In this follow-up, I want to dig deeper into Comrade Osagie Obayuwana’s memorial lecture in honour of the late Comrade Jonathan Ihonde. The lecture was more than elegant—it carried the fire of activism and clarity that only someone forged in the trenches of struggle could deliver. As a mentee of Ihonde, Obayuwana’s words bore the imprint of revolutionary urgency—something raw, something real.
Like his mentor, Obayuwana doesn’t just talk about justice. He embodies it with the passion of a rebel who refuses to rest while injustice thrives. His core message stands against the quiet wickedness of the ruling elite—their entitlement, their distance from the suffering masses. His conviction was firm: justice isn’t a favour; it is a fight—one meant to uproot the system that keeps the rich powerful and the poor invisible.
But before I venture deeper into the heart of Obayuwana’s reflections—and how they echo the socialist energy of Ihonde’s Hotel De Jordan—permit me a brief detour. Last week’s piece stirred reactions from readers who, like me, still carry the weight of memory and meaning. I owe them space in this continuation, because our collective voices form the soil from which new truths grow.
Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano, ever the surgical structuralist, saw my essay through a literary lens. He argued that I didn’t merely eulogize Ihonde—I used his image as a symbolic “narrative ploy,” a kind of literary resurrection only possible because he is now, safely, gone. As he puts it, “Your essay speaks on the condition that Mr. Ihonde is (safely) dead… for your essay to emerge.” It’s a fair, if complex, critique—one that wrestles with the ethics of memory and authorship. Would we still reflect this deeply if Ihonde were alive and uncelebrated?
Professor Owojecho Omoha brought a different insight, one rooted in mythology and the enduring rhythms of tradition. Drawing from Idoma culture, he described how kings are never truly buried; their journey continues even in death. For him, to honour Ihonde while living—or posthumously—is to revive the human spirit against the forces of greed and inequality. It is to interrupt the national obsession with “befitting burials” and return focus to the living truth—the people still suffering the same system Ihonde resisted.
Bob Majiri, journalist and storyteller, gave a warm, nostalgic nod to Ihonde’s creative legacy. He reminded us how Hotel De Jordan was not just television—it was a mirror. As kids, we saw ourselves in characters like Chief Ajas and Idemudia, sang along to “Poor man dey suffer/monkey dey work/baboon dey chop…” and, without knowing it, absorbed the political undercurrents Ihonde laced into every scene. Today, the message still holds: the poor still suffer. The baboon still chops.
These reflections—literary, cultural, personal—will be revisited, properly and with depth, in time. But for now, I return to Obayuwana and his masterful unpacking of a comrade’s life. His tribute wasn’t wrapped in platitudes. It was a battle cry. A statement that Jonathan Ihonde may be gone, but his rebellion is not. His memory is a live wire in the fight for justice.
I only hope Obayuwana doesn’t mind the way I’ve rendered him here—as a torchbearer, as a gleaner of truths too heavy to carry alone. And if he agrees, perhaps he too will smile knowingly at Professor IBK’s remark about my “literary rhetorical waxings” being “powerfully strongish!”
As for the Galactic Federation—they too are watching, shaking their heads at our disaster-creators and the mess they’ve made of hope. Ihonde, I imagine, would understand that phrase perfectly. And perhaps—just perhaps—he would smile.
