10 YEARS WITHOUT DIMGBA IGWE By FEMI ADESINA

“He didn’t make it.”

That was what Pastor Dickson Anyanwu quietly whispered to me as he came out of the Accident and Emergency ward of Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) that Saturday morning of September 6, 2014.

My head simply vanished! Have you had that feeling before, when on hearing some heart-rending news, and it feels your head has taken leave, and disappeared from your neck? Horrible feeling. Horrendous. Awful. Accompanied by a sinking sensation in the pit of your stomach. That was how I felt when Anyanwu, one of the pastors of Evangel Pentecostal Church, told me Igwe had lost the battle for life from injuries suffered as a driver from hell ran into him, while he jogged in the streets of Okota, his neighborhood, in Lagos. The driver fled.

I had met Igwe on the pages of Sunday Concord in the mid-1980s, as I was rounding off my studies at the then University of Ife. I never missed reading the Sunday Concord, first edited by the iconic Dele Giwa, and later Sina Adedipe. They had an insert called the Sunday Concord Magazine, which paraded easily the best prose stylists in the country then. First to grab me was Mike Awoyinfa, whose writing was like music, with a lilting cadence. There were others like Chuma Adichie, May Ellen Ezekiel, Monzor Olowosago, and then came a new introduction, a new kid on the block in 1984. Dimgba Igwe.

Where have you been all my life, I exclaimed the first time I read him. He combined the styles of Dele Giwa and Mike Awoyinfa in one personality. A lyricist and poet rolled into one. The team had a fan in me. For life.

Well, I’ve told the story many times, how I wanted more writing from the radio job I was doing in 1989, and I simply walked to Concord Press, asked for Mike Awoyinfa, who was Features Editor of National Concord, preparing to midwife the Weekend Concord. I showed him two pieces I’d written, and that was it.

I later joined the Weekend Concord team, of which Dimgba Igwe was the Deputy Editor. Oh boy, we sure had a ball. The newspaper was selling like hot cake, and all you needed to do was to get your art right. The story, sharp news edge. The intro. If you don’t grab Mike and Dimgba (as we called them behind their backs), with your intro, you wouldn’t get published. You must have a complete package, reading like literature, like music to the ears.

Two people couldn’t have been more dissimilar in propensity and world view. One minded the affairs of this world, every part of it that young men indulged in. The other minded the things of Heaven, with eternity firmly in view. Yet they became a tag team that seemed divine. Inseparable.

Dimgba was a Christian of the born again stock, and later became a pastor. Awoyinfa? We were praying for him. In an article I did two years ago to celebrate him at 70, I called him “man of affairs” (I leave you to interpret it). Dimgba’s favorite way of describing him was “man of iniquity,” always going kakiri kakiri (here and there).

At the turn of the century, the duo left Concord Press, and went into full time book writing. They made a success of it. And in 2002, they were putting together The Sun Newspapers, funded by Chief Orji Kalu. They sent for me, and the rest is history. The Sun hit the market like a tornado.

I am of the same predilection as Dimgba. I’d become a born again Christian in 1988. One day, in my early days in Weekend Concord, I asked him where he fellowshipped. He said for many years, he had been part of an evangelical church, a good church, but which didn’t believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in tongues.

Dimgba and some of the younger people got exposed to teachings on Holy Spirit baptism, and began to speak in tongues.

“So they kicked us out,” he told me. And that was how they teamed up to form Evangel Pentecostal Church. Dimgba was Assistant General Overseer by the time he died.

Death. That spoilsport. On Friday, September 5, 2014, I and Dimgba had spoken for about an hour on phone, from about 6 pm. We had just returned from Katsina the previous weekend, where we had attended the Annual Guild of Editors Conference. I was President of the Guild then. We spoke and spoke, without me knowing it was a valedictory conversation.

I had concluded a prayer meeting somewhere in Ikeja by 8.30 am Saturday. And I told my wife we should briefly stopover to see a senior friend, Sir Tunde Olowu, at the G.R.A . I said I would be brief.

My wife simply said:

“You? Be brief with Sir Olowu? When he starts with his usual jokes and stories, and the two of you are laughing uproariously, I will remind you.”

And truly, we were in the middle of a bout of laughter, when my phone rang. Mrs Gloria Oriaku, an executive assistant to Mike and Dimgba.

“Mr Igwe has had an accident.”

“W-h-a-a-a-t! But I spoke with him till late last evening.”

“Yes. He was jogging in the street of Okota this morning when a car ran into him. He was seriously wounded. We are now at Ikeja General Hospital.”

That was less than five minutes drive from where I was. I drove as if the devil was at my heels.

Outside the Accident and Emergency ward, I met Oriaku, Mrs Ify Anyaelechi, a very godly woman who had been our Procurement Manager at The Sun for many years (and a part of Evangel Pentecostal Church), and Pastor Dickson Anyanwu. Pastor Paul Toun, General Overseer of the church, joined us later. Mrs Oby Igwe was inside with the husband, and my wife, being a very senior nurse, was also admitted. She later told me Dimgba just looked asleep after he passed on, with a peaceful mien.

We were outside, praying, asking God to spare Pastor Igwe. It seemed like eternity, but I don’t think it was up to an hour, when a nurse came to ask for who was the Pastor among us. Anyanwu stepped forward, and went inside.

Few minutes later, he came out, and quietly told me:

“He didn’t make it.”

My head vanished!

Mrs Anyaelechi was the first to see the look on my face, and started asking questions. I feigned deafness.

When Pastor Toun, an army Major General came shortly after, the medical team briefed him, and he was asked to break the news. Wailing all around, with Mrs Anyaelechi rolling on the ground, and recounting all that Dimgba had done, the lives he had touched.

Mike Awoyinfa was away in UK, and I couldn’t reach him. But I spoke with Chief Orji Kalu, who expressed shock, and told me to issue a press statement. Sad. Mournful. Dolorous.

To mark 10 years of Dimgba Igwe’s passage on September 6, members of the ‘Faculty of Mike and Dimgba School of Journalism’ are putting together a public lecture and luncheon, to hold in Lagos. Topic is: Dimgba Igwe; Tabloid Journalism Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, to be delivered by Mr Muyiwa Adetiba, publisher of Prime People, Vintage People, and TNT Newspaper. Who better to do it.

When we held rites of passage for Dimgba a month later in his hometown of Igbere, in Abia State, I partook in all the ceremonies, till it got to the time of interment. I then fled. Straight to the airport. I always want to remember the living man, not one planted in the soil like a seed, to germinate on the great Day of Awakening.

*Adesina, journalist, author, farmer, was spokesman to ex-President Muhammadu Buhari