AS DIMGBA DEPARTS BY SAM OMATSEYE

Dimgba Igwe and Mike Awoyinfa

"live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had? … I haven’t done so enough before—and now I’m too old; too old at any rate for what I see. … What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. … Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don’t be, like me, without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don’t quite know which. Of course at present I’m a case of reaction against the mistake. … Do what you like so long as you don’t make my mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!” – Henry James


One afternoon in 1997, I walked into Mike Awoyinfa’s office and it was not the clatter of his type writer that ushered me in. Nor his familiar voice calling out for a copy. The air collapsed under an aroma. Before my eyes caught him as I stood on the threshold of his door, I wondered aloud. Who had turned the office of the Weekend Concord into a kitchen of rare delicacy?
When I saw Mike, he was crouching in furious enjoyment over a plate. Pounded yam and what?
“It’s Igbo soup,” he said between swallow-fulls. I was evidently an unwelcome guest in his hour of union between palate and plate.
“Ask Dimgba,” he commanded. I was already hungry. I went out and asked Dimgba whose palate was also talking to plate.
“It’s oha soup,” said Dimgba Igwe. It was my induction to that Igbo delicacy, but it was also a moment in national unity. Mike did not know the name of the soup. But he tried it because his friend, Dimbga, an Igbo man, ordered it. He also ordered it, and enjoyed it. Theirs was not a culinary union. It was a union of hearts that transcended tribe, history, family. They were twins by soul.
“We are birds of different colours,” crooned Mike at the service of songs held for him at the Evangel Pentecostal Church on October 4. But they flocked together in stunning harmony in a friendship that lasted 30 years. It had the potential of another 20-year run if the impetuous madness of a car driver had not ended Dimgba’s life while jogging on September 6. Dimgba and Awoyinfa
Those of us who witnessed the friendship of Mike and Dimgba saw a mini-Nigeria. Tongues and tribes did not differ. In a corporate life where heads and deputies often did not agree, they were an alloy. The chemistry was unlikely given the trajectory of a larger Nigeria. I witnessed this unfolding, and it never occurred to me or anyone I knew that there was any tension, any suggestion that anything could bring them apart. Ordinarily, anyone who wrote such a script would be tagged a dreamer. Mike a free spirit. Dimgba a contained personality. Mike a lover of the social tempers of the day, such as music, drama, Sina Peters, etc. Dimgba in thrall of gospel music. Mike of the outdoors. Dimgba a home buddy. Mike a poet. Dimgba a word processor. Mike the adventurous. Dimgba the cautionary tale. Mike a Yoruba man. Dimgba an Igbo man. Their paths tracked in the opposite.
Their friendship did not make Dimgba less an Igbo man or Mike less a Yoruba man. It only made them more Nigerian. But reality trumped imagination. Anyone who anticipated tension at the beginning now rooted for them. But they did not need anyone’s prayers. They were always together, in Lagos, in London, in the New York, in Germany.
“It is not as if we did not quarrel,” Mike announced at the service of songs to a hall packed with media icons. Doyin Abiola. Sam Amuka. Ray Ekpu.  Dan Agbese. Nduka Irabor. Etc. He referred to his jeans affection. Dimgba did not like jeans. He was always formally dolled up. He recalled an occasion when the even-tempered governor of Delta State was looking for them. Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan did not see Mike but noticed Dimgba. According to Mike, Dimgba poked fun at him afterwards, saying how could the governor have noticed him when he was dressed like a mechanic? Ditto when they travelled business class when his sartorial humility was out of sync with others. Or when they drove to a fuel station and Mike would not want to pay for petrol, and Dimgba poked at the “Ijebu man.”
Dimgba alone could reel out a biography of Mike at his 60th birthday. Affectionate and unflattering, it was executed with the candour of a brother. Dimgba trusted him saying he could leave everything in Mike’s hands and “go to sleep.”
New Telegraph Managing Director Eric Osagie and I saw them in their Weekend Concord days as a study of human harmony. Osagie worked under them. I wrote a regular column. In fact, Mike was the first person to believe in me as a columnist and made me write every week based on the day’s cover story. Dimbga was the one that enforced the discipline. Dimgba also made the point of getting me paid for it.
“Would you take your column to your landlord at the end of the month?” quipped Dimgba.
Eric and I saw how Dimgba made Mike shine. Mike was impulsive as Dimgba was the stabiliser. Mike bubbled with ideas but the technocrat in Dimbga delivered the goods. Mike wanted to work for money but Dimgba knew how to turn it into bread and butter. They played without jealousy or envy. That is why private and work life merged.
Their homes are next to each other, and there is no fence. Between this Yoruba man and this Igbo there is no barrier. That is the trust we do not have in the real world. Mike lamented that when he fainted on a Paris street years ago, Dimgba revived him. But he was not around for his friend when death visited him on a Nigerian road. He was out of the country.
The church launched a trust fund for Dimgba’s family, his wife, boys and girls. All the governors and the president ought to deposit something handsome now into that purse before their attentions move away as humans do. Dimgba was a special journalist.
Mike also now carries the burden of both families. It was evident when Dimgba’s son, Chinazam, paid tribute to his father. He broke into tears, especially when he said the hit-and-run driver “killed a legend, but not his legacy”. Mike put his arms around him like a fatherin consolation.
He also nodded in approval as Dimgba’s daughter, Victory, rendered a song of plaintive power for her dad. Victory’s voice, kinetic and electric, is a talent that must be nurtured to stardom.
But he also lived a good life and enjoyed it. Mike spoke about their travels, how in Helsinki he exulted at Sibelius Monument in honour of the composer Jean Sibelius, whose song inspired the Biafran anthem. In Egypt they saw Pharaoh’s tomb where Dimgba mused on the vanity of power. In Israel at River Jordan and how now he regrets turning down Dimgba’s offer to baptise him.
Dimgba lived his life well in tune with Henry James’ advice in The Ambassadors: “Live all you can.” Dimgba did.








Source: The Nation