HENRY AKUBUIRO Saturdaysun
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•Ibezute
Photo: Sun News Publishing
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It is an intellectual miracle that sounds like the stuff of A-rated Nollywood flick. At over 380 pages, the autobiography, Rediscovering My Mission, written with literary predilection, could have been written by any university don, but it was penned by Celestine Chukwuma Ibezute, MD of Cel-bez publishers, Owerri, a man who never, for once, stepped into the four walls of either secondary school or university. Today, he is steeped in the world of bibliophiles, amazingly.
As a primary school student, Ibezute was an extraordinary brilliant student, always taking the pride of place in exams. His education was truncated, however, with the Nigeria civil war in the 1960s. After the war, a combination of trials put paid to his ambition for further educational pursuits. As a young man out to eke out a living, he decided to try his hands on trading.
It was a decision that took him to Aba, Benin and finally to Owerri to find where his bread was buttered. His bread, however, wasn’t buttered in that endeavour. He was to take to book publishing, carrying his books about in Owerri to market them. One day, he was overwhelmed with thoughts on the travails of his life, which was becoming unbearable –an attempt that resulted in a book project, The King of Alandu, his debut novel. A new scribbler was born.
So far, he has written 19 books consisting of novels, poetry collections and non-fiction. He is not thinking of a swansong at the moment, even. If in the past Ibezute was hawking his books about in the streets of Owerri, today he sits with myth in his office in Owerri waiting for distributors and clients to come and take delivery of books.
But, then, he didn’t just sit back to allow knowledge come him way on its accord. His testimonies of relative success as a book publisher and a writer came as a result of embarking on self-education. By reading magazines, newspapers and books, Ibezute was able to acquire more knowledge that has stood him in good stead.
“Rediscovering My Mission is a way of telling the world who Chukwuma Ibezute is,” he tells me in a toneless voice. Initially, I was into business,” he continues in a chat in his office in Owerri. “I tried my hands on different types of business before going into publishing.”
Due to his intelligence as a schoolboy, his classmates expected him to further his studies and make a mark. He derailed along the way. Now, he seems to have made it up. When, at first, he wanted to begin the autobiography in 1989, having reflected on the topsy-turvy of his life, memories of bygone vistas couldn’t simply flood in. That could have been for the right reasons, however, because people would have been wondering what an anonymous publisher got to say, after all.
“Whenever I look back at my life today,” says Ibezute, “I see myself as one of the symbols of God’s mercy, love and miracles. After his primary education, he was a most sought-after pupil by prospective secondary schools in his locality. Sadly, his dreams died at twilight.
His pastime later in life was reading writers in the Heinemann’s African Writers Series, Longman’s Drumbeats and Macmillan Pacesetters Series. “I developed interest in reading in 1980s, buying any good book that came my way. Between 1984 and 1990, I established a library in my house. I was reading those books with seriousness, memorizing every language I encountered. When I realized I had flair for writing, I bought notebooks and began to study. I also interacted with experts, which helped me to know the dos and don’t in writing,” he recalls.
Just as he was interested in fiction, Ibezute was interested in non-fiction, too, especially the civil war memoirs that rolled out in the 1980s. More than anything else, it was his voracious reading culture that widened his intellectual horizon.
After making his debut with The King of Alandu, he wrote Hamarian People’s Revolution. His fecund mind was let loose, and, hence, he became prolific, writing work after work. “After writing five manuscripts after a couple of years without publishing any, it bothered him tremendously to get published. He consulted friends in Benin City, who didn’t impress him with what they did. His enthusiasm took him to a scholar at Alvan Ikoku College of Education, the then head of Department of English, Dr. Nwachukwu, who made scathing remarks on his effort that made him to start champing at the bits to fine-tune The King of Alandu until it was published, paving way for others.
Ibezute cuts a meek appearance, sitting at large table in his office, almost overshadowing his diminutive presence. He isn’t a man who claims to be what he isn’t, it must be stated; which is why he has never paraded himself as a graduate, though nobody could have doubted him if he did. “Except now that I am letting people know I didn’t attend formal education, nobody knows. I have never told anybody I read this or that in the university. In fact, it is even one of the reasons I wrote Rediscovering my Mission,” he declares.
Casting his mind back to when he published his first novel, he recalls a friend of his asking him what he studied in the university, and when he told him he was neither an undergraduate nor a graduate, he went to town with the story that Ibezute couldn’t have been the author of the novel he claimed to have written because of his education background. “When I heard the story, I laughed over it,” a smug smile sidles across his face.
Before he finished writing Rediscovering my Mission, Ibezute was filled with ideas to teem the book with, but he was overwhelmed with creative lacuna until he flowed unfettered. “I then realized that nothing is done by the power of man, but that of God,” he says matter-factly.
On Saturday, March 31, Ibezute will be presenting the book at Maine Hotel, Wetheral Road, Owerri. Rediscovering my Mission is a testament of a self-educated man, who became fecund with creative ideas at a drop of a hat. If there is any award for being prolific without sound academic background, Ibezute will surely be a frontliner for the scudeto.
OUR ERROR: In our lead interview on this page last week, we erroneously wrote Paul Emema as Paul Omena. Error is regretted –Editor
