Remembering Uche Nwokedi

By Yinka Olatunbosun

I still remember the day I received a copy of A Shred of Fear. It was a mind-blowing experience for me. In fact, two of my editors called me when they received their copies.

“I didn’t know you were that close to him.”

My imagination went wild.

Not that close. We only talked on the phone a few times in a year. And I would get a random invitation to his Lekki office every now and then. Of course, I didn’t understand the affection because I had never met anyone of his ilk or pedigree that would want to have a wholesome intellectual conversation that wasn’t meant for a newspaper. Even if I did, I always maintained a very respectable distance – and that I did.

I was always quiet around him. I studied him with intensity. I couldn’t fathom the relationship he was trying to sustain since I first had that interview with him, at the foyer of Agip Hall, MUSON Centre.

For sure, he was always excited about his creative works. First, it was Kakadu the musical. My younger self was a hardline critic. His first show… I told him straight in the face that it was too long, too slow-paced. I didn’t even think of all the efforts he had made into creating a masterpiece that would later be exported to Switzerland and South Africa. He made sure I saw it at South Africa’s biggest theatre, the Nelson Mandela Theatre, Johannesburg in 2017 and I gave him that ‘five-star rating’ that the production deserved – verbally.

I only stood him up once when I got an invite from him that clashed with my scheduled interview with Yinka Shonibare then MBE. I stuck with my Shonibare appointment but my lawyer-author-friend played the bigger person by sending me all the episodes of his TV series, E.V.E. that I failed to watch on DSTV and review even after he had persistently called me to do so.

Uche Nwokedi

It all came to me in a purple-coloured flashdrive- sent by a courier to catch me somewhere along Ozumba Mbadiwe Road, Victoria Island where I was waiting hopelessly for Shonibare to appear. I felt bad. Very bad that I considered Shonibare more important than a meeting with him. But it turned out to be a good decision- as the cover for that week’s art page was dropped suddenly and Shonibare story came to the rescue.

Back to this book – I heard about it first from one of those close door meetings. It always felt like a secret service briefing because I was always warned not to disclose anything we discussed. Privileged information.

I was curious though.

“Why are you doing this?”

I was wondering why he was writing a childhood memoir and like Kakadu, it was Biafra war-themed.

“I will be 60 in…”

I tried to pay attention to what he wasn’t saying. But nothing registered really till now. He told me that many people who saw the civil war are dead or soon to die. And it’s important to document history for generations to come.

Of course, he wasn’t planning on stirring up old sentiments but he was worried about the backlash that the book could get.

I told him what Athol Fugard did after the heinous crime against humanity called Apartheid in South Africa. He set on the journey of healing through his post-Apartheid plays. We talked about his target audience. The language. Overall emotion. Trauma and retraumatisation.

And then the use of humour.

He took his cue from there and kept on writing. I admired his doggedness because he had a very busy work life.

Even when I failed to show up at his father’s funeral in Anambra, he invited me to his office to tell me how it all went.

“…and a goat.”

That got me laughing really hard. The thought of him taking a goat to his community ahead of the funeral plans only affirmed how much respect he had for the Igbo culture. He showed me some pictures…

I knew I missed out. I tried not to sweat it. Of course, I knew there were many sides to the man and he probably had a very eclectic taste in music like I do. He took a picture with Ludacris – and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it on Facebook.

He was full of surprises and warmth.

He was human.

And even though he is gone, his voice still resonates in his book, A Shred of Fear.

Holding it in my hands now, it feels like a parting gift. A perfect parting gift.

* Olatubosun is a journalist and culture critic