Follow Us on Google
By Olu Obafemi
Every death connotes and denotes a painful loss, a burdensome deprivation, to one or more persons. The more intimate the deceased was, the more agony it inflicts on the body and soul of the bereaved. As I gathered my garments around my hapless loins to grapple with the shocking demise of my brother and friend of over four decades, Professor Albert Sunday Anjorin (whom I simply called “Sir Albert” and who called me “Olu Obaf; Brother me; Aluba omo Griteni y’oku,” as the older generation of Orokere-Amuro referred to Albert Anjorin over gourds of palm wine during our numerous visits home, I’m unable to amortize my passion and feelings of loss.
No exaggeration at all. An avalanche of passionate memories from the furies race through my mind in a way that informs me that Professor Albert Anjorin’s irredeemable loss will rage and simmer, depending on which of the moments or chapters of our friendship and kinship is being captured for sober reflection.
In recent times, a couple of years past, our intimacy which was akin to a siamese intercourse, had retreated somewhat as our commitments and engagements took us along disparate paths. This makes the pain of loss more blightful and deeply agonizing in its unrecoverability in flesh and blood, in the manner of deaths.
I shall measure the past of our friendship in stingy teaspoons to savour the memories enduringly. For, truly, no one who knows Sir Albert in his prime of life in the eighties, nineties and early twenties, like I do and a few other friends will resist the drop of a couple of salt- water tears for the crash of this giant, this grove- rampaging elephant (in both physiognomic and cerebral senses): this medical colossus, with an infectious volume of social magnetism, with humane and humanizing impactfulness. What an untameable loss, even in his octogenarian clime of life!
Prof. Anjorin will be gravely missed in the classroom by votives and accolades in the Pathology and Morbid Anatomy classes across Nigerian and West African universities. He will be missed in homes and homesteads of his weekly NTA Ilorin audiences of “Your Health.” He will be missed by those of us his paddies in club houses in Ilorin and Ibadan, and at “Fish Pond” shed in Adewole, Ilorin where we drove to for recreation on nightly basis for over a decade.
His absence from union activities across the country at NECs and meetings playing the role as an unofficial ‘ASUU Doctor” will be visceral. His innumerable pro bono treatment of patients thronging from just anywhere, any corner of this country will be bitten by the bug of his indefinite absence. His animating touch of the homeless, the succour from the ring of his inimitable voice of compassion, the cream of love and kindness from the generosity of his spirit will cause endless pain. His handouts to the dreg of the earth in the Okun villages will be a source of mass deprivation.
In sitouts, his contagious smiles, and roaring laughter as bottles of Star beer fell by the wayside amidst bantering and jangling on the fate of our troublous nation will yield mournful aegis.
Sir Albert will be missed in our home, as he had a special palley and choice of dish with my wife. Mama, my 103 year old mother, any time she gains her presence of the mind, asks after “Orere Albat,” her doctor in the eighties, who carried her in his car to hospitals in Ile- Ife and Ibadan.
Adieu then, the white-haired, medical genius, cerebral intellectual, passionate and compassionate nursetender of the ailing whose caring fingers nourished the souls of many. For decades, your companionship and intimate guide were invaluable gifts I have cherished and your memory will never depart from the recesses of my still restless mind. Rest on then, Sir Albert.
•Obafemi, FNAL, NNOM, D.Litt
Emeritus Professor of English
