By Osa Mbonu-Amadi
It is now a fact that while the world was mourning the five who perished aboard the OceanGate submersible at the bottom of the Northern Atlantic Ocean, a somewhat similar tragedy, by the fact of its being a fatal transportation accident, involving a father we all love and cherish, was lurking on land in our midst. It finally befell us on Saturday, June 24, 2023.
As though it was meant to evoke a feeling of foreboding, drawn by the events of the imploded submersible, I was ensconced somewhere on Sunday afternoon, June 25, 2023, reading the introductory page of The Titanic Reader edited by Professor John Wilson Foster, a book I have read many times before:
“Like the bookish on board we see allegory. In our minds’ eyes and in motion picture enactments we see struggle that resolves itself into the procession of human life towards the fatal destination of water. For here was enacted with an indifferent simplicity ‘the state of manne, and how he is called at uncertayne tymes by death, and when he thinkest least thereon’. That one was called in company must have helped to muffle at first the sound of death’s summoning voice. ‘It all seemed like a play, like a drama that was being enacted for entertainment,’ one woman survivor recalled, ‘it did not seem real.’ Fellow-passengers, after all, had the appearance of a holiday crowd, some in casual dress, some in tuxedos or evening gowns; Mrs Stengel wore a kimono, Officer Charles Lightoller wore a jumper and trousers over pyjamas, J. Bruce Ismay wore carpet slippers while he impatiently shepherded starboard passengers into the lifeboats.
“Then the possible terrible outcome of what was happening must have intruded. As the sinking continued, the familiar options, potential and variety of one’s life dwindled fast. All became foreground and the present distending moment. The sound of death must have grown less disregardable, the company less reassuring and at last comfortless, even hostile and alien.
When the great ship disappeared, it must have seemed to those in the boats that she was faithlessly abandoning them to their own frail devices. (Those in the water were quickly beyond metaphor and even thought, expelled from their previous land lives, creatures now, out of their element and in the final battle for survival.) The cruelly clear night and calm sea must have resembled to the saved in the boats a resort playground in hell, the manly and womanly voices raised not in cheer and sport but in summons and petition and in the end in abjection and mercifully diminishing terror. Unbearable to us is the thought of those still alive on the ship, borne under the waves, departing on that interminable voyage into the abyss.
“In those short hours there must have been innumerable acts of compassion, selfishness, courage, failure of nerve. The situation must have released unfamiliar and surprising strength in some, unfamiliar and surprising weakness in others. Some became people they had not known in a lifetime – changed utterly; some proved to themselves what they had always known they were, good, bad or indifferent as that was. Many survivors must in later years have relived the experience in nightmare, some remembering their behaviour during the sinking with regret, or dubious satisfaction, perhaps painful self-reproach. Like the trenches three years later, Titanic was a breeding-ground for a lifetime’s excruciation.”
Suddenly, a call that came in terminated my reading. It was from my friend, Chris Onuoha. “I sent something to your WhatsApp which I need you to confirm,” Chris told me. I sensed something unusual in his voice, so I rushed to WhatsApp.
It was a link to The Punch Newspaper’s online story: “LASU don, Lai Oso, dies in fatal accident”. Life and the entire universe stood standstill in my head. A mild headache I had been having since the previous day suddenly intensified. I rushed to our Lagos State University School of Communication Ph.D. (2016 set) WhatsApp group to see what was happening there. Lo and behold, it was true! One of us, Dr. Boye, had broken the news on the platform since 8:42 am!
Professor Lai Oso had shepherded many of us academically at the Lagos State University School of Communication; some from graduate levels and others from Masters classes even before he became the Dean of the faculty after the end of the tenure of the pioneer dean, Prof. Idowu Sobowale, around 2006 or 2007, when the LASU School of Communication was still at Adebowale Adegunwa House near Ojuelegba, Lagos.
Professor Oso was one of the most brilliant scholars I have ever met in my entire academic life. On November 16, 2022 at 9:42 pm, a certain discussion on our Ph.D. WhatsApp group took us to Prof. Lai Oso, and I wrote the following words:
“Any time I remember what Prof Lai Oso said one day in the class I would have a good laugh. He said: “When we tell some of these students to attend classes, they will say, no, they will read from textbooks. ‘Which textbooks are they talking about? The textbooks some of us who are professors will read and we won’t understand what the authors are talking about?’ If some professors will read the textbooks and not understand, so na me go come and kill myself?”
Dr Kola Oni responded: “Prof Lai Oso is the most down-to-earth person I’ve ever seen. Take a narrow path and finish and go, you won’t be the one to solve the problem of this world with your project (Prof. Oso always advised students) ….”
