Ace Satirist, Salone’s Herodotus…Olu Gordon

It is expected that Mama Sierra Leone should by now be beaming with smiles as she celebrates her Golden Jubilee.

However, strange gloomy weather has superstitiously revealed that she is weeping rather than smiling.

Public’s perception views such as probably the result of the end of a man society tagged as the illustrious son, who has advanced Sierra Leone on issue surrounding economic, social and political emancipation- Richie Olu Awoonor-Gordon (in photo).

Olu the Star!

Exceptional stars are known even before coming in contact with them.

Conversely, Olu Awoonor-Gordon was a star I had heard of before knowing him.

Disciples

As a curious, outgoing, creative and compassed pupil of the 80s, I had heard of Olu’s supernatural gifts through Haroun Boima (RIP).

By then Haroun Boima was on an indefinite expulsion from Fourah Bay College (FBC) and was engaged in evangelizing Colonel Muammer Ghaddafi’s revolutionary Third Universal Theory (TUT) in communities in Bo town and environs.

Unavoidably, the wise, radical, upright, and eloquent attributes Haroun had attached to Olu’s description, allured me to becoming one of his disciples of great historian, satirist, and freedom fighter.

God’s Time

My thirst of knowing Olu lasted until the Master’s time materialized. This was around mid 2004. A time he launched a campaign against the New Vision, a newspaper I was working for as a cartoonist.

Provokingly, he coined out “old visionless vision” to psychologically distract New Vision’s editorial from its SLPPism – his beef.

To his astonishment, New Vision’s publication the following day carried a cartoon showing him (Olu) drowsing in a drunken stupor at an unkempt desk with “Port Loko 55” fuming between fingers as his wonder pet dog Fifi shed tears.

The satire which this cartoon evoked caned Olu to trace me.

Not like others whose meeting sometime results to the use of invectives, but rather a meeting of eye-to-eye that saw him asked me join his newspaper PEEP!

His Goodies

Numerous people perceived Professor Peep a controversial person. For others, he was a hermit, a cocky Creole stuff and deviant to the day’s order.

However, Olu could not be aptly described either. The living Richie had plenty of goodies that surpassed his disliked lifestyle. Being a no pretender he had no alternative to shouting as means of registering his disapproval of unwarranted behaviours.

He was a good mixer. Of course, he was too conscious of whom he shared with, where exactly he converged and for what reason.

Till his time of death, Olu believed that the beautiful ones are yet to come to planet earth. To Olu, corruption has no reason to exist because he abhorred materialism to the last. From the day we met he kept spoiling me with uncountable goodies – drinks, cigars, reading material, captions, money, and inspiration.

As the saying goes ‘even Satan has friends.’ In spite of our age gap, Olu always wanted me to act intelligently, and be experience and time conscious, just as him.

Nevertheless, breaches of such expectations were mostly overlooked by him; something he hardly did for others.

The two of us remained passionately glued together until his recent answer to God’s call.

Signs on the wall

Through his harsh commentaries on a page in the PEEP newspaper called Professor Peep, Olu successfully hammered nails in coffins of unscrupulous public officers including Mohamed Wanza and the Gunboat Saga.

This, to many, has earned him enviable and serialized awards.

Although one of a kind in the context of partisan politics, Olu the fanatic socialist contributed immensely to the wind of political change in society thus the bringing, pulling down and removal of the out-gone SLPP from governance through preachable political analysis to the favours of then opposition APC.

The signs became evident and conspicuously written on his performance wall.

Readers of his regular Peep can attest to what I now say of Olu.

His coverage of issues became limited. Time and time again the newspaper ‘Peep’ metamorphosed into a staunch customer of the Printers Devil nay changing the face of the newspaper’s editorial and sweet reading form.

The Last Days

Unwellness started visiting Olu frequently. When the course of death laid hands on his best buddy, Eric Eccles James, a philanthropist whose Savage Street residence used to house Peep magazine, till his demise. Off records!

The late Eric James has been instrumental in initiations of concepts for cartoons I used to draw for PEEP publications.

A cat Olu’s death has let me take out of the bag. Eric’s death cost Olu plenty; real truth, trust me. He would never and could never attempt compromising such a loss even in the grave.

Well, well, well, behold death was not far from Olu at all. Symptoms of ill health overpowered the late man; and just the other day, it was told to me that his condition was serious and he would be flown to the UK for medication.

Yes, he went, but never again to return as a living corpse – died in the UK; a big loss to the world of journalism in Sierra Leone.

Be it known also that a man who was seen as a chain smoker, more so cigar, abandoned smoking in 2010, refrained from alcoholism completely… yet it could not help because it was all at the eleventh hour… mishap was all around him.

In March of 2011, Olu’s situation approached the worse. He spent most of his time on his bed at his Bailey Street residence.

All I remember him doing as at then was receiving ‘Get Well Soon’ cards from friends and family to give hope of courage whilst on his sick bed.

Up until his whisking to the UK, I was fervently calling on God to give Olu a well up health.

God has given Olu what is most suitable for him. So Brother Olu, brace it well for the giver knows and loves you best.

By Momoja Lappi

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