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By Francis Ewherido
Today is my birthday, and yes, I am happy to celebrate another birthday, especially one INEC has made more popular by fixing elections for today. At this time last year, birthday messages, prayers and well wishes were pouring in. Some well-wishers sent messages encouraging me to try and put a book together. A friend, Mrs. Ronke Aina-Scott, went a step further.
For 30 minutes, she practically was “coercing” me into writing a book. I had actually started work on one earlier, but my elder brother, Fr. Tony, who went through it, told me it was not intellectually rigorous enough. I got stuck and took a break. But two hours after Ronke’s “coercion,” the title MUDIPAPA flew into my head and I started writing. That day, I wrote about 3,000 words. Life Lessons from MUDIPAPA is almost ready and on this special day of the anniversary of my birth, I serve you the excerpts:
Chief Julius Ferdinand Mudiaga Orien, Ph.D., sat in his expansive living room, playing with his granddaughter, Temi. Tejiri, Temi’s mother and Chief Orien’s first daughter, started dropping off Temi with grandpa and grandma in Lekki from when she was a toddler. As she developed and learnt how to talk, she asked Chief Orien one day, “What is your name?” “My name is Mudiaga,” Chief answered. “No, he is Papa, Grandpa,” Tejiri, who was nearby, interjected defiantly. “You say your name is Mudiii… (She could not pronounce Mudiaga), but mummy says you are papa. It means your name is Mudi-Papa,” Temi said with finality. Everybody roared into laughter, but it became Chief’s nickname and stuck.
THE BEGINNING
Mudipapa, as Chief Mudiaga Orien later came to be known among friends and family, made up his mind to marry early. That was about 45 years ago when he was almost 20 years old. Initially, his childhood dream had been to become a Catholic priest. From age five, he had fallen in love with the white cassock, having been raised in a Catholic family and visited by European and indigenous priests alike. However, when he was nine, he began to be intrigued by how the males among the domestic animals that his parents kept, fought themselves even to death over the females for what he later understood to be mating rights. In his young mind, he felt that whatever the males were fighting to death for must be good and he looked forward to experiencing it when he grew up. But when he realized that becoming a Catholic priest meant taking a vow to forego what he was looking forward to experiencing, his interest in the priesthood evaporated. Even as a young boy, Mudipapa kept promises. But his young mind warned him that the vow of celibacy was one “promise” he would not be able to keep.
Henceforth, his interest shifted on to how he was going to have a happy marriage, like his parents, and become a good father and husband, like his father. A few years after he graduated from the university and had secured a stable job, he started working towards his marriage. As a good Christian of the Catholic faith, he started booking Masses for a “good life partner,” but clothed it as “special intentions.” But unknown to everybody, Mudipapa was going through a nightmare. His dream of a happy marriage was falling apart. Mudipapa could not sustain a relationship. He easily got bored. Some of his relationships lasted well under two months. Only one relationship made it to its first anniversary, but it had been clinically dead since one fateful night about eight months into the relationship.
Mudipapa was then living along Lawanson Road, Surulere, Lagos. Near his residence was a street called Ayilara, where prostitutes converged every night to ply their trade. There were also a few brothels for ‘short time’ and resident prostitutes. Mudipapa was seeing off his girlfriend, Laide to Ojuelegba Bus Stop to get a bus home after a visit. It was his custom to tease all his visitors while walking past Ayilara at night: “your sisters are out again on their daily hustle.” “They are not my sisters,” Laide thundered. As Mudipapa made to explain to her that he was only teasing her, he heard a deafening and authoritative “enough!”
The ‘Urhobo’ man in him took over. “This ‘small girl’ is telling me to shut up, wetin remain again?” He said to himself. There and then, the relationship died. Everything that happened thereafter was mechanical. With the benefit of hindsight, Mudipapa came to realize that he may have been too hard on Laide. She had seven sisters and no brother. That could have been the reason she was so touchy and blind to Mudipapa’s joke. But the relationship was over and he had to move on.
MORAL: Men have gargantuan and inexplicable egos. Wives and girlfriends should not mess around with their husbands’/boyfriends’ ego.
More relationships followed after Laide’s, but ended quickly like many before them. Mudipapa tried all kinds of experiments: he dated much younger girls, his contemporaries, virgins, “experienced” girls, very religious-looking girls, party girls, quiet girls and “loudspeakers,” all to no avail. At this time, Mudipapa was in real panic, his mind was in turmoil. His thoughts went to his “sweet sixteen” during the National Youth Service days. She was under-aged then and nothing really happened. Though he loved her, he never really wanted any relationship because of her age and the stern warning from the school principal to him not to mess around with her girls. But Rita was persistent and determined. They exchanged letters after youth service, but lost contact after a while.
He wondered where Rita would be now and what was happening to her. He had an overwhelming urge to travel to Calabar to look for her, but how does he start looking for Rita without an address in a city like Calabar? She had since left the secondary school where they had met. Then, Mudipapa was teaching junior classes while Rita was in class five. He got Rita out of the equation because it was just wishful thinking. He needed concrete and immediate solutions. He wondered why God was not answering his prayers, or were his sins too many?…
Life lessons from Mudipapa will be out in May this year. It is about life, courtship, marriage, planning and commencing investment early in life. It is about family, parenting, dealing with life’s storms, planning for retirement and a purpose-driven post-retirement life. Mudipapa will make you laugh; it is also very sobering and humbling.