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Eulogy For Obi Egbuna: The Peter Tosh of African Literature By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

In Obi Egbuna’s “Emperor of the Sea and other Stories,” a King goes to the stream to take a bath. On approaching the banks of the stream, he beholds the most beautiful woman his eyes have ever seen bathing. Mesmerized, he takes a knife from one of his acolytes and plucks out his two eyes. His reason: after seeing this beautiful woman he could not stand seeing any other woman less beautiful.

In Obi Egbuna’s “Emperor of the Sea and other Stories,” a King goes to the stream to take a bath. On approaching the banks of the stream, he beholds the most beautiful woman his eyes have ever seen bathing. Mesmerized, he takes a knife from one of his acolytes and plucks out his two eyes. His reason: after seeing this beautiful woman he could not stand seeing any other woman less beautiful.

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I just finished reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera.” I went into the kitchen and picked up a knife that could go through my skull and pluck out my brain. I raise the knife up, but just before I could point it to my head, a voice said to me, “Before you do that, first read ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude.’”


The above two paragraphs was a proposed post I drafted for my Facebook status as a way to scream Marquez and Egbuna’s geniuses to those who did not know.


I did not make the post on Facebook because I was not sure if the story was actually in that particular collection, “Emperor of the Sea and other stories.” I wanted to buy more time and see if I could confirm by asking friends who had read Obi Egbuna’s books, or to check online.

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The other day, I googled Obi Egbuna and Emperor of the Sea and that was when I got the devastating news that Obi, my Obi Egbuna passed away on January 20, 2014.


Obi Egbuna’s passing should have been breaking news. For sure, he deserves an obituary. And a lot more.


I was mostly devastated to note that all these while he lived in Washington DC, a mere six-hour drive from me.


I have been looking for Obi everywhere. I’ve asked everyone who should have known. Several times I contemplated posting once a week on my Facebook status: “Where in the world is Obi Egbuna?” Each time I decided against it out of reverence.

He was one of the few people I would have done everything to meet.

I was 16 when an older friend introduced me to Obi Egbuna’s work at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State. Before I turned 17, I had read all his books that I could lay my hands on.


I read the drama: The Anthill: the novels: Wind versus Polygamy, The Minister's Daughter, The Madness of Didi:  the short stories: Daughters of the Sun and Other Stories, Emperor of the Sea and Other Stories, The Rape of Lysistrata and Black Candles for Christmas: and the non-fiction: The Diary of a Homeless Prodigal.


At the age of 17, Obi Egbuna was my favorite writer. I liked his unpretentiousness. He was radical in his thoughts and his styles. In it all, despite the seriousness of his subjects, he didn’t fail to see the humor as well as the folly in human conditions.


It was after I read Obi’s work in quick succession that I made my first adult attempt at writing a novel, since my initial attempt at imitating Charles Dickson’s Oliver Twist at the age of eleven.


My first work, an unfinished novel in letters borrowed a lot from Obi Egbuna. My second attempt, “The Diary of a Wasted Poet” had all the flaws of Obi’s works without the brilliance. My third, “Death On Mount Trashmore,” still in progress, can pass for a tribute to Obi Egbuna’s “The Rape of Lysistrata.”

Achebe told me about people in graveyards around me. Ngugi wa Thiong’o held my hand across the hills and valleys of Kenya, showing me where yearning met politics. Cyprian Ekwensi took me to Lagos in “Jagua Nana” and “Jagua Nana’s Daughter”. Chukwuemeka Ike in “Potter’s Wheel”, “Toads for Supper”, “Naked Gods”, “Expo ‘77”, “Sunset at Dawn”, “Chicken Chasers”, put voice in the people I knew.


Obi Egbuna did all that and much more. It was Obi Egbuna who first took me to America. That he was frequently seen in places where his stories were set made me begin to see stories where I was. He had no problem in having a narrator tell the story of his book to a character named Obi. His stylistics genius was dazzling.


He was the first writer that I knew who attended the international writing program at the famous Iowa University. He made me pencil it down as something to do. I ended up at the second best- the Western Connecticut State University, MFA program.


While in Britain, he wrote “Wind Versus Polygamy” which became Britain’s entry at the first World Black Festival of Arts in Senegal in 1966. A member of the Black Liberation movement of the 60s, he was arrested and jailed in Britain for inciting violence against police officers. He was released following overwhelming demonstrations in his support. He chided Nigeria for its treatment of Biafra in “The Murder of Nigeria, an indictment”.


Obi moved backed to Nigeria in the 70s to teach writing workshops. It’s a similar move that I hope to make in years to come.


It’s a tragedy that most of his books are out of print and out of reach of a young generation itching for inspiration. The tragedy of the much touted renaissance of African literature is that it is often disconnected from many of its unheralded pioneers- people like Obi Egbuna who brought in the parts that helped to make the whole.


Obi Egbuna was daring, unapologetic and self-conscious. If Chinua Achebe was the Bob Marley of African literature, Obi Egbuna was the Peter Tosh of African literature. His path was not designed to get him accolades, especially from the very people whose iniquities he took delight in highlighting.


Like the character in the “Madness of Didi,” when the world Obi envisaged failed to materialize, Obi Egbuna disappeared.


Obi disappeared. And we who admired him missed him. But now that he has transitioned, I feel him all around me. And each time I bring out kola-nut and Schnapps, ready to pour libation, his name is amongst the first to come out of my mouth.


I’m forever indebted to you, Obi. I will forget everything I learned in life but I’ll never forget what you said the responsibility of a writer is in “The Madness of Didi.” If I could write an obituary, I would have written one for you. You taught me everything but not how to write an obituary for a writer never dies. Even when their books are out of print, their stories stay in the hearts of those who read them and reincarnate in the works of their disciples. So I simply say: au revoir, my mentor.

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