ND Briggs was an intellectual giant.
One of the one offs who bestride this planet so rarely.
This is not in doubt.
I enjoyed him most however for his sense of humor which was alternately droll and dry.
How can I forget the liberties he took with our names?🤣
“What’s that your name?
Is it Kimono?Wait,wait don’t spoil me don’t spoil me.Is it Mililo?”
“My name is Dimoko” I would squeak,cowering in the great man’s presence.
“Ah! Dimiko! he thunders,the final nail in my surname.Classmates are snickering.I turn round and look daggers at them,silently promising payback.
Who can forget his skits with Adetunji?
Between calling him Ademola and any other Ade that came to mind he dropped this gem-“It’s not your brain I’m worried about it’s your body.Drink plenty of akamu hian?”
While everyone convulsed with laughter he would then add the crowning bon mot-“add plenty milk and sugar you hear?”
This was his own unique way of calming students petrified by this colossus of a man,intellectual and physical.
He would then launch into an absolutely riveting monologue on the condition being discussed couched in the most delectable English.
We would stare spellbound,sometimes forgetting to write,hypnotized by his intellectual incandescence.
On another tangent,I absolutely coveted his trademark short sleeved shirts.
Death has indeed stolen from us,from Nigeria and indeed the world.
I can picture him settling into heaven,studying the place and then calling Saint Peter and telling him how his operations could be more efficient.
In the end death hasn’t won the final victory.
The legend of Nimisere Dimkpa Briggs will ring through the ages unsullied and unfettered by death.Farewell sir as you ascend to that great university,that great theatre,that great library,that great delivery room in the sky.
