I met Dagga in 2010 in Alakoto Senior High School. Before then, I was the typical truant who ran from class. I was more interested in the next lips to kiss or who to make a list. The only class I attended then was Mr Ogundiran’s Fine Art class. When I met Dagga in SS 1, he came in dressed in sweaters that was odd for the weather and trousers that were rather odd for his personality. I was ignorant of the term, bohemian then. His height held part of the moment and his personality took another part. He asked who was going to read Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. Amidst silence, I stood up. I can’t tell why I stood up. Maybe to show him I too could read without hitches. Being someone who easily sniffed challenges, I saw a rival who I wanted to defy and show I wasn’t intimidated by. I read the first chapter of Purple Hibiscus, and that singular reading changed my life.
Dagga praised how I pronounced church and come. I learnt the words from a certain guy Koffi in my street. Dagga took me to a book launch at Terra Culture where I picked my first challenge to become a writer. When I got home that day I started what was supposed to be a novel “Red Night”. The story was a recollection of my own birth and the mystery surrounding it, born with a large wound that was healed over night with powder. I wrote up to chapter three and started another title “Searching for Paradise” still a personal story of pent up emotion with a girl in my class. In 2011 I wrote my first poem modelled after some poems from Dagga’s “Dark Waters Drunkard” That same year he encouraged me to buy my first book “Mythology” by Edith Hamilton. So a poet’s journey to words began.
Today I fail to write a poem of Dagga. That same man that discovered me like a child lost in the jungle.
I left Lagos and the physical Dagga, but the connection has not been broken. He has remained a model and height which I measure up to, in all senses of the word. He becomes the reason for pushing on in school. A challenge to grow. I hope that one day I will be able to write a biography of Dagga. If nature doesn’t make a Dagga to write a dirge for an Ocho – what is this thanatophobia I hold?
This is not politics, it is supposed to be a celebration as the title indicates, but what celebration can I weave around Aj Dagga Tolar and not ‘talk about revolution’. Let the revolution continue and let the celebrations abound. No words can truly define Dagga, no verse sing his worth. I hope this little tribute suffices.