By McPhIlips Nwachukwu

Ugebe  oti wala, otiwala  o  ,                    The mirror has broke,  has broken o
Ezigbo ugebe otiwala, otiwala o,           Beautiful mirror has broken,  has broken
Otiwala ni ike eee ,                                       It broke suddenly

One of the most challenging things to do by anybody is to write  death tributes for one’s beloved ones. Unfortunately,  I have  been saddled to do this ugly job even against my will. But what can one do when  confronted with this kind of task ? keep  silent in the face of such troubling emotion? It is unthinkable.

And that is how I feel now, and how I felt that night, around 11pm last week Wednesday  when Japhet Alakam’s phone  call woke me up from stream of sleep.

“McPhilips”, he  called with fears registered  in his voice, “ have you heard?” , “ heard what?” I mumbled having slept earlier as part of the fringe benefits  deriving from my annual vacation.” Amadi is dead.” He told me flatly. Immediately, sleep evaporated from my eyes and  night dawned double in my consciousness. I became awake with my eyes closed and my mind opened.

Late Mr. Ogbonnaya Amadi , pioneer ICT journalist

The shock that gripped me over this  unsettling news   was reinforced  by the fact that  exactly one week to that very day he passed on ,I  met  him at the Vanguard when I went there to cross check some information in the library. In his usual fervent manner, he gave me his signature butt: “ Dede  Nne olee otu ihe nnu?” that Ngwa Igbo dialect which translates to, “ My brother, how are things?” had remained our uniting and greet pattern all the time I knew him in the Vanguard.

When I saw him, he was dressed in traditional black Safari  suit  well fitted in his body. I looked at him closely and smiled as I saw white hairs shot  out silently from different parts of his body and I smiled again at myself, at how all of us, who joined Vanguard media as young boys are surprisingly, aging gracefully in this  vineyard. But he was not sick.  Our brother  and friend was not sick.

Amadi was one of the Vanguard’s staff that I first encountered when I joined the service of Vanguard Media.  First, I was assigned to work in the political desk with Tunji Olawuni, Jide Ajani and John Ighodaro. Then,  Amadi was  already the  established head of  Entertainment desk. We did not work together at  the same desk, but when the Publisher of Vanguard instructed me to  take over  the rested Arts and Book Review page previously handled by late, Yeriba Kina , we became closer.

As a younger reporter in the arts desk, I learnt a lot from Amadi and Obi Nwakanma, the then, Group Arts / Assistant Editor. From Amadi, I learnt the thread of entertainment writing by reading through his pages every Saturday and from Nwakanma,  the tropes of intellectual art and  the beauty of flowery and deep prose.

The two characters loomed large in my imagination in my  early days in the Vanguard. They  helped to  initiate me into the  beauty of arts and concerts. Together, we  discovered the beauty and hidden secrets of night and women as much as we discovered the beauty associated with loneliness attendant with Night  crawling.

In  the later years, when Nwakanma had proceeded to the US to pursue his other love: scholarship, Amadi and I remained to carouse the arts and entertainment. Arts and entertainment being Siamese twins with interests crossed here and there, we worked together without infringing on each  other’s beat.

We shared ideas together and debated on common issues. We respected ourselves as well as our  age differences. He was a  beautiful soul and joked and laughed from his heart.

As an entertainment reporter, Amadi wrote his name in gold and succeeded in making Vanguard a reference paper when it comes to entertainment  journalism in Nigeria. He had brilliant ideas and was very innovative. In every sense, he  lived an  urban life and identified with everybody. We will all miss him, and more so, his electrifying presence.

Anyi  na  acho dede ee, Dede anyi  onye obioma  ee,  Olee ebe ka anyi  ga ahu ya,   Ndi  Uka eburula ya gaa ni ili.

We are searching for our brother

Our good natured brother

Where can we find him

He is been taken to the graveyard

Good night, Dede Nne.