Dimgba Igwe: Passage Of The Veteran

By Kola Johnson

I had known Dimgba Igwe by reputation, right from his “Day One”, as a staff writer in the defunct Sunday Concord. I, however, had the opportunity of interacting with him personally, beginning from some 28 years ago.

The veteran journalist, Monzor Olowosago and Dimgba were colleagues in the Sunday Concord, then edited by Dele Giwa, the flamboyant media chief of blessed memory.

I was at that time Assistant Editor Oriwu Sun, the imperial wave making leader of community newspapers in the Nigerian journalistic firmament, founded by Monzor Dawodu Olowosago; who prior to his advent into newspaper publishing was the production Editor of Sunday Concord in which Dimgba was a senior staff writer.

At that momentous inception of that pioneer leader of community journalism, colleagues of the publisher, who were obviously joyous about his vision, had ensured that they availed their quota of input in the drive to propel the experiment to the envisioned height of fulfilment.

Prominent in this category more than others, were Dimgba Igwe and Chuma Adichie also of Sunday Concord. Their more enduring input to the newspaper contrast with Mike Awoyinfa’s whose involvement probably didn’t transcend the pioneer stage of the newspaper.

Dimgba and Adichie were by this token, more regular spectacles in our office then. This aside, I had cause to relate on frequent basis with Dimgba – usually on the premise of his regular editorial contribution to our newspaper – at the Mafoluku location of his office at the then glorious but defunct National Concord newspapers where we not only undertook our production work, but also printed the newspaper.

With time, Dimgba receded in presence, ostensibly on account of his increasingly busy schedule, as Adichie featured more prominently, even to date.

While Adichie radiated an impressively personable airs, Dimgba from my own ken was diametrically contrary. Not too pleasantly at least on the face of it. This to repeat, might after all be a natural outward façade; at variance with perhaps a more sublime inner nature.

My interpretative connotation of this; whether rightly or wrongly was that it might be syndromic of the popular Pentecostal strain of born-againism.

It was of course for this abstemious code of born-againisim as one was apt to recall then, that the Oriwu Sun publisher Mr Olowosago would usually tease him: “Dimgba how Una girlfriend now?” – to which Dimgba was usually indifferent in response.

As Dimgba rose through the rank from the National Concord to the Weekend Concord and later The Sun – coupled with his extra-journalistic exploit in book authorship – it would not be off the mark to suppose that it was the bold hand of God tellingly visible as a trademark consequence of the prophetic covenant of Divine prosperity of God, for the exclusively hallowed circle of his chosen.

Dimgba to be sure, soon attained the apotheosis of journalistic fame and glory. He had a happy family and was full of life, beans, vigour, vibrancy and sundry items converging to salutiferous robust health.

For a self-made man like this writer, who for whatever reason was devoid of the availing benefit of a first degree; this was no mean achievement – but an unusual kind, exclusively repository of the inner circuit of the beloved of the most high Divine.

For Dimgba, all things went well. Life was fine. Life for him, was the quintessential paradise on earth. Dimgba became a role model to all – especially by those animated by the juxtapository spirituo-temporal cross-current of professional accomplishment on one hand and the subliminal elevated spirituality of the higher Pentecostal hue.

It was against this background that when recently, the departed media notable was writing, in a tribute – in the wake of the death of Dora Akunyili – little did it occur – of the imminence of his own passage. It was as if the dividing line, in the spatial frame of time, would amount to an eternity.

Can you imagine a man, who in a remarkably pathetic elegy as rendered in his regular weekly column in The Sun had narrated his sense of shock, in the face of the eventual but grim unfolding that he would have no option than to henceforth refer to Akunyili in the past tense.

However, not exactly three months after, the mourner himself is gone in a stupefyingly reminiscent motion picture fiction or fantasy-like fable of classic textbook yarn for the marines. Gone to be seen no more.  What an intriguing humour in irony!

Whereas he was supposed to jog to live, considering the infinitely endemic benefit of jogging to life – he jogged to death. An even grimmer humour in archetypal paradox. May his soul rest in peace.      

•Johnson is a writer and Journalist