I get the impression you might even be better informed than myself on the historical incidents I addressed since I gather you were in the thick of the literary scene in Lagos in those days, where all the action was, while I subsisted on rumours in more or less remote Benin.
thanks
the other oluwatoyin
apart from the great Toyin at the University of Texas
On 28 November 2011 14:30, Oluwatoyin Ade-Odutola <kole2@yahoo.com> wrote:
Toyin Adepoju (you are too much!!),
I doubt if you are an ordinary man-scholar. You have such a clear mind and clear head that everyone should envy. I still suspect that a highly esteemed professor Farooq A. Kperogi wrote what I just read. Wow!!
Toyin please keep up with your ability to think clearly. I endorse the piece by Femi Kusa!
Ibru has become larger in death. He was a human being with faults and he got upset like my landlord does when I miss my rent by a few hours.
Dr. Farooq A. Kperogi please chill and relax...read the piece again and your own reaction. I will send you Sina Peters to sing that song for you
Have a productive week ahead
Kole
From: toyin adepoju <>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 7:22 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Femi Kusa's, former Editor in Chief of The Guardian writes an unflattering exposé on Late Alex Ibru
I identify with you in the loss of your wife, Farooq.
Could you please give any directions on learning obituary writing? I've done some writing of that but did not know it was considered a genre of its own that could be systematically studied.
I dont see this essay on Ibru as negative.
It tries, instead to give us an image of Ibru in his various manifestations, as businessman and politician.
Allow me to embarrass you and others by stating that I would also have liked to read about what transpired between Ibru and the man who might be the leading light of the Guardian at its founding, Stanley Macebuh, a dispute rumoured to be over a woman that seems to have led to Macebuh's leaving the Guardian and taking with him the magical photography of Sunmi Smart-Cole, if I have the name right, as well, in my view, the culture of the Guardian as an intellectual lighthouse. which was for a time, at the centre of Nigerian intellectual life in the humanities as evident in the Guardian Literary Series, where some of the best essays of leading Nigerian literary critics, such as Abiola Irele and Biodun Jeyifo were published, not to mention some of the most comprehensive explorations of various facets of Nigerian literature, essays written by scholars in Nigeria before a number of them fled abroad. The series was published as a set of two books edited by Macebuh. As far as I know, after Macebuh, the Guardian tried to continue that series, but it did not seem particularly successful and no more books came out of it. To my mind, from that point, the Guardian became more or less an ordinary newspaper of less than sterling quality. It was through the Guardian, for example, that Philip Emeagwali laid the decisive foundations of his massive global fraud of self misrepresentation, through a glowing interview with Reuben Abati, later to became chairman of the Guardian editorial board, an interview full of bare faced lies of achievements of global stature, lies which a journalist ought to have been able to uncover through some diligent and even basic research, before going to press.
I hope the Guardian will one day apologize for unwittingly aiding this fraud.
I don't believe that death is a time to speak only positive things of the departed. What human is only positive? Let us leave the exclusive rights for encomiums to the graveside. Those who have opinions, emotions etc unlocked by the death of the departed person should please air them. That is part of the departed person's legacy. Those who read that can then piece together the bits and come to their own conclusions.
Evidence of small mindedness on my part, the vicissitudes of the Guardian after Macebuh and the fact that
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