Mike Awoyinfas lamentation Sadness is now my name. Sadness like those missing girls stolen from us in the middle of the night and taken into captivity. Sadness is the tattoo mark emblazing my face like Mike Tyson’s facial tattoo. I have been reading Mike Tyson’s bizarre memoir: MIKE TYSON, UNDISPUTED TRUTH, MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY and I was planning to write on it. But I am compelled to jettison that to write this sad column. Oh, my God! You know why I am sad. My best friend is gone. My twin brother is gone. A good man is gone. A generous man is gone. A man who gave all his life serving God and journalism is gone. A man who is the other part of me is gone. Dimgba Igwe is gone. What will I do now? Who will I turn to now? Who? Why must all my friends and heroes in journalism die so cruelly, landing on the front page? My editor Dele Giwa died the same way: killed dastardly through a letter bomb on October 19, 1986. And up till today, the riddle of his death remains unsolved. It has become “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” to use a phrase by Winston Churchill. Like Giwa, Dimgba Igwe in the throes of death was crying: “I don’t want to die.” For four hours, he was bleeding on the road to Golgotha. No ambulance. No oxygen mask. No Samaritan hospital. From St. Raphael Hospital to the General Hospital Isolo where there was no surgeon to attend to him, it was the story of Nigeria’s systemic failure as a country. He finally gave up at Lagos State University Hospital, Ikeja. If I am angry at all, it is not with the bloody coward who killed him and fled in panic. I will forgive the hit-and-run killer. And the Dimgba Igwe I know, will forgive the man who killed him. What I cannot forgive is a nation with health institutions that can do nothing, once your life is in danger. It’s the same story all over Nigeria. Of course, you know that once you are taken to LUTH on emergency, you are as good as dead. -Mike Awoyinfa
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 17:35:33 +0000
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