THE shocking news keep coming, and very early in the year too. But death, it seems, offers no respite. I write about my former teacher, Remilekun Ademola Adedokun who died as the first month of the year was ending.
I received the news of Dr Adedokun’s departure – after a brief illness at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, Ile-Ife – with shocking resignation that comes with powerlessness. The shock stings like the bite of harmattan in the morning. Or, how do you explain the death of someone such as Uncle Remi?
The first time I met Remi Adedokun was in the early 1980s. He was a lecturer and the administrator of the Arts Theatre, as it was then known, of the University of Ibadan.
However, I had heard of his fame long before then. He was one of the first set of students at the newly establish School of Drama at Ibadan. And he was also one of the few who survived the fatal accident that nearly wiped out the entire University of Ibadan troupe to the 1972 All-Nigeria Festival of the Arts in Kaduna, in the week before Christmas of that year. Bayo Oduneye, formerly of the National Troupe of Nigeria, who died last November, was another.
Adedokun later had another serious accident in the late 1980s, which he also survived. So, we already knew this man was destined for a ripe old age, that he had a charmed life, and his death would only come in the middle of the night, on his well-pressed pillow.
Why did you now leave us, RAA JP, in the pre-twilight of your life, without bidding farewell?
In 1984, I recall, I went to his office at the Arts Theatre annex, the former office of Professor Wole Soyinka when he was the head of the School of Drama before he was ‘detained’ during the Nigeria-Biafra war. As you can imagine, there was a whole wall of shelves filled with scripts and papers and books, all protected by Adedokun. That, he might have said, were materials for a veritable archive, as they belonged to the owner of this place. But I remember his next words: ‘I am just a caretaker’.
That library later burnt down with the department of Theatre Arts in 1995. But I am jumping ahead.
Adedokun then offered me some roles in the radio and television dramas he was producing at the time. Unfortunately, due to previous commitments, I could not accept. But he never gave up. A few years later, he was involved in a ghastly motor accident between Ibadan and Osogbo.
On the hospital bed, the only thoughts on his mind were the survival of the production group and the various dramas for the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS). The ultimate managerial mind that was the man then came into play: he offered me free access to his office on the condition that I complete the productions and even start new ones. That was how I became the surrogate ‘caretaker’.
As his assistant – or director, as he termed me when he came back – I worked on several radio productions for broadcast on BCOS, using the facilities available at the BCOS, Oke Mapo, Ibadan, till the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. We worked on so many ideas until I left Nigeria. Rather, I gluttonously drank from his milk of experience and expertise, and he was generous in giving.
That was about me, about what he meant to me.
Nonetheless, there a part of Adedokun that was hidden from even those who knew him intimately: he never understood why people could refuse even the clothes on his back, when he wants to freely give. One incident came to mind.
Adedokun had just defended his doctorate thesis on Theatre Management, supervised by Professor Femi Osofisan, for the University at Ibadan. In appreciation, he packed some livestock – he had a ‘farm’ of ducks, hens, and geese at his old residence off Oduduwa Road on the Ibadan University campus, before he moved to the former house of Mrs Laide Soyinka (the Soyinka connection again) – and went to gift them to Osofisan. Characteristically, the latter rejected the offering, claiming he was only doing his job, and that supervising Adedokun’s work gave more satisfaction than ‘wura and fadaka’.
Undaunted, Adedokun organised a sumptuous luncheon and invited all students and all passers-by, as many as could fit into his living room and the yard around. The banner in front of his flat read: This party is sponsored by Professor Femi Osofisan. Pray for him.
Adedokun later established Oracles Repertory Theatre, with Yemi Akintokun as the Artistic Director. And turned his house at Osogbo into a studio, producing Tales by the Moonlight for YouTube.
To now learn that Adedokun has gone – just like that; not of old age, not of accident, but of a brief illness, that infamous killer of Nigerians – soured the honey of existence and putrefied the salt of our memory.
Professor Duro Oni, former Deputy Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos, who was one of the first to confirm the news to me, found the death unconscionable. In fact, he found the illness unexplainable and made several calls to ascertain the facts. Alas, Uncle Remi JP has left us to answer the call of the pottage seller of Orun. May his gentle soul rest in peace.
*Dr. Adeyemi is of University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
