Remi Oladoye had a chat with Mama Adebanke Fagunwa, the matriarch of the DO Fagunwa’s family .,
How do you feel having eminent scholars like professor Wole Soyinka around today speaking about your late husband who is one of the pioneer indigenous writers in Africa ?
I feel great and honoured.I am excited to see everybody here, their coming here and what we discussed here has really shown that D.O Fagunwa still lives on even decades after his death. I am impressed and I want to thank the organizers and God for making today a glorious one, the weather was in our favour, everything went smoothly even beyond my expectations. I am grateful.
How has it been 50 years without your husband ?
Well it has been God, my children were grown up then so they cooperated with me, my husband family also stood by us they didn’t let me have a feeling that my Fagunwa is no more when it comes to some responsibilities and God has been helping us to hold forth the house though not as it would have been if he were to be alive but thank God for everything. I thank him for giving me the strength and good health and i thank him for sustaining the family.
Can you relate with us your experience with Baba Fagunwa while alive ?
Fagunwa is naturally talented . He was blessed by God. As we gathered here today he can write a whole book about this place and what we have been doing since morning, He jot as inspired and it naturally flows in him. Again he is a nice man, he hate seeing people around him to suffer or lack any thing. He can give out the last kobo on him so as to make people smile, he was a very humble and cheerful person. He doesn’t denigrate anybody and he never belong to a cult as some insinuated . They tried to draw him to Ogboni but he refused and because of that some of his friends who belonged to one cult or the other left him because he refused to joined them and what attracted some of them to him was his intellectual prowess and creative ability, and Icon confidently tell you that my husband did not belong to any cult while alive.
With the way he reasoned and acted , especially when writing those books some people are of the opinion that he was a mysterious human being who must have been getting inspiration from a power that transcend human being, just like anjonu. He was not a mysterious creature. He is a man like you, a normal human being that reasoned and acted like every other human being but what makes him different just like every other person is the gift , The potentials which he utilized effectively while alive. Look at Professor Wole Soyinka that just spoke now, he is not a special creature but he was naturally endowed with wisdom and that make him unique and pave way for him. He was a man just like every other person he has no special power or anything special that made him . what he was and not until he died when some people began to spread unfounded rumors about his death that he was taken away by a spirit ( Anjonu).
Unfortunately when I was browsing through the programme I saw a part in which they said he died in an accident, he had no motor accident but died in a river which is the true story . A day before he died, he was at Bida where he slept and planned to returned home the following day, that was on Friday
And on Saturday morning, the driver that travelled with him said he woke up as early as 5; am so that they can return home before noon,. So he got inspired because then he was working on a book , he was holding his jotter and pen and suddenly slumped and he was found the third day and when they found his corpse , what they say was amazing and that makes people to feel he is a mysterious human being, he was holding his reading glass in his hand, his cap was on and his Agbada was on and his shoe was on him no part of his body was removed, but what me i know is that he was a skilled swimmer while alive and may be the Agbada he was putting on did not allowed him to swim .He did not died a mysterious death, his death was natural.
How did you meet Chief D.O Fagunwa ?
He is from Oke Igbo, and I am from Oke Igbo too .We met at Oke Igbo he was working in another town but he do come home and I was a teacher at Oke Igbo and that was where we met and married each other.
What do you want government to do to further immortalize your late husband ?
Thank you just like the chairman for Fagunwa Foundation who gave vote of thanks said, we want the government to transform the site which he wrote about to a standard tourism site .We don’t want that place to just be as it has been. It is an asset with great potentialities to l generate income for government of the state and contribute to the development of Oke Igbo and the entire environments .So we want government to please try and develop the place because the more people visit the place the more Fagunwa’s name will be mentioned and it will continue to pass from one generation to another and his name will be remembered as someone who came and achieve the little he could during his lifetime.
