Kole Omotoso: Testimonies on a don’s greatness

Renown academic and writer, Professor Kole Omotoso, bade this world farewell on July 19 in Cape Town, South Africa, and Adewale Oshodi speaks with members of the literary community, who were among the closest to him on who he was and the differences he made. Excerpts:

DR Wale Okediran, a former president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA):

More than 40 years have passed since I met Professor Bankole Omotoso, distinguished short story writer, novelist, dramatist, critic, actor, biographer, founding General Secretary and a former President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA).

Throughout those years, I had the honour of attending several local and international literary events with this brilliant, kind and thoughtful man who went on to become a mentor as well as a great and loving friend.

When I first met Kole Omotoso in the early 1980s, I was a young medical doctor/writer in the grips of some unforeseen forces which were intent on tearing me away from a relatively stable medical profession into the uncertain terrain of writing.

Though I was enjoying my private medical practice, I found myself drawn more and more into the circle of writers, artists and left wing ‘kaftan and jeans wearing’ radicals rather than my ‘shirt and tie’ medical colleagues.

Matters were not helped by the fact that some of these new found friends of mine were well known ‘troublemakers’ who, had at one time or the other, had issues with the establishment.

Although I felt at home in this literary circle who loved my writing and benefited from my occasional free medical consultations, doubts still abound on whether I was doing the right thing spending more time with books rather than I spent with my patients.

Luckily, I met some hard-nosed and critical thinkers such as Kole Omotoso who were able to assure me that I wasn’t doing anything abnormal.

Apart from being reminded of a long list of medical doctors who had successfully combined medicine and literature, I also recollect several medical doctors who have had outstanding careers as statesmen, revolutionaries, innovators among other human endeavours.

Though I did not find talent and tenacity of purpose in short supply, I could not have gone far in my long and lively literary career without the support and guidance of people like Prof Omotoso.

As a mentor, he was there every step of the way for his mentees. He had the ability to render criticism with a sly smile or laugh without causing a fatal blow. All he cared about was whether the work was good enough.

He was also the sort of wordsmith that many writers would love to emulate. His writing was often so transcendent it might take flight from the page at any moment, buoyed by the profound goodness, honesty, and beauty he possessed.

Although he was away from the country for some time in South Africa, we kept in touch and got together anytime he was around to play ‘catch up’.

I recall that to mark his 70th birthday anniversary in 2013, a series of activities were lined up in his honour. One of the activities was The Kole Omotoso Exhibition – Akure to Jo’burg which was on display from 19th April to 21st April, 2013. The Exhibition, which showcased his contributions to civic education and development of popular culture in Nigeria and South Africa was donated to a cultural establishment in Ondo State after the celebrations.

In addition, I was also his guest at Elizade University, a private university located in Ilara-Mokin, Ondo State when he came home briefly to take up an academic position with the university. The visit enabled me to visit him in his house on the outskirts of Akure where I enjoyed a hearty lunch prepared by his adoring wife, Bukola.

In addition to a moderate literary production, I also followed the footsteps of my mentor by taking up some literary administrative positions such as the General Secretary and later the President of the Association of Nigerian Authors.

However, when in 2007 he proposed that I should relocate to Ghana to take up the position of Secretary General of the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA) I thought it was a joke. I promptly rejected the proposal. It was our first major disagreement and it caused a little strain in our relationship.

When in 2020, I finally found myself as the Secretary General of the same PAWA, I called Prof Omotoso to announce my new position. He only gave his trademark chuckle and congratulated me. It was obvious that the mentor had now become a seer.

It is a thing of joy that his children have also built legacies of their own, some of them especially, Yewande following his literary footsteps.

Yewande, who now has three award-winning novels to her credit was once a resident at the Ebedi International Writers Residency in Iseyin, Nigeria.

I was a very happy man when Yewande sent me an email about three years after her residency to inform me about the success of her book: ‘The Woman Next Door’ which she had completed at the residency.

As she put it: ‘’I am writing simply to thank you and acknowledge the Ebedi International Writer’s Residency in supporting me with the completion of my novel ‘The Woman Next Door’ which was released in South Africa and the UK in May 2016 and will be released in the US next year in February.

