Of Tributes and a Memory: When Thunder Struck at 60!

COUNTERPOINT With Femi Akintunde-Johnson

For several weeks, former maverick entertainment editor, radio broadcaster and runaway friend, Azuka Molokwu Jebose, has been planning to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his birth (June 22, 1961) with a landmarking, groundmaking milestone: galvanising efforts and enthusiasm to build a community health centre worth at least N160m in the name of his late mother, Mama Reggie, somewhere in his homestead, Onicha Ugbo, Delta State, Nigeria.
This massive humanitarian project is expected to turn sod from late July, and hopefully be handed over to the community before the end of 2022.

Though a resident of the United States of America for over 30 years, prospering and multiplying the earth – among other exertions – Azuka wants the Health Center to provide effective and affordable healthcare to every indigent Nigerian who can find his or her way there. He dreams of the clinic’s doors remaining open, welcoming all Nigerians, irrespective of differing tongues, tribes or treasures.

He once passionately shared his dream with me: “It is my hope that this health center shall provide affordable healthcare to every sick Nigerian that can find his or her ways to the health center. No sick person shall be denied treatment for lack of money or not able to pay”… Typically Azuka… always carrying loads for others…in pursuit of making the society better than he met it.

He has promised to dredge up a large chunk of his savings over the years in fulfilling this vision, while hoping that he would be joined by hundreds of friends, home and away, to ignite the fire that can stoke the fundraising drive which should culminate in a Mama Reggie Hospital Fundraiser/Birthday Party on July 31, slated for Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.
Metaphorically, if you can slice open a heart to observe emotions and motives, you’ll likely find in Azuka’s heart a pure breed of selflessness in helping friends and family members; a dogged chivalry on the side of the poor and oppressed; a volatile crusade against corrupt leadership, and docile followership, anywhere; and above all, a searing resentment against man’s inhumanity to another of his kind. That’s Azuka for you, to a Zed!

So, while wishing a redoubtable colleague and an essential humanist a wonderful diamond jubilee, we also use this moment to encourage lovers of goodwill, and those who enjoy helping the downtrodden in getting a fair shot at survival to ‘collude’ with Azuka to make this N160m dream possible. Keep pace with this admirable humanitarian march, and make Nigeria proud.

Stay with Azuka, go to his Facebook page and Twitter handle (he’s not in Nigeria, and so the Twitter ban should not affect him), and make this year a wow-full one for him. Mama Reggie would be beaming all through. Happy birthday, Zukkyman, my gra-gra brother whom my mother never met.

Olusegun Olusola, OFR, mni (March 18, 1935 – June 21, 2012)
A native of Iperu-Remo, Ogun State, he walked off this stage on Thursday, June 21, 2012. He was 77 years old. The Baba of tele-drama and patron-saint of the creative art, Chief Olusegun Olusola’s story is one of those rarities where re-telling it will never be a bore.

Distinguished as black Africa’s first television producer, Olusola created the apogee of his career, The Village Headmaster over 50 years ago, barely four years after he joined broadcasting (radio) in 1955.
This incredibly hilarious nationwide situational comedy/drama ran for over 30 years. And even in the 2020s there are still agitations and controversies on who has the copyright power to re-stage or re-shoot the enigmatic series.

In 1959, with the great excitement at the advent of television in Africa, and at just 24 years old, Olusola joined WNTV as a producer. Dogged almost to the fringe of fanaticism on the quest to project indigenous TV productions, Olusola was once queried for insisting on producing an all-Nigerian programme – thereby ‘wasting’ a princely sum of 75 pound sterling on local thespians!

Throughout the 80’s until his demise, the former ambassador to Ethiopia (1987 to 1992) became the centerfold of Nigeria’s ‘moving’ art, spreading his colossal shoulders for new generations of practitioners to lean on, and drawing elemental directions. What a way to live!
All ceased for him, as surely as no one would escape it, Olusola’s fire was extinguished this week in 2012 – and this eulogy came forth, instinctively. Deservedly.

BABA IS GONE OH!
“He would welcome us to his house, his office, his gallery across the years, in the different climates, with constant warmness, enthusiasm, joyfulness, and apparent felicity.
If his presence would lift your spirit and buoy your aspiration, Baba would gladly give it.
If your dreams needed his faculty, baba would not hesitate to spread it across your canvass, casting benevolent shadows around the lawns of your hope.

When you were down and troubled, and the news filtered to him with the slightest draught, baba would summon mates and palates to reach across the ages and rages… so that joy could return and hope be restored.
That is Baba… our father in the art…. mellowed was your gaze… your kith and kin are torn… your shrill was heard on earth and it’ll be in heaven…
May you find peace yonder that is greater than Ajibulu Moniya….
Rest in glorious ambience… Baba, Ambassador Chief Olusegun Olusola.

Lancelot Imasuen: Champion of Cultural Exposition at 50
This week’s Sunday, June 20 he clocked 50 in a career choke full of creative entanglements.
“He is unapologetically fascinated by his deep concept of Bini historicism…the young prolific director, producer and scriptwriter, Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen kicked off his career in the mid ’90s with his first film Adaku (1995), an Igbo language movie. This was, in quick succession, followed by Kill or Die (1996), The Year 2000 (both 1996), Yesterday (1997), The Soul that Sinneth (1999). And thus the gladiator of the Nigerian native narratives, the unabashed ‘Captain Prolific’ was born!

Always driven by the creative process from childhood, Imasuen started his romance with the director’s chair in 1990 as the 19-year old director of a gospel TV drama in Benin, the Evangel Theatre. And five years later, after a stint at the NTA, Lagos as production assistant, Imasuen swiveled into Nollywood, and it has never been the same again.” (Extracted from Page 240 of Reflections, published June 2021).

Contrary to most of his ‘surrogate parents’ on the internet who birthed him, severally, in July… we can confirm that on June 20, 2021, the devout historian-dramatist-teacher of one of our ancient heritages was fifty. And as unsurprising as the ancestral craft of Bini welcoming you into Benin City, he marked it in a dramatic fashion.
We felicitate a trojan of modern Nigerian film making.