Reconfiguring
the Complexities of Omafume Onoge’s Life:
A
Funeral Tribute
By Peter Ekeh
Omafume
Onoge was a well-sized man. He was also a
multifaceted person. The Urhobo, Onoge’s people, love to liken men of
his
stature and complexity to elephants. Elephants disappeared from the
Urhobo
countryside where they once freely roamed centuries
ago –
as did such other famed beasts as
lions and hippopotamuses. Of those powerful animals that have
become extinct from Urhoboland’s physical environment, none has dwelt
in Urhobo
folk imagination as forcefully as the elephant. Men of stature, grace,
and
wisdom easily offer themselves for comparison with the proverbial
elephant in
Urhobo rites.
So
it is that when Omafume Friday Onoge is laid to
rest on August 28, 2009, in his beloved native village of Ugborikoko in
Uvwie,
the youth will remember him by singing that ritually nuanced Urhobo
refrain:
Onogę
ke
eni, eh he eni, eh he eni; Onogę ke eni. eh he eni, eh he eni. In English this verse
renders roughly as follows: “Onoge is like the elephant, Onoge is like
the
elephant; yes indeed, Onoge is like the elephant.”
It
is doubtful that any English translation will
fully capture from this refrain connotations of wisdom and strength of
Onoge’s
accomplishments in the span of a dynamic life. It is more likely,
though, that
the elephantine metaphor will convey the sheer complexity of Omafume
Onoge’s
life story. That complexity is already reflected in the numerous
tributes and
comments that have surfaced since his death on July 12, 2009.
Most
of the tributes to this remarkable man have
been by people who knew Onoge as a graduate student of Anthropology at
Harvard
University in the 1960s; as a university teacher in the Faculty of
Social
Sciences at the University of Ibadan from 1969 until the late 1970s;
and as a teacher
at the University of Jos, as well as the Dean of that university’s
Graduate
School, from the early 1980s until the early 2000s. Others have touched
on his
rich contributions since his retirement from the academy and his
resettlement
to his native village of Ugborikoko. Most of his years in universities,
both as
a student and as a teacher, witnessed Omafume Onoge choosing the ideals
of
socialism in preference to the advertised barbarities of capitalism.
Within the
Marxist vocation, in which he pitched his camp with Ola Oni and Bade
Onimode at
Ibadan, Onoge was sometimes suspicious of Soviet Cold War advocacies
and was far more
attracted to China’s Maoist teachings of liberation from the torments
and
tortures of institutional oppression.
Those
who saw in Onoge a passion for taking sides
with the oppressed are right in their judgment. As one of those who
paid
glowing tributes to him so correctly phrased this point, Onoge
attempted to be
the voice of the voiceless. In this matter, he was wholly sincere.
Onoge was often
offended by rulers and scholars who professed to be Marxists but then
pursued
oppressive policies that took away the humanity of those who had no
means of
adequately responding to acts of domination and intimidation.
How
would Omafume Onoge react to these tributes, if
he were around to evaluate them? He would gladly accept them, with
gratitude. But
he would caution that they were only fractions of his complicated life.
Perhaps
phrasing his response in Marxist imagery, Omafume might say that such
characterization touched on his mid-life and beyond it, but that it has
left
out the story of how he got there. As an anthropologist, Omafume Onoge
might
well say that these tributes have largely focused on his urban
activities.
There was a deep rural side that must not be left out of the picture of
his complex
life.
For
this
side of Omafume Onoge, I offer myself as a witness. Some nine months
before his
death, I phoned Omafume to ask him if he knew Chief L.
U Ighomrore,
an Uvwie
chieftain who contributed enormously to the history of Urhobo College.
He
bellowed into a huge laughter, saying, “Without Pa Ighomrore, there
would be no
Omafume Onoge for you to make friends with.” Onoge then proceeded to
tell an
amazing story of how he gained admission into Urhobo College. He was a
bright
kid in a primary school in Uvwie, near Warri, that had given land to
Urhobo
Progress Union to build Urhobo’s national secondary school in the late
1940s. Ighomrore
was one of the early employees of
the College. In 1951, Omafume sat for the entrance examination to the
College.