I want to sincerely thank you for providing me with a residency at a crucial time of writing the novel’’

My happiness was two-fold. I was happy to see the emergence of another successful young writer and also that I was able to also pay back my mentor albeit in a small way, what he had done for me.

Malam Denja Abdullahi, a former ANA president:

Kole Omotoso was an iconic and experimental writer, and this culminated in his well known book, Just Before Dawn, which is its first of its kind in Nigerian literature. The book is an admixture of facts and fiction. I did a major study of it for my Masters at the University of Ilorin between 1991 and 1992 entitled, ‘The Emergence of Documentary Narrative in Nigerian Literature: A Study of Kole Omotoso’s Just Before Dawn.’

I also worked with him as ANA General Secretary when we invited him to deliver a keynote at ANA international convention in 2007 on Literature and Conflict Resolution. I am happy to have also got him to appear in a documentary on ANA to talk about the early years of ANA. The documentary is entitled, ‘The Dancing Mask,’ and it is available on the ANA website. Many may not know Kole Omotoso was instrumental in cultivating Mamman Vatsa to donate the Mpape land in Abuja to ANA, which has given a huge boost infrastructurally today to the association. Kole Omotoso personally told me a few years ago about the intricacies and politics behind the donation of that land by Vatsa. During the ANA debacle between 2019 and 2020, we communicated by phone constantly, even while he was on his sick bed in South Africa. I was able to convince him of the facts of the matter on the crisis in spite of some persons who fed him fake and malicious information. Kole Omotoso, from my reading of him as a younger person of the writers’ clan, was one who would stand for personal, literary and intellectual integrity. He was genial, accessible and down to earth. He had no airs about him and from his look and penetrating eyes, you would know he was wizened. He was a committed writer with deep concern for the society. It was a pity he had to depart Nigeria later in life to live elsewhere, but he was always making frequent forays to connect back home.

Salamatu Sule, writer/ANA member:

I met Kole Omotoso through his critical acclaimed works and also through a former president of ANA, Mallam Denja Abdullahi. He was a pioneer member of the Board of Trustees of the association and had featured in the ANA documentary, The Dancing Mask. Many contemporary writers do not know much about his writings and his literary activism, but they are just going to start finding much about him now, and to do so, is to go back to his works.

Kole Omotoso had been part of resolving ANA’s dispute, even though he lived in South Africa. Season of Migration to the South: Africa’s Crises Reconsidered is one fine non-fiction that I will continue to remember Professor Omotoso for.

Paul Liam, poet, writer, critic and ANA member:

Professor Kole Omotoso was a unique intellectual. I can’t remember where exactly I first met him, but it must have been from one of the many ANA conventions I attended. I remember him as a rather remarkable person who seemed to enjoy seclusion. He was never in our faces like the rest of his peers. I think he is less known by the younger generation and certainly not many young writers or people know that he was Yewande Omotoso’s father, herself a remarkable novelist. Professor Omotoso’s death is a great loss to the African literary family.

Anote Ajeluorou, journalist, writer:

Omotoso was a rare scholar who traversed three disciplines – English and Literature, drama and Arabic. Look around; no other scholar traversed such vast area of academia. That’s a rare distinction for him.

I remember when Ondo State government under Governor Olusegun Mimiko celebrated him a few years ago in Akure. Omotoso related how the arts had been a part of his life. He revealed then that as a child, all he wanted to do was be part of the masquerade performances that were part of his childhood. He just loved the street performances of masquerades and would follow then wherever they went to perform. However, his astute father steered him from that path, but he never quite succeeded, as his illustrious son would go on to become a greater masquerade of intellection in a way that further explicates Africa’s cultural milieu that the masquerades he loved so much is a part.

He was a master of fiction as a genre of writing. Two of his expository works bear this out: ‘Just Before Dawn’ and ‘Season of Migration to the South’. These two works are seminal in scope and depth. However, sadly the genre doesn’t seem to have enjoyed much followership among Nigerian writers. So Omotoso is a standalone in this genre, which is a huge credit to his fertile imagination and genius to succeed twice in a path that seems impassable.

No doubt, Nigeria and Africa have lost a scholar and a gem. But that’s the way of all flesh. Omotoso has become an ancestor.

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