By Laju Arenyeka & Prisca Sam-Duru

Lagos—The late Arts editor of Vanguard Newspapers, Mr. McPhillip Nwachukwu who passed on last year was yesterday celebrated at the launch of his book, “So long a Night” in Lagos.

The book, published after his death, features a collection of the writer’s poems inspired by his battle with a life-threatening illness in 2005, which eventually claimed his life in 2013.

Mr. Toni Kan, who reviewed the book, quoted McPhillips’ own words to drive home the message: “Forgive me if I leave the stage halfway, it is because I have journeyed for long through life’s experiences.” Kan said the poems were written “in service of the message, and that the poet had a lot of messages to tell. They are his last will and testament”.

The Publisher of Vanguard Newspapers, and Chairman of the occasion, Mr. Sam Amuka, represented by the Editor-in-Chief, Mr. Gbenga Adefaye, encouraged those present to live as the late McPhillip did. He said: “Do your best while you are here on earth, and hope that your best will be good enough and speak well of you when you are gone. That was the McPhillip way.”

Also eulogising her husband, Mrs. Tina McPhillip-Nwachukwu who organised the event in association with the Arts and Culture Writers Association of Nigeria, AWON, said McPhillip’s poetry makes him come alive to her.

She told Vanguard: “Anytime I go through the poems he wrote, I still feel his presence. It’s like we’re talking in some spiritual sort of way. I feel his inner voice. I communicate with him through his poems.”

She also said she felt elated at the success of the book launch. Her words: “I feel fulfilled. Though I have been in pain for a long time, the success of this book launch has made me very happy.

It might not be next year; I do not know when exactly it will be, but I know that I will come up with something new in his honour very soon. It will definitely be based on his work. He had a lot of poems that have not been published yet.”

The event also doubled as the Maiden Memorial Lecture series in honour of the late journalist.

Guest speaker, Toyin Akinosho spoke on the ‘Influence of Arts and Culture reporting towards Nation Building: The McPhillip Example.’

Akinosho said: “I know that my main brief here is to discuss the role of Art writers in contributing to the role of the culture industry.

But the first thing I would urge is that since we are journalists, we might want to take advantage of McPhillip’s memory, which we so cherish, to examine the question of negligence and quality in the Nigerian medical landscape, in a way that, hopefully will lead us to a place of such blinding self-awareness, that we will use knowledge as a curative in itself.

Nigerian journalism ought to pay attention to its own health, starting with situating death of one of its most likeable, personable practitioners in context, and this is by investigating it thoroughly.”