The son of a master-fryer of akara balls does not want another master-fryer in business. (Omo alakara ko fe k’enikeji o din, Baba Yekemi) It is not often that you find a columnist paying respect and homage to another, particularly from the same newsgroup. Art is indeed a jealous master and writers can be a notoriously truculent and difficult brood. After paying copious tributes on this page to Dr Femi Orebe on the occasion of his reaching the octogenarian benchmark, the autumnal Ekiti warrior waited patiently for yours sincerely until the actual reception before collaring the columnist. “You this chap, so you cannot even pay me a common tribute without abusing me, abi?” the great man rumbled with ominous conviviality. Yours sincerely took mental note of all the possible and potential headhunters in the hall.
And while still talking about the tribe of celebrated pen-pushers and their infamous thin skin, it is meet to report that after a nasty tiff at a reception in the most rarified ambience of upper crust New York, Norman Mailer, the great novelist and celebrated hell-raiser, dumped the equally celebrated Gore Vidal on a pile of prime pancakes and Christmas decorations after a flurry of exploding punches. Mailer, a decorated boxer and World War Two hero, had little time for Vidal’s upper class pretensions. After being helped to his feet in all his Kilimanjaro-like heap, Vidal noted with aristocratic displeasure: “Words have failed Norman again”.
All this by way of tribute to a retiring fellow columnist on this newspaper who let it be known in a valedictory rally last Wednesday that his much cherished combo was calling it quit. Dr Tony Marinho, an illustrious scion of the illustrious Marinho clan, has been a tremendous asset to this newspaper right from inception. He was there from the word go even serving as a columnist on board of The Comet, the paper that transformed into The Nation. That is over twenty years of continuous exertions, relentlessly poleaxing the unjust, the unfair and the mindlessly incompetent while pointing the way to a better society. Before being publicly unveiled as a noted columnist, he had served as a member of the Anonymous Authors Association of Nigeria, his first letter to the editor having been published exactly fifty years ago in 1976 while serving as a second set NYSC medical doctor.
Dr Marinho writes with an “up and at ’em” gusto, a discernible British bull dog tenacity which leaves no stone unturned and no turn unstoned, as it was once famously noted. There is a stirring immediacy to the writing; a fierce sense of the urgency of now which makes the leisurely ambulatory gamboling of elderly stylists like yours sincerely a tad complacent and even faintly complicit. There is always something about the doctor which reminds one of the unforgettable poetic renditions of Simon and Garfunkel: The Boxer.
It is therefore not surprising to learn that in his youth, Marinho had been an apprentice boxer in the Abalti Barracks gym of the iconic boxer, Hogan Kid Bassey, former World Heavyweight Champion. The lessons learnt and imbibed, particularly the minatory crouching gait reminiscent of Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, the science of relentlessly advancing without being poleaxed by a sucker punch, would have stood the eminent medico in good stead in the modern coliseum of Nigeria. This was the calling of Medicine at its most medicinal. There are some physicians who happen to be true healers just as there are some natural healers who happen to be physicians. Given his moral clarity, his passionate adherence to simple and elementary decency, his noble altruism and abiding sense of obligation to the poor and needy, it was inevitable despite his obvious disdain for hustling and aversion for self-promotion that he would attract attention at the highest quarters.
Legend has it that he was once offered appointment at the highest level of his calling. But when his questioning became too intrusive and invasive, it led to a protest by his mentor and potential benefactor, Professor Ladipo Akinkugbe, the imperious and aristocratic Ondo-born medical avatar, who wondered whether the young man was going for national service or national inquisition. The offer fell through. In the event, the nation’s loss was the gain of The Nation. But no matter the condition and circumstances, you cannot hide a star under a bushel. Marinho will be missed by his teeming readers and admirers. May his tribe continue to grow.
