Evelyn Osagie: a short tribute to an unstoppable literary journalist

The news came like a shock, awakening a spiral of forged memories in those days when the activities of the association of Nigerian authors (Ana) were adequately reported and extended to the public by a battery of artists of arts and culture. Evelyn Osagie was just one of the brilliant and dedicated journalists who moved with writers from one end of the country to the other to perform literary projects.

But there was a shade of difference in her. She was always ready for travel, robust, adventurous, enterprising, not surprised by the challenges of the inadequacy of anything and blocked her words with a ring of smiles and laughter. After a literary event, when other journalists returned to make only one story, Evelyn would report the same event with multiple full -bodied corpulent features by different angles running for weeks after the event in the national newspaper. You would begin to ask you for his intuitions and eyes for details when you read his relationships on the same event in pleasure in which you had participated. He experienced the saying not to be in a single space while looking at a ball of dance. It was therefore not a surprise when he later won the Ana Litery Journalist of the Year award a couple of times, just like other dedicated journalists of arts and culture that won the prize before they define themselves later.

I had a very solid professional relationship with Evelyn during my period of general secretary of Ana and subsequently. It was as if there was a literary event and she was not there, the coverage of that event was already lacking. Unfortunately, as at the moment I became an Ana president, he had moved away from the literary desk of the nation to other things such as the journalism of development (which was already peeking while he was reporting Ana) and performance poetry.

A few years ago, we met again at a literary event around Lekki in Lagos and I had to give her a long way back to another part of Lagos. While we did on the suffocated roads of Lagos, he resurrected a discussion that he had shared intermittently with me over the years. He had to do with the exhibition of the beam of photos and archival materials he had acquired from his long years of Ana reporting and other literary events. He had shared some of these with me and I saw a good documentary project project. I had told her before the possible routes to make the project forward and I wondered why I was still blocking. We separated with her promising to do something about it.

About two months ago, a very respected literary philanthropist reached me and was telling me to open an opportunity for someone to come to a residence extended somewhere. He spoke a lot about the person and the person in question who reached me is not a frivolous advice of anyone. He sent me the number of the person without telling me the name; He just said the person was in the media. I composed the number and name of Evelyn has jumped out. My first words for her were like “so are you someone who would recommend me, do you see your life?” Rise his usual laugh mixed with the speech. I raised the question of the project that was running away from the execution. I practically said to her: “This is your opportunity!” I noticed that something had disappeared from his warm response. We finished the call with a superficial promise of a follow-up from her

Now, this departure is premature, too many things are still canceled. Death does not notice anyone and that’s why, if possible, every day it should be lived as if it would be the last. Evelyn Osagie played so well in her part in the drama of life with the script he got from the last playwright (God) and that is why all those who knew her are talking about her today. May his soul rest in peace and his loved ones to be consoled.