First of all, a big shout out to everyone in this Yuletide season. As expected I have been thinking hard about what to offer during at this time of celebration , something with which to brighten the celebration of the birth of Christ. It took days and weeks of thinking, and nothing came up until last weekend when I stumbled into some old works of mine. And did that sweetened my heart? I bet you it does. Now, you must be wondering what it was I stumbled into, I will tell you. I was looking for an important document and couldn't find it, I checked everywhere it should be, but to no avail. You know how it feels. You go looking for something in places you were sure the object you are looking for will never be. Well that was what happened to me, I looked into an old shoe box full of old papers, a shoe box I have not touched for years. But at a point I forgot what I was searching for, for the box started yielding some interesting papers; Old letters, drama scripts, personal notes, poems and so on. One of the papers contained a drama script written by one Mr Tony Ozoalor.
Now, let me briefly tell you about this gentleman. Tony Ozoalor hails from Ngwo in Enugu state of Nigeria. I first knew him when I was a college student. At that time he was a tenant in my father's house in Enugu. A very genial fellow, jovial and friendly to all. That was the much I knew of him then. Years later I was to find out another side of this gentleman, his intellect. He is well gifted with the use of words be it English or Igbo. He is a creative writer as well as speaker. His writing ability covered a wide spectrum, from prose to poetry, even speeches. Indeed I still do not understand why he did not publish many of his works. I can only remember one which he co-authored, "One Hundred Quotable Quotes and Poems of the Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe by Nnamdi Azikiwe and Dons Eze and Anikwe, FI and Tony Ozoalor ..." It is also possible that there are other published books by him I am not aware of. He is really a very talented person. He wrote short plays, stories and poems, that were published in many Nigerian newspapers. I also learnt that at a time he was the speech writer for one of the military governors of Enugu state, I do not remember which one it was. He retired as the zonal public relation officer of the NITEL Enugu zone.
His script that I found was a drama script he wrote which, I was supposed to produce for the program 'Radio Theatre', one of the programs I was handling at the time. Unfortunately due to the austerity measure in the country at that time I was not able to use the script until I left the shores of Nigeria. How the script ended up still being with me, beats me, but surely, the find made my day. It made my day because I quickly remembered that Mr Ozoalor also featured prominently in my other program 'Poetry Time'. Many of his beautiful poems were featured in the program. Among some of the copies of my old productions that are present with me, is a Christmas poem he wrote that was aired in December 1987. I searched for it, found it, and will like you to listen to it, hoping that it will brighten your Christmas
The program was presented by Oseloka Zikora, one of many gifted and well trained announcers of that time. I must admit that the standard and quality of most of present day voices heard over the Nigerian airwaves are not encouraging. There is the need to improve standard through training and selecting trainable persons for the job, not just anyone. I guess this may be the topic of my next post.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas.
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