By Chuddy Oduenyi
Despite his advanced age,the recent transition of Prof Kalu Uka to the higher realm still sent shock waves to his legion of admirers and has continued to stir sad emotions in many enlightened circles.
Uka,88, was a scholar of rare specimen and a literary giant.One of his earlier publications Earth To Earth, a book of poems,was a recommended text for senior secondary schools students.His later day literary works were perceived by many as difficult,dark,dense and inaccessible. He was unfazed by such views considered to be mostly mendacious and preferred constructive criticisms from informed minds. Prof K, as he was affectionately called, was prominent among a corps of distinguished scholars with whom I forged very valuable friendships during my student days at the University of Calabar (UNICAL).
Fortuitously,he became one of the intellectual giants on whose broad shoulders I firmly planted my fledgling feet at UNICAL.
My published reviews of his 1985 novel Colonel Ben Brim in The Guardian, Nigeria Chronicle,Daily Satellite, and Concord Weekly further endeared me to him and cemented our friendship.
One of my finest and proudest moments at UNICAL was the day in 1985 I happened to be in the midst of the trio of Prof Ben Obumselu (external examiner),Prof Godfrey Uzoigwe Dean,Faculty of Arts) and Prof Kalu Uka(HOD Theatre Arts) who were engaged in indepth discourse spiced with robust wit of the then hot button issue of some academics teaching what they were not paid to teach.Few days earlier I had the opportunity to listen to the views of the venerable Marxist scholar Prof Eskor Toyo and his then protege Dr Akpan Ekpo on that issue for which the Babangida junta was hunting down some earmarked radicals in the nation’s ivory towers.
But on this particular day I was savouring my time with three esteemed bourgeois scholars and by the time the affable Prof Ernest Emenyeonu(DVC) and Prof Chidi Ikonne (HOD English and Literary Studies) joined the “party” the erudite Prof Kalu Uka had hurried back to oversee a drama rehearsal at the University’s main auditorium dubbed the New Arts Theatre (NATH).
When the drama was eventually showcased to a capacity crowd at NATH two days later,it bore the unmistakable imprint of Uka and the audience roared in thunderous applause to which the inimitable former university orator quipped that the superlative performance by the Theatre Arts troupe was not just magical but “Theatre Science”.
Prof Kalu was affable, witty, thorough, farsighted, reliable, and accessible.
In an uncanny way, he was a man of the people. I know of his closeness with a host of renowned academics, including Prof Abiola Irele and his affinity with Kongi (Prof Wole Soyinka) years before he harvested the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986.
Uka was masterly,masculine mindful,and a marshal.
May the angels sing him to his rest.
Dr Oduenyi, MD/Editor-in-Chief of Daily Query, is an adjunct faculty at Pan Atlantic University Lagos.
