My junior colleague,Marianne Tabi Enow, who wired the obituary to me, did so with the temerity of a celebrated doomsayer.
“Please,Sir, I just got it on good authority that Prof Tazoacha Asonganyi is dead.” The sad news stormed my ears with the force of a tornado. I prayed hard that the news should turn out to be one of those April fool jokes.
“But how can we have this kind of cruel joke in the evening of July 3,” I wondered.
My heart sank deeper into the abyss of melancholy. In my cowardice, I died many times while waiting for my real death as I figured out the callousness and cruelty of death.
Even in such a state, I remained a Doubting Thomas, given that in our country rumours kill many people long before they ever die. I remembered vividly that rumours killed the Bamenda-based business magnate, Francis Yong, weeks before he travelled to the hereafter.
My scepticism was further fuelled by the journalistic instincts in me-that discipline of the verification of facts and going the whole gamut of the reportorial enterprise, just to separate facts from fiction. As my mind did a tour of the abstract world, another colleague lent a bold tongue to Marianne’s tidings.“Yeah, the man is dead,” he confirmed.
After coming face to face with the reality, I consoled myself in the words of the Englishpoet. “Death, be not proud”. I told death, the great enigma, not to be proud for having harvested a great intellectual, because Prof Michael Tazoacha Asonganyi lives on.Yes, he lives on in his legacy.Prof Asonganyi’s legacy is a simulacrum of his immortality.
It was the English poet and sermonist, John Donne, who typified death as “a mere cessation of breathing.” So even without breathing, Prof Asonganyi lives on in the critical contributions he made towards the repair of Cameroon’s national edifice.
His contributions as a professor of Bio-Chemistry, his tenure as the Secretary General of the opposition Social Democratic Front, SDF and his participation in the civil society onslaught for change, proved that he was a genuine intellectual.
When he resigned from the SDF in 2005, he did not swing to the CPDM, like many of his peers. He remained committed to change and usually took sides with the oppressed masses against the indecently mighty of the establishment who say in no unmistaken terms that: “L’étatc’est nous’’.
Prof Asonganyi’s write-ups on issues of great national import were unsparingly frontal. He hitthe facts on the head and called issues by their real names.
The man was far from the madding crowd in a country where hypocrisy has been taken to the pedestal of virtues. He kept a safe distance from hypocritical oafs and pseudo-intellectuals who had long sold their consciences just to line their pockets and fill their stomachs. He was a genuine intellectual who lived in self-denial and abnegation. Small wonder, that the soft-spoken professor did nothing to amass wealth that would lead him to self-aggrandisement.
He scorned the “motion of support” intellectuals who sing the praises of the sit-tight regime just to get the crumbs from the” Essingan” table. Asonganyi was an outspoken critic who spoke without blinking, whatever he considered to be the truth, even when the guillotine lurked over him.
Among the people that will miss Prof. Asonganyi are journalists. In a country where access to information sources is a very big problem, Asonganyi was a big source and resource person to many journalists.
He accepted, in all alacrity,to talk to the press at anytime onissues of public interest.Many journalists looked up to Prof. Asonganyi when the hope of quizzing other public officials on important issues, was obliterated. He was an infectiously likeable and erudite don who did not talk to people ex-cathedra. He was humble and believed that he could learn one or two things, even from a nonentity.
He reiteratedfreely with friends and fully enjoyed life through quaffing, especially at One Spirit bar at the Melen neighbourhood in Yaounde.He was a loving father and a husband who believed that “marriages are made in heaven.” In his book: “Cameroon:Difficult Choices In A FailedDemocracy,” he takes off time to narrate how he came in contact with his wife, Florence Asonganyi. He also talks about his children,Nzengong, Njuzy,Anyifua, Njinkeng and Nji, with loving passion.
Besides being the scribe of the frontline opposition in Cameroon, Prof. Asonganyi also shot into the limelight as the PermanentSecretary of the opposition coalition that disintegrated, even before the 2004 Presidential election. Prof. Asonganyi’s untimely eclipse leaves a big vacuum in the political arena.
No doubt,Cameroon is poorer by his death but remains rich because of the undying legacy he has left in the country’s socio-political scene. That is why all roads will be leading to the Lewoh Fondom, on July23, where the Prince will be lowered into the grave to join his ancestors.
That will be Asonganyi’s best day, because, even those who hated him, will canonise him in their eulogies. They will impose sainthood on him. Yet, all will be vanity of vanities because the varsity don will make amends with his matter. But the sad reality remains- that death, that blind giant which humanity isunited by a prevalent fear of its power,descended on Cameroon and did a bountiful harvest of her intellectual.
But one thing remains consoling; that Prof. Asonganyi lived for the nation and not for himself. That is why the applause is loudest even after he has quit the stage.
