It’s impossible to meet Professor Charles Ekwusiaga Nnolim without getting a surprise or two. He always had a twist in the tail of the tale. My mind goes back in time when I travelled from Lagos to Yenagoa, Bayelsa State to serve as the reviewer at the presentation of Bina Nengi-Ilagha’s award-winning first novel, Condolences, and short story collection, Crossroads. It was a striking surprise to me that Prof Nnolim was the chairman of the launch, and I happen to hail from the same Umuchu hometown in Anambra State as him.
Prof Nnolim had in his lifetime given our hometown a good dose of literary limelight through his essay that cited a booklet “The History of Umuchu” written by his uncle, Simon Nnolim, as a source for Chinua Achebe’s classic novel, Arrow of God. In the turf war of literary controversy, Prof Nnolim never surrendered any quarters in the course of his lionized life.
When I got to the review podium in Yenagoa, Prof Nnolim as chairman was seated beside Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the then Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State who would later become the Governor of the State and thereafter the Vice-President and President of Nigeria.
While remembering the many humorous stories that Prof Nnolim told that evening, it is worthwhile to recall that Bina Nengi Ilagha’s novel Condolences narrated the intriguing story of the passing away of Pere Alazibo and the hypocrisy of his friends and enemies in life who united as platitudinous mourners after his tragic death. Prof Nnolim has departed these shores, and it is incumbent on us, the living, to remember him with sincerity unlike the mourners of Pere Alazibo such as Chief Zoro and Dandie who while pretending to be grieving over Pere’s death were actually more interested in taking over his personable wife, Atari-Joy!
Dr Goodluck Jonathan and Prof Nnolim in their different ways offered their independent reviews of my review after my presentation. Jonathan who struck me as a very good listener asked how I got to know so much of Ijaw history as per the depiction of the stories and heroes of the Bayelsa dream and Izon resurgimento such as Isaac Adaka Boro, George Amangala, Nottingham Dick, Sese, Boardman Nyananyo, etc in the short story collection, Crossroads. Prof Nnolim informed the audience and readers of Bina Nengi-Ilagha to pay particular attention to the author’s use of anagrams, to wit, words formed by arranging other words in a different order.
Prof Nnolim was in lived life what I call a professor of the people. The town and the gown found comfortable accommodation in his person. He was never a seclusive intellectual He ribbed himself with self-deprecatng humour, for instance, telling that the slow pace with which he built his home abode made the village masquerade legion known as Achukwu to mock him that the place overgrown with weeds had become a happy hunting ground for hunters hunting for grasscutters alias Nchi! In another instance, Prof Nnolim told the story of how he was appointed a chief launcher in a fundraising ceremony and he donated five thousand naira only for a monied young upstart to rise up to damn the poor professor for his paltry donation!
In my hometown, Prof Nnolim was among the architects for the founding of the developmental agency known as Umuchu Development Forum (UDF) which catered to the multiform well-being of the community. He worked in concert with his great friend, Prof Uka Ezenwe, Emerirus Professor of Economics at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria. He was the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Emmanuel Agupusi Educational Foundation, a body that offered scholarship to many indigent students. He wore with grace the high chieftaincy title of Ikoro Umuchu.
There was no room for half measures in the commitment of Prof Nnolim. Whether in literary criticism or community development, Prof Nnolim gave his all. He groomed mentees from all over Nigeria and beyond. He made his words and actions to count. He was a distinguished Fellow of the Nigeria Academy of Letters, Fellow of the Literary Society of Nigeria, Fellow of the International Biographical Association, and Fellow of the World Literary Academy. It is little wonder then that he was awarded the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM).
When I came to Bayelsa to do the review of Bina Nengi-Ilagha’s Condolences and Crossroads I was filled with so much joy on seeing my esteemed townsman, Prof Nnolim, as the chairman of the occasion. As I wrote from the very beginning, there’s always a twist in the tail of any tale about Prof Charles Ekwusiaga Nnolim. I was hailing my townsman from Umuchu in Anambra State when I received the shocker.
Prof Nnolim said: “I am now an Ijaw man, and my name is Nnolimowei!”