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By Olu Obafemi
Come July, it will be five decades since we met and rapidly grew a bond of friendship which has transformed into a sibling relationship. It is a relationship which, I must confess, has produced the greatest laughter sessions of my life,: a relationship which many of our younger friends, colleagues and students found covetable, because, as it were, we do not relate as friends who are fond of each other.
We poke fun at each other in a way that produces marvel and wonder among onlookers but which, I have long come to understand, gives each of us cherished joy, internal satisfaction and fulfillment. I have benefitted, acquired tremendous, unquantified, unquantifiable, non-material, ineffable benefits from this enduring relationship with him, and it is my silent anxiety and genuine hope that he has retrieved some reward from the affection that he has lavished on me.
I cannot determine now how the friendship evolved because acquaintances do no automatically translate into friendship. The story of our relationship is certainly not a fitting subject for a moment such as this when everyone wants to slice their piece, metaphorically speaking, from the ebullient side of a great man of letters: one of Africa’s s most prolific playwrights, most staged dramatists, poets, novelists, polemicists, biographers journalists media/public intellectuals, who allowed himself to be my bosom friend and elder brother ( I must now give it to him now that he has left me in my seventies and crossed the bridge to the land of the Octogenarians).
The story teller’s compelling narrative must wait for another day however tempting the nudge to tell his story is. I take solace in the fact that I had, in the past two occasions- in 2006 when he turned Sixty and 2016, when he celebrated his Septuagenarian, organizers of his birthday parties had given me the rare opportunity to give the Keynote Lectures of the occasions. These are besides the essays I have published on your works, beginning with the 1982, over “cited “Revolutionary Aesthetics in Nigerian Theatre, published in Africa’s leading peer reviewed journal, African Literature Today”.
Emeritus Professor Femi Osofisan, your plays that I and my students of Ajon Players and Drama students have staged, including Morountodun, which I produced in 1983 as Convocation Play at the University of Ilorin, a play which gave my only daughter, her name, Morountodun. I am glad that our friendship hasn’t been all jangle and banter, merry- making and jollity, important for the bouquet of laughter, and tension–easing which have helped nourish our appreciable longevity.
I have never had ample opportunity to appreciate, in reasonable depth, the sacrifices which you have had to make for me in the course of the journey of our friendship.There may never be a chance to show gratitude to you and I know you really don’t yearn for such recompense for a friendship genuinely cultivated.
Which shall I recollect them for audience attention?
Is it your numerous travels to many functions organized for me anywhere? Your journeys from Ibadan, through the heart of Yorubaland of Oyo, Ekiti, Ondo, l through Kabba and the scarcely passable road to Akutupa? I recall, with deep but unexpressed appreciation, your driving all the way in the middle of the rains to join me in burying my father in 2014.
To my people, any Olu Obafemi event is incomplete without Femi Osofisan in cherished attendance. He always honours us without being mindful of the road hazards implicated in the journeys. Only last year, repeating the exercise of the previous year, you had to take a taxi from Ibadan to Lagos to be able to fly to Abuja, and traveled in the night from Abuja to Lokoja to be able to join in the Olu Obafemi Annual International Colloquium. How much more can one expect to reap from a friendship which hardly offers any benefit outside of the value invested in the very idea/ideal of genuine feeling of love?
Or should I recall the genuine support you gave me in moments of distress? On one of such occasions, you took me, on road, from Ibadan to Ijaw land to the riverine City of the Bekederemo- Clark to visit our great literary Patriarch, JP. Clark. I had just lost a contest which you imagined would weigh me down, and you wanted some relief, some soothing balm? These are some of the exemplars in practice, of the task of soul- nourishing by a great man of literature and reconstructor of society.
I am genuinely enamoured that you have fulfilled the prayer) dream and prophecy of your best friend, Emeritus Professor Biodun Jeyifo, in one his last chats with me, when he turned Eighty in January, before he passed on to the great beyond. He had prayed for you and I that that we will cross the precipitous hills before the bridge collapses. Happily, his prayers have been answered on you. You have sauntered, literally, into the Octogenarian season.
I join Professor Adenike Osofisan, your darling wife and your children, Wale, Yemi, Akin and Oyintomi, and the art and theatre family across Africa and the Globe, celebrating your graceful ride to the Seasons of the Octogenarians. Happy birthday, my beloved friend and brother Emeritus Babafemi Osofisan.
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