“(Professor Oso is) very realistic and simple, notwithstanding the fact that he is super-brilliant. He doesn’t pretend about anything,” I commented.
Dr. Yinka Oyegbile replied: “That’s the hallmark of scholarship. No posturing, no shakara.”
These few observations sum up who Prof. Oso is: Very realistic and simple, notwithstanding the fact that he is super-brilliant. Prof. Oso doesn’t pretend about anything.
Prof. Lai Oso is respected as a god at the LASU School of Communication, both by students and his professional colleagues, including other professors, not because of anything else, but on account of the amazing and abundant knowledge he carried in his head. In all the time I sat at his feet in the classroom to drink from the deep fountain of his vast knowledge, I can hardly recall seeing Prof. Oso come into the classroom with pieces of papers or textbook. And yet, by the time he starts teaching it would seem as if he was dictating from a well-written but simplified textbook!
His verdicts on scholarly discourses or arguments were regarded as final. Whenever Professor Lai Oso spoke on any dialectical issue, it was usually the end of that intellectual disputation. I owe part of the success of my Ph.D. thesis to Prof. Lai Oso, especially the acceptance and approval of the topic by the panel set up to approve thesis proposals of Ph.D. candidates.
First, as I mentioned on the appreciation page of my thesis, “Prof. Lai Oso encouraged me to pursue music communication for which he knew me, when I was tempted to do something else on environmental communication.” He called me ‘music man’, in reference to my research interest in music communication.
Professor Oso saved the topic of my Ph.D. thesis from being cast into the garbage bin by one of the professors on the panel. That day, as soon as I had started presenting my proposal, Prof. Oso’s phone rang. He stood up and took the phone outside to answer the call. Before he returned, I had finished presenting and the professor in question who happened to be the head of the panel had told me outrightly that “the topic is not researchable!”
Normally, no candidate argues with the professors except the candidate wants to fail. But because I was alarmed at the prospect of the rejection of the topic into which I had already put so much work and was completely convinced that it was very researchable, I put up a vehement defence of the topic that bordered more on argument as I addressed the panel. It was in the middle of my argument that Prof. Oso came back after answering his call. He listened to my argument: “For more than a century,” I said, “Western popular music has dominated Nigerian popular music on radio programming in Africa – a state of affairs scholars in that field described as cultural imperialism. Today, some people are claiming that Nigerian popular music has ascended above Western popular music and become dominant on radio in Nigeria. Sir, are you saying that is not researchable – to investigate whether such a revolution has actually occurred or not?”
“Who said it is not researchable?” Prof. Oso asked.
Everyone fell silent. Nobody said, “it is I.” The oracle had spoken.
All the other professors, including the one that had flagged it down, joined hands to chart ways forward for the topic. To the glory of God, guided by my supervisors – Prof. Yinka Alawode, the current Dean of LASU School of Communication; Prof. Jide Jimoh, and Dr. Yomi Bello of the Department of Theatre Arts & Music – I completed the thesis and later defended it successfully on June 28, 2022.
Since the news of this horrible tragedy broke on Sunday, June 25, 2023, while many of us who are beneficiaries of his boundless erudition, love, politeness, kindness, wise counsel and more, have been speechless due to the shock, some of us have said a few things about this academic Socrates who the cold hands of death snatched from us while he was being transported from Abraka in Delta State to Lagos, just as the passengers of the Titanic and OceanGate submersible were snatched on April 15, 1912 and June 22, 2023 respectively:
“I know God is unquestionable. But Prof Lai Oso? Ha.” – Dr Oni.
“We have lost a kind father, a loving friend. A great teacher. A great scholar. We have lost one of the best brains in LASU. Moreso in such a horrifying way. May the Lord Jesus keep his soul. Amen.” – Osa Mbonu-Amadi.
“This is so sad. Prof Oso did not deserve this call. No one who has come across Prof will forget him in a hurry. He was a good man.” – Dr Lydia Madu.
“A gentle and humble giant. May his soul rest on.” – Dr. Olujoke Asekere.
“Shocking! May God comfort us all; his family and friends” – Barrister Gbemiga Ogunleye.
“With Prof. Lai Oso’s demise:
Children have lost a father.
Students have lost a teacher.
Friends have lost a companion.
Communication system has lost a device.
Humanity has lost an Icon.
While Heavens gained all.
Thus, painful and glorious.
Hallelujah!
May we all be duly comforted in Jesus’ name.” – Dr Babajide Adeyinka.
May the almighty God console us all, especially the families of the deceased, and grant eternal repose to the souls of the departed, in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
