THE Reverend Horatius Bonar is among the very many thinkers who explained life and death in some insightful words. His words on many occasions serve as great conclusions. He saw life as a journey and some of the perks along its route as the fuel to carry us as we journey to our Maker. “Life is a journey, not a home,” he said, “a road, not a city of habitation; and the enjoyments and blessings we have are but little inns on the roadside of life, where we may be refreshed for a moment, that we may with new strength press on to the end.” The preacher points to that abstract but profound thought many of us hold with different levels of belief and practicality – life is transient.
The very fact that life is ephemeral in itself, is ethereal. Humans view death from varying prisms. Most humans’ views of death are either cultural or religious or both. As Igbo by birth who has long interaction with the Yoruba, I view life and living; death and dying, from the cultural and religious prisms of these cultures. Like millions of others like me, I can neither view nor know the contentions of a Japanese Shinto or Indian Hindu about death and dying. Reading may give a clue or an insight into these peoples’ cultural and religious dispositions about human transition, but it would remain in the realm of conjecture. One can only just imagine, albeit through reading, the intensity of incensing in cremation in India, or the number of cows that go into partying to celebrate the dead in Nigeria. But as diverse as we view the occasion, and no matter how it comes to its victim, death has only one definition: The end of earthly life.
David Ilesanmi Ajiboye has been cast in this mould. On Sunday, 8 August 2021, his earthly life ended. He joined the Saints triumphant, as we say in Christendom. He has, by his death, assumed the position of our senior. When the fire burns out, we drop the raffia torch. He is now only being remembered by all of us – his family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, business partners, and even those who knew him only by his name and where he worked, for what he did while here with us.
Again, Horatius Bonar comes to mind. He wrote a hymn in the 17th century, which is still so apt today that many use the hymn to mourn or remember their dead loved ones. In the times Bonar wrote his verses, it gained acceptance so much that it became an anthem, more of a mantra really, for those who fell in “the Great War”.
Fading away like the stars in the morning
Losing their light in the glorious sun
Thus we would pass from this earth and its toiling,
Only remembered by what we have done.
David Ajiboye had literally been ‘stomping the yard’ like all of us, the privileged, lucky ones are still doing. Indeed, literally and figuratively, David did stomp the yard of journalism – in the print and broadcast divisions of the profession. Since we first met around 1999/2000, and since we became ‘neighbours’ in the newsroom around 2005, Ajiboye has been etched in my heart. I still picture a T-shirt he gave me when he returned from a ‘tour of duty’ in the USA in 2009. It was a souvenir from that year’s Core DJ’s concert. He was a good neighbour.
He once told me, after one of his earliest trips to
northern America, about how squirrels were parading near the window of the home of his hosts. He said the mammals were so brazen that they would stroll leisurely through the window sill and even chase themselves in play, at his arm’s length disregarding his huge, dangerous presence! He said his host had read his mind and noticed that he might one day do the unthinkable by hunting down the ‘mumu’ animals. His host too as a Nigerian, from a village, was in sync with what a typical Nigerian could do in such a circumstance. His host had to warn that killing or even harming any of the squirrels was actually the unthinkable. It would amount to a police case! We laughed at our societal differences with the oyibo people and drew lessons from the humour.
Today, David Ajiboye has fallen in the Great War and can only be remembered for what he had done. Isn’t our life a great war? In life, we battle for everything. Even the very precious free gifts from God are received only by the living who are willing to live each day fighting for them. To not fight for life and the many graces of God is to die; and we must pray to God for the grace and privilege! Gbenga Ajiboye, the radio act by whom many broadcasters’ standards are measured, chanted Ma gbà lesson l’owo iku (learn lessons from death and the dead).
How and when it will come is still embedded in Matthew 24:36 or Mark 13:32 – “no man knows the hour”. However, for David and some others we might know, the COVID-19 scourge has served as a vehicle. Since the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Nigeria on 27 February, 2020, when that Italian was diagnosed in Ogun State, “a lot of rain has fallen…” A synopsis on the spread of the harbinger of death by Center for Communication and Social Impact (CCSI) says “the beginning and rapid spread of COVID-19 has its root in rapid globalisation and urban growth which has facilitated transmission from country to country, state to state, community to community, and person to person.” From this, we must draw our lessons. We’ve been told to take precautions. How careful can we be? The least the government can do is to tell us to be careful, even if they are offering us nothing more. And they have done just that. So, we must get in the habit of being careful – for ourselves, for our community and for our loved ones.
Interestingly, we still reel in illusory myths like “COVID-19 does not affect a black man”; “the temperature here is very high, it doesn’t affect us”; some will ask you “have you seen anybody that the said COVID-19 has killed in your community?”
A “Powerful HANDS” campaign implemented by CCSI, through the federal government in collaboration with the United Nations and with funding by the European Union (EU) is trying to rouse us to the responsibility of taking precautions. It might sound so distant and far removed from us, but the simple message is: “Have your hands washed or sanitised frequently; Always cough or sneeze into your elbow; No going out without a face mask; Distance of at least two arm’s length should be maintained; Stay indoors and self-isolate if you feel sick.”
We have heard of many people killed by this virus, but it has taken the death of David Ajiboye to drive home the message for many. May we not join in the statistics now, we pray o Lord.
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and then