By Banji Ojewale
Ten years after we lost Ikpehare Izedomi Aig-Imoukhuede,
the prismatic columnist of Vanguard newspaper, we are still
grieving and regretting we’ve not gotten a heir, a successor, nay a pupil to
step into the great shoes of the master. It is the sign of a sinking age. A
hero departs and seems to take with him the stuff of greatness that built him.
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Although Aig-Imoukhuede borrowed heavily from the biting
style of two other legends, Sad Sam (Sam Amuka) and Peter Pan (Peter Enahoro),
he added his own: the caustic episodic approach. Every Wednesday in his Sketches column he stood on a tripod-
Sad Sam, Peter Pan, and Aig-Imoukhuede –to feast his readers. The outcome was a
unique brand. For, whereas Sad Sam and Peter Pan’s columns were not always a
story telling affair Imoukhuede’s would every time broach trendy events to
pillory society. His writing was airy, reminding you of the ambience that
envelopes you when you read the short stories of Guy de Maupassant and Ernest
Hemingway.
That was my submission when I paid a tribute to this
remarkable columnist on his death a decade ago.
I wrote then that before he died in Lagos on January 23, 2007, Aig-Imoukhuede had
this memorable encounter with the living. Writing in his long running Sketches column in Vanguard of January 24,
2007 he gave no hint of a terminal ailment nor of stalking death right on his
doorstep.
Under the title “Money
In The Bank”, Imoukhuede identified two counter cultures that he observed
were emerging as a result of the Central Bank’s report on alleged injury to the
naira. CBN, he claimed, was frowning at those abusing the national currency. It
advised them to take to keeping the money in the banks rather than under their pillows. In other words, they should
imbibe the banking culture of transacting business with plastic money.
