I have been itching to say a few words about him since he offered us Tenants of the House, which sadly, I have not perused. And when the work clinched, recently, a very important international literary prize, I also promised myself to reveal some force of feeling that would enable me to say what a spectacle, what a splendid, admirable spectacle he is. Somehow,  I couldn’t get myself to fuflil that promise to self. And he himself did not help matters when he launched Tenants. His main invitees to the event were the glitterati who were his fellow tenants throughout the four years period he honeymooned with them.

The literati, his primary constituents outside those in medicine where he began his sublime climb to where he rightly and fruitfully perches now, were not remembered as they ought – I thought. If they were, mainly those whose proximity to the arena of the event was advantageous to  our author and launcher, found themselves there. Those of us, his friends of yore, who were too, too faraway and too, too un-outgoing to be remembered, were out of reckoning when the list of the glitterati and literati was manufactured. Perhaps his oversight was the real reason  I became self-forgetful all the while.

Now, thanks to Anote Ajeluorou. His recent focus on the anthor of Tenants of the House (see The Guardian of Monday, August 2, 2010) pulled me from the clutches of the land of the self-forgetful. Descending, as my forehead glowed with beads and rings of sweat, I remembered, with all fire and ardour of friendship, that I needed at last, to compose and write some truth and beauty about Wale Okediran – medical doctor, short story writer, essayist, novelist, literary administrator and politician.

I want to begin my portrait of Okediran by saying straightaway that since I knew him through our first meeting in Calabar years and years ago, when he was at that time the national treasurer of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), his composition was and always has been that of one through whom serenity of victory breathes. As ANA treasurer, he was remarkable. As  General Secretary of the Association, he was always in combat with hardwork and despite this, his eyes ever extolled happiness, which combined with his intellect to make him and the ANA exco where I also served as Treasurer triumph.

Of course, Alhaji Abubakar Gimba, who was ANA president then, and who was always clear-sighted and clear-minded in his manner of administration never dreaded leaving assignments and duties in the hands of Okediran and other faithfuls, including this columnist. As president of ANA later on, Okediran was simply what you might want to describe as a heroic character. This time, I was not really involved in the activities of ANA, but my gleaning and readings of ANA’s activities in newspapers and via other contacts clearly indicated to me that his inspiration and enthusiasm for getting things done in an excellent manner not bare of faultless quality never left him.

Towards the tail end of his presidency, this writer of the people requested me to prepare for a lecture on literature and governance, to be delivered as part of the activities for the celebration of the first hundred days of Governor Adams Oshiomole, the “people’s governor” of Edo State.  But the lecture, intended to be hosted by the Edo State government, was not to be for reasons that bordered on finance.

As a practising medical doctor, from the little and much I saw of him and his patients all the times I visited him in his Cornerstone Hospital (I hope that is the name still) at Sango, Ibadan, I am bound to express here that he was a very caring doctor, who was buoyantly so. The writer in him illuminatingly shone forth in his medical relationship with his patients, many  of whom were grassroots’ people.  From our little chats then, if  I can still faithfully recollect , he never had the energy of mind to bill them outside the muscles of their purses. You would appreciate his very humane rapport with his patients, as you also applaud his elegant prose and moral concerns in his short stories, essays and novels.

Where is this portrait of a writer leading to? And what is the purpose of this portrait of an exceptional talent? Get the answer in the writer’s own words, and as Ajeluorou quoted them:

When I arrived Abuja…, I was in a strange environment although I had been warned, but writers are always happy to be in strange places. I started keeping a diary. But my lawyer warned me not to write non-fiction, else I be swarmed by litigations.

No, no Dr. Okediran, our brilliant and clever Wale.  I disagree with you and your lawyer. The “fiction” in your “non-fictional” work must have removed good beauty, fire, ardour, daringness and bravery and heroism from Tenants (and from you).

A writer must dare to be brave and heroic. He must dare to be bold and damn it all - legal and conventional morality! No fear of litigation cowed Soyinka from excising telling portions of facts from the photographic The Man Died when it was initially published. Of course, much later, Soyinka allegedly succumbed to the claws of litigation in respect of certain portions of his highly engaging and richly aesthetic prison diary/autobiography. Yet, the work is still as compelling and as memorable as ever and it also still remains a very objective example of oppositional politics in non-fictional narrative.

Okediran, simply put, should have remained deaf to whatever unliterary advice his lawyer thought of, composed, dictated and offered him. Okediran needed to have connected his aesthetics in Tenants with action of non-fictional fact and truth because the writer and diarist who was a “prisoner” in the House of Representatives was engaging himself in the art, act and fact of oppositional culture and politics throughout the period and time he was in the foreign and “strange” assembly,  where we “get punished by the dullards” who always “make the wrong, selfish decisions.”

What to do? What, in other words, do I recommend for Okediran? He should give us photography. He should go back to his memory, his diary and his past in the House of Representatives and connect aesthetics with action. It is a measure of Okediran’s achievement as a skilful narrator of stories and tales that the step I am recommending would not be hard for him to take. He should and ought to give me for my undiluted enjoyment his photographically raw experience in the House of Representatives to serve the healthily moral purpose of truth and let us wait thereafter for the “dullards” to settle scores with him in the Court of Law. After all the hullabaloo that we have been witnessing in Bankole’s House, and after the recent bridge disgrace we saw on Sango-Ota, Dr. Okediran needs to do a rethink and do for us a non-fictional narrative, whose vocabulary of muscles and bones must be as stern as they are physically factual.

Meanwhile, I congratulate him on the publication of Tenants and task him to courier my copy to me now. And thanks to Ajeluorou for the spirited report of Okediran’s visit to the Department of English of UNILAG, where he did a reading session and urged the students to partake in politics, after their studies, in order to “make things better.”

Yes. I’m in perfect agreement with the humane writer. The “dullards” and their “wrong, selfish decisions” sooner or later shall cease to be in all our Assemblies of Legislation. Our poets shall replace them, our poets who shall soon be duly recognized as the acknowledged legislators of Nigeria.

•Matter to come: Queen Bolanle and Oba Adesina of Akure have reconciled. Watch out for In and Out on these dramatics personae of royal love.

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