BY OUMAH OTIENOH

A decade ago, Kenyans were greatly challenged by Austin Bukenya’s exhilarating piece published in Kenya’s Saturday Nation; ‘The naming and shaming of thoroughly ungrateful guest’ (Saturday Nation, December 19, 2015).

Bukenya, a weekly columnist with the named newspaper laughingly penned a simple etiquette message of ‘Thank You’ that most of us seldom remember to observe.

Most of us were lost for words about who really deserved a ‘thank you’ note within our ring of intimate friends.

Recently, while watching one of my beloved Nollywood movies, True Love starred by a Nigerian actor, Ramsey Nouh, I quickly thought about paying tribute to the fallen actors and actress from Nollywood as a way of applauding them for their creativity.

Alas! A legion of movie enthusiasts imagines that thespians are immortal beings. Far from it. These ‘larger than life’ personalities who fill our living rooms are also mere mortals.

Death the grand-robber in the past couple of years grabbed from us some of the best thespians from the Nollywood movie industry.

Henry Wadsworth in The Golden Legend once avowed that: ‘The grave itself is but a covered bridge, leading from light to light, through a brief darkness’.

In 2011 Nollywood lost some of its key actors and an actress to the gruesome hand of death. Ashley Nwosu was the first to succumb to death after a brief illness.

Nwosu will forever be remembered for a dozen of thrilling movies such as Lagos Babes, Endless Night and Between Two Walls amongst others.

Geraldine Ekeocha an actress also passed away at the same period due to a failed fibroid operation. She had starred in movies such as After My Heart and Heavy Storm.

A couple of months later, Nollywood and its movie lovers were reeling in tears after the demise of one of its most hilarious actor, Sam Loco Efe.

 It was saddening that Efe passed on while seated in a hotel room during a film editing due to asthma related ailment.

He had bequeathed us with a legion of movies such as Heart of Stone 1 and 2, A Fool at 40, Away Match 1 and 2 and the ever rib-breaking Long John that he co-staged with another hilarious thespian, Nkem Owoh.

Many ‘Afro-Cinema’ lovers were heartbroken in 2013. This was the darkest time ever for Nollywood.

The spiteful hand of death had again struck on the Nigerian soil. The no-nonsense Justus Esiri bowed out of stage.

The mention of Esiri sends cold shivers down any movie lover’s spine due to the ferocious roles he played in the theatre production.

Most of us first ‘met’ Esiri in one of his thrilling movies, Wasted Years that foretold his demise. In the movie, he played the role of a staunch heathen who couldn’t come to Christ no matter what befell him.

Justus Esiri was a veteran artiste who had bagged several awards in drama.  

Besides Wasted Years, he also starred in Six Demons and The Price. It is in The Price where he got the label; ‘God giveth and God taketh’, a phrase he was fond of in the movie.

The sudden demise of Justus Esiri confirmed to us what the playwright William Shakespeare opined in Hamlet about death. ‘Thou know’st ‘tis common: all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.

The underworld’s belly wasn’t full yet. Muna Obiekwe was next on the ravaging queue due to a kidney failure. The youthful Obiekwe had staged in several movies including Unstoppable and Eyes of the gods.

Without doubt, when such buttressed actors and actresses take the final bow, many tend to act in disbelief and may even treat such distressing news as another black-buster.

Nevertheless, the earth is never full of those he takes with it to the underworld. It is no respecter of persons. It engulfs under its belly both the lowly and the mighty.

Fare-thee-well our Nollywood brothers and sisters!

The writer is a Kenyan tutor at Ng’iya Girls and a weekly contributor on literature, art and culture. He is also a travel enthusiast.  oumahotienoh2009@yahoo.com