Harvest of deaths in creative community

For the art and culture sector, the past few weeks have brought a lot of gloom. From the literary to the film and broadcasting arenas,  four people have died in their prime.
The first to submit to the pang of death was Nike Adesuyi-Ojeikere, a Lagos-based writer said to have battled cancer.
Apart from the fact that she was a very inspiring poet, down-to-earth and painstaking with her craft, Adesuyi-Ojeikere was instrumental to the development of the Association of Nigerian Authors, especially the Lagos chapter.
No wonder, tears for the amiable woman, who passed on at the age of 48, have been multiple and sustained. Only on Saturday, her  former colleagues, including Odia Ofeimun and Jumoke Verissimo, gathered at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in the Yaba area of Lagos, where they held a memorial conversation and reading for her.


The tears were still very fresh when a seasoned broadcaster, Taiwo Oladokun, died in a road accident along Abuja-Lokoja Road. This again stung many members of the arts community more than a deadly bee. From the Arts Writers Organisation of Nigeria, to the National Association of Theatre Arts Practitioners, shock and grief ruled the waves. Here was a man who, apart from having been a media adviser to former culture ministers – Adetokunbo Kayode and Edem Duke –  disclosed plans to deepen his stakes in the film sector a few days before his demise.
Unlike Adesuyi-Ojeikere whose remains were interred in Lagos about two weeks ago, the  broadcaster , who also died at age 48, has yet to be laid to rest.
According to a senior member of AWON and a lecturer at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Mr. Sola Balogun, the writers’ body is planning to hold a programme in honour of the man who bagged a PhD from the University of Ibadan, worked with NTA and was a an official of the Centre for Black and African Civilisation.
On November 5, 2016, the writers community and their environmental counterpart are supposed to be celebrating the 21st anniversary of the demise – via judicial murder – of writer and Ogoni freedom fighter, Ken Saro-Wiwa. It is a date that many people look forward to. But the story took a new twist last week when a son of the deceased, Ken Saro-Wiwa jnr., also passed on.
He was not a firebrand warrior like his father. But Ken Saro-Wiwa jnr. also made an impact in the creative and environmental worlds. It was such impact that made former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo  and Goodluck Jonathan to engage him in an adviser’s capacity on matters relevant to the emancipation of the Niger Delta.
Perhaps, the most dramatic of the losses is that of Prince Afam Chiazor, an actor and filmmaker. He was said to be on the set of a movie in Abeokuta, Ogun State, when he had a cough. That was on Saturday, October 22. Some complications were said to have followed, which forced his colleagues to rush him to a hospital. Chiazor, who was the president of the Cinematographers Association of Nigeria, was said to have been declared dead on arrival at the hospital.

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