use could that be?
Gani: Use it scare the likes of Obasanjo.
Dr. Damages: Why were you buried in Ondo?
Gani: I hail from there.
Dr. Damages: But you ran away from there as soon as you could.
Gani: Death leads everyone home.
Dr. Damages: Did Babangida’s boys actually spread in your prison room the chemicals that caused your cancer?
Gani: No.
Dr. Damages: What caused it?
Gani: Smoking.
Dr. Damages: You mean cigarettes?
Gani: I smoked too much cigarettes.
Dr. Damages: So that accusation by your wife isn’t true.
Gani: No.
Dr. Damages: Is it like Fela’s wife saying that he got AIDS from something the government spread in his prison room and not from his numerous women?
Gani: Don’t blame the poor widow.
Dr. Damages: Why? Because death is a bitch?
Gani: Death brings all of a man’s bragging to an end.
Dr. Damages: Does it make all things right?
Gani: A lot of wrong things happen when you die.
Dr. Damages: Like what?
Gani: Like sitting here and answering your silly questions.
Dr. Damages: What would you rather be doing?
Gani: Decaying?
Dr. Damages: Say what?
Gani: Reincarnating.
Dr. Damages: People are searching for the next Gani.
Gani: Good luck to them.
Dr. Damages: Where should they search?
Gani: Under Aso Rocks.
Dr. Damages: Where?
Gani: In themselves.
Dr. Damages: What do you mean?
Gani: There is little Gani in all of us.
Dr. Damages: Even in Babangida?
Gani: Maybe not in Babangida but in many others.
Dr. Damages: How come?
Gani: There is guilt in innocence and innocence in guilt.
Dr. Damages: How do we get that out?
Gani: By eschewing greed, embracing selfless service and being prepared to lose your life in the struggle.
Dr. Damages: Forget that.
Gani: Then forget the search.
Dr. Damages: How is life over there?
Gani: Boring.
Dr. Damages: Have you seen any interesting Nigerian there?
Gani: Like who?
Dr. Damages: Zik.
Gani: No.
Dr. Damages: Awo
Gani: No.
Dr. Damages: Belewa.
Gani: No.
Dr. Damages: Okotiebo.
Gani: No.
Dr. Damages: Dimka.
Gani: I actually saw Major Okar.
Dr. Damages: Really?
Gani: Yes.
Dr. Damages: What about Fela?
Gani: Yes.
Dr. Damages: What!
Gani: What’s surprising about that?
Dr. Damages: I mean, the weed, the women and…
Gani: What a brainwashed fellow you are.
Dr. Damages: Are you sure you’re not in purgatory?
Gani: All I know is that I am where the angels are.
Dr. Damages: Seen anyone to sue?
Gani: Not yet.
Dr. Damages: Still waiting?
Gani: Waiting for Babangida to bring his behind here.
Dr. Damages: What will you sue him for?
Gani: For killing Dele Giwa.
Dr. Damages: Any regrets in life?
Gani: Just one.
Dr. Damages: What is it?
Gani: That I have but one life to give to my country.
Dr. Damages: There is something different about you?
Gani: Like what?
Dr. Damages: Like, since we started this chat, you haven’t quoted the Richardson Constitution or any other Constitution for that matter.
Gani: Do they matter anymore?
Dr. Damages: And you even seem to have a sense of humor. Something I had never seen in all your interviews. In fact, I never saw you smile.
Gani: Horace Walpole said that life is a tragedy to those who feel.
Dr. Damages: So you’ve stopped feeling?
Gani: He also said that it is a comedy to those who think.
Dr. Damages: So you now think?
Gani: Must I explain everything to you?
Dr. Damages: I just want clarifications.
Gani: I cannot believe the quality of graduates our universities are producing these days.
Dr. Damages: You see, something is different the way you speak today.
Gani: What?
Dr. Damages: You answer every question in one sentence. You don’t use to do that.
Gani: I know.
Dr. Damages: You use to take 30 minutes to answer a question.
Gani: That was then.
Dr. Damages: Why the change?
Gani: Could it be because I am dead?
Dr. Damages: I doubt that.
Gani: Maybe because you haven’t transcribed the last two-hour interview you had with me in 2002.
Dr. Damages: You still remember that?
Gani: All you do when you die is to remember things.
Dr. Damages: Gee!
Gani: Lookia my frien, I be thin say you get sense of humor.
Dr. Damages: Ha ha ha ha…
Gani: Shurrup!
Dr. Damages: Sorry, Sir.
Gani: O pari o!
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