In the midst of the examination, a bout of malarial fever, which he
thought he
could contain, broke loose, forcing him to leave the examination hall
to vomit.
He was taken home by relatives.
Thereafter,
Omafume
settled on rubber-tapping. Then one morning, a messenger came to him at
the
rubber plantation telling him to come home on his father’s orders. On
getting
home, his father asked him to change into his school uniform so that he
could
repeat the entrance examination with some other Uvwie boys on that day.
He told
his father that he did not have money to pay for the required
examination fee.
His father then informed Omafume that Mr. Ighomrore had already paid
the fee.
The rest is history. Omafume Onoge was admitted into Urhobo College
where he
performed brilliantly, enabling him to gain a Kennedy-era ASPAU
scholarship to
study in American Universities.
Omafume’s
father and
his native village were to play another critical role in Omafume’s life
journey. He did return from the United States and was teaching with his
Harvard
Ph.D. in the Department of Sociology at the University of Ibadan.
Academically,
he was doing quite well. But he was also a Marxist, which offended
certain
chieftains of the Federal Government. When General Olusegun Obasanjo
became
Head of State, he could not tolerate these Marxists. And so Onoge and
his
comrades were sacked from the University of Ibadan for their beliefs.
Onoge’s
associates could rely on their spouses and relatives to survive in the
city of
Ibadan. Beyond a much-used Peugeot and stacks of books, Onoge had
nothing else
that would enable him to survive at Ibadan. He was forced to return
back to his
native village of Ugborikoko in Urhoboland. His father was already old
and
could not help him other than offering his son family lands for farming.
So,
Omafume Onoge – with
a Ph.D. from Harvard, famed for brilliantly winning debates against
mighty opponents
– sharpened his cutlass and went back to the farm for sheer survival.
He developed
a large cassava farm. He later got a part-time job at the State
University at
Abraka – although it was doubtful that the authorities in the Federal
Government were aware of this little arrangement to help the refugee
scholar to
survive. It was in the course of his farm work in his native village
that he
came across a dark-complexioned beautiful girl from the neighbouring
Uvwie town
of Ekpan. She became the love of his life. When finally the Federal
Government regained
its senses and rescinded its brash dismissal of Onoge and other
Marxists, he
moved to the University of Jos with his young wife who studied Law at
Jos and
practiced Law in that city.
I
am sure that my
friend, Omi, would want these memories to be reflected in the story of
survival
and triumph that he lived. In the end he triumphed. He died a hero of
his
village of Ugborikoko and his sub-cultural unit of Uvwie. He is also a
hero of
the Urhobo people who regarded Omafume as a man who put the interests
of his
people before his own. Outside Urhoboland, Omafume Onoge is widely
admired in a
country in which the corruption of the elite has eaten deep into their
reputation. Outside of Nigeria, his scholarly contributions are well
celebrated.
Did
Omafume have any
regrets? That might be an unfair question to ask some who passed away.
I am
confident that it is a question that Omafume would want to answer. In
the first
place, in spite of the pain that they caused him, he never disavowed
his
socialist beliefs. He loved humanity and he believed that those
socialist ideas
enhanced our common humanity and were worth fighting for. So, what
would he
regret? First and foremost: that cancer took his wife away from him. In
many
ways, the premature death of his charming wife inflicted an
unimaginable pain
on Omafume. But he became even a better father to their four children
after his
wife’s untimely death. There is something else that it pained him to
discuss.
He once told me that he would want to repair the damage and unfairness
that
were done to his progeny from his first marriage. Illness barred him
from exploring
that dream.
At
the end, Omafume Onoge was a man of
struggles. He lived to overcome many odds. He must be a happy man at
the end of
a life that was a catalogue of triumphs over excruciating odds. He will
be laid
to rest by co-villagers with whom he grew up in Ugborikoko. I salute my
good
friend for a life so well lived.
Omafume,
I wish You
Good Night and Eternal Rest. Omi,
gbe to odę o!
Peter
P. Ekeh
Professor
Department of African and African-American
Studies
State
University of New York, Buffalo.
August 18,
2009