In 2011, less than six months into the birth of a new government in Oyo State, a proposal was brought for the celebration of a festival in the state. The memo got to the topmost decision-making organ of the state, the Executive Council. A the Exco, a very suave and articulate man marshaled points on the need for the festival and everybody who spoke gave the memo thumbs-up. However, I constituted the one-man kanda, the stone in the bowl of his rice. So, I raised my hand and the governor, Abiola Ajimobi, gave me the go-ahead to speak. “Your Excellency, sir, beautiful as this proposal is, if we go ahead with it, the people of Oyo State will stone us. Our administration hasn’t constructed roads nor succeeded in bringing development to the people. A festival now will be a disaster,” I said. God bless his soul, without mincing words, the governor immediately canceled the memo.
As I stepped out of the Exco Chambers, someone called my number. It was my friend of, by then, 15 years, Dupe Baruwa. She said, “Boda Festus, tomorrow, my children and I will pack our baggage and move to your house for sustenance.” Alarmed, I asked why. “You just shot down the memo presented to the Oyo State government by my husband!”
In 1996 or 1997 – I can’t remember now – a ravishingly beautiful lady on internship was posted to the Sunday Desk of the Nigerian Tribune newspaper and we became very good friends. She had just finished her Ordinary National Diploma from the Ogun State Polytechnic. We became each other’s confidants and advisors. Dupe confided in me on virtually every issue of her life and I did same to her, too. At some point, she even took me to Ijebu-Ode to go see her mother. When it came to my life-time consort, Dupe’s decision on who I would marry was the loudest and carried the day.
As fate would have it, in 2019, while in a tutorial class at the Nigerian Law School, Lagos, one evening, I beheld a man downstairs. He looked like the man I was his nemesis in 2011. So I called his name. As he turned, I knew he was the man whose memo I voided in the Oyo State council, Dupe’s husband. We hugged and became even closer during our period at the Law School, sharing same Group 8 class together. Michael Dada’s family became mine, too.
When I woke up last Sunday to check the social media, I saw a post that nearly ran me mad. The post wished the soul of Dupe Barruwa-Dada a sweet repose. I was alarmed and aghast. How could Dupe die? Why did Dupe die? It must be a daydream. I had called her a few months earlier to commiserate with her on the loss of her mother and was waiting to attend Mama’s burial in Ijebu-Ode. It was not until I attended her funeral in Ikeja last Thursday and Dupe’s casket was wheeled into the church that it dawned on me that the angel had flown away afterall.
If angelic behavior could confer immortality on one, Dupe will be alive today. She symbolized the sapphire in intelligence, good-naturedness and purity of heart. She was amiable, obliging and amiable to anyone she came in contact with. Dupe’s death at the age of 48 tells me further about the brevity of life and its comparison by the Holy Writ with vapour which whooshes with such vigour but disappears in a minute.
Sleep well, my friend of 27 years, confidant and sister.
