The sting of death stong yet another literary icon in Nigeria, a poet, novelist and writer extraordinaire, community leader of courage, inspiration and organic mine reservatory of inexhaustible vocabulary. Another thing that fell apart, which his vast community of people can never ever put together!
Pa Gabriel Imomotimi Okara, OON, is no more, like the rain his luminating spirit of the writers wall fell with the flood and returneth no more. He died just four weeks to his 98th birthday. How he raised ahead of nature's discerning poetic gift to the readers world.
Pa Okara was a father figure, leader, mentor, instructor, and ol chum. One of our best in the literary world. A forerunner and a pioneer in many aspects, he ventured into a very uniquely scriber's world that can only be described as indigenous literature.
An iconic genre of poetry, novel, literary works Africans, and Nigerians can truly identify with as indigenously traditional African art. This stood him out of the crowd of intellectual giant writers.
Described by some writers as “the first modernist poet of Anglophone Africa”, our beloved Pa Okara belonged to the very best amongst peers of poetic writer spilling from his inner repository of knowledge effortlessly.
He was among the first to launch Nigeria into the international literary arena with brands of poetry and stories that were unmistakably indigenous but very outstanding.
Pa Okara was born on April 21, 1921, to an entrepreneurial Ijaw chief, Samson Okara and Martha Olodiama, in Bumoundi, Bayelsa state.
As a young Okara, he attended Government College Umuahia, Abia state, and moved to Yaba Higher College. After high school, he started working as a printer and bookbinder for a publishing company in Lagos 1945.
During World War II, he tried to join the British Royal Air Force but failed the medicals. He later worked for the British Overseas Airway Corporation, which changed to British Airways.
In 1949, he studied journalism at Northwestern University, USA. The late Pa Okara, had a few flings with marriages, and divorced three times, his survived by four resourcesful children.
May his soul find heavenly rest.
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