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Mr Idang Alibi
By Idang Alibi
I am very vexed in my spirit right now as we Pentecostal Christians usually put it when we have what we consider a righteous indignation concerning an issue at stake. This piece is supposed to be entitled ”Tribute to Onah Ogar”. But it is not quite a tribute. You pay a tribute to a man who died a heroic death.
Rather, this is an elegy. I am in deep mourning; in a deeply pained lamentation over what I am certain is the cause of the premature death of a former dear age mate, a fellow villager from Gakem in Bekwarra Local Government Area of Cross River State, a childhood friend, a playmate, a fierce but healthy competitive academic rival, an aborted great destiny carrier, a great potential that did not see full realisation, a man whose life, I am certain, was needlessly terminated midstream, all because of an unfortunate life style he adopted which society tolerated and even urged him on on, rather than rebuking him and encouraging him to kick the addiction to that pernicious, demonic brew called alcohol.
I am referring here to a man known officially as Christopher Onah Ogar but known to us his fellow Gakeminian villagers, brothers and friends simply as Onah Ogar with the nick name Jampe, an engineer with the Cross River State Broadcasting Service whose destiny was sadly aborted by consumption of alcohol.
Between 1968 and 1973, there were five children of various ages who were in various streams of their classes in Saint Mark’s Primary School, Gakem who in the early stages of their primary education, were consistently at the top of their classes. The five children were Onah Ogar, Sunday Oko, Justine Adie, Francis Justine Ogodo and Idang Alibi. Today, four of those children of promise who used to set the End of Term result announcement alight are still alive. But Onah Ogar is gone, his life terminated by alcohol.
At a later stage, the five children found themselves in one class and they embarked on a fierce academic rivalry as to who and who among them will emerge among the first three. The competition was so high that I recall that there was a certain end-of -year promotional exams that three of those boys ‘bracketed’ or tied in the number one position! Onah Ogar was among the three. The second of the trio was Sunday Oko. And the third of them, I will not mention.
In those days, if you were among the first three at the end of the term when results were published through announcement in an assembly where parents, teachers, chiefs, community elders and the pupils were gathered in the Assembly Hall of a school, you will be called to stand up and receive an appreciative hand clap. Others who came fourth to the last person in a class will not receive that honour that was a great scholastic achievement to those who were beneficiaries.
When they buried him yesterday in his Atiambi homestead of Gakem, May 12, no one talked about the alcohol that ended his life prematurely because according to the hypocrisy of society, no one should speak ill of the dead. But me, I think differently. I think that the cause or manner of Onah’s departure should have been the main theme of the mourning of his death. It is the high point with which any lover of his should have used on a public platform to warn others that this is what is responsible for our friend’s death and that alcohol is not the way to go. But will anyone do that? No. No one did. And that is why I say I am vexed in my spirit. Alcohol has claimed the lives of millions of people on the earth, possibly since the time of Noah. It has disabled millions of more people and it has aborted the destiny of millions more. Yet, we gloss over this deceptive weapon of Satan against man.
I am supposed to follow the hypocritical way of society by speaking only about Onah’s good side — the pedigree of his birth, his brilliance, his keen sportsmanship in the days of his youth, his sociable ways and keep away from mentioning the real thing that cut him down in mid life. I will not do that.
I am in mourning principally because if Onah had kept away from the deceptions of alcohol, he would still be here with us to contribute more to society. But he died as an unremarkable man.
Onah, I am sure, was created by God for higher things. His father, Ogar Ajeche, from whom he took his sexy yellow complexion, was of the royal household of Chief Imadu of Atiambi unit of our village. His about 80-year old mother, Imaji Ejim, an ebony black beauty, is from the royal family of Obogo Ushie, known more popularly as Ushie Amiah. Already a prince by birth, the least Onah would have attained is that he would have risen to the position of a powerful chief. But he couldn’t. He died a commoner, ruined by alcohol.
The Bible calls alcohol a mocker. It is not only a mocker. It is also a wrecker of dreams. It is also a confuser of thoughts. It is a trigger of lascivious thought. Shakespeare says of it that ‘’it provokes the desire but takes away the performance’’.
Above all, alcohol is a ‘’finisher’’. The more you engage in it, the more it incrementally takes away your essence. First, your integrity goes. After a while, many dismiss every of your promises as the promises of a drunkard. Then it takes away your physical power by attacking your vital organs. Finally, you develop liver cirrhosis and life creeps gently and surely out of you until one sad morning your demise is announced as happened to that immensely gifted Zimbabwean novelist, Dambudzo Marachera, author of the award winning novel House of Hunger.
Because of societal pressure, I forced myself to drink in the early years of my adulthood. But while I was at it, I knew instinctively that God had created me a Nazzerite. As soon as alcohol enters my system, Malaria will soon become my hated visitor. In the course of time I told myself that I was a priest in the Order of Melchizedec and was not meant to touch alcohol by a long pole.
But the day I was finally convinced that alcohol was not meant to be my friend was when I learnt of a hilarious pathetic plight of a friend who was, and still is, a heavy drunkard. He had, in a beer parlour, taken fancy to a fat ugly woman who was also a woman of easy virtue. But because alcohol is a mocker, it impairs your mind and your sight and makes you see every woman as a beautiful damsel. I don’t know whether it was my friend and alcohol or it was the woman herself who took the initiative. Whatever happened, he booked a room and they had intimate relationship, most certainly what they call a one-night stand. It was the next day of that encounter that I was with my friend. And the woman was desperately trying to draw his attention to herself. But my friend had completely forgotten this woman and the time they had together the previous night which I am sure he even paid for!
Frustrated, the woman now spilled the beans to us: ‘’He did something to me last night in a room in this very hotel and he is now pretending that he does not know me again’’. It was after this rude and crude disclosure that my friend started regaining faint memory of what happened and eventually agreed he had indeed consorted with her. My passion for that thing died for some days after that disclosure. A man will drink and be in a state where he will go that length with a woman and not remember what happened until he is crudely reminded? It means that alcohol can momentarily make you a living dead person. Alcohol is indeed a mocker. I now told myself that no matter the kind of pressure I face, I will never again take alcohol. I have kept to that resolve for over 40 years now. May God be praised!
Today, I regard all alcoholics as beings who operate at 50 per cent of their installed capacity. No matter how good they are at anything, I still think they would have performed 50 per cent better if they were not alcohol drinkers. Such is my low level of respect for drinkers and I am not apologetic about it at all. They may be smarter than me in many respects but I think arrogantly that I am superior to them.
After all this lamentation, what can I say to Onah my brother and friend? All I can say is ‘’Fare thee well, Onah. But damn you alcohol and other deceiving foods of Satan’’.
From Idang Alibi Facebook timeline
