By Valentine Emeka Utulu
In the mid nineties, while working for a law firm on Rasaq Balogun Street in Surulere, I came across Sammie Okposo and we became friends and later, as time went on, we became brothers closer than blood relatives.
In those days, after work, because of my bohemian nature, I preferred the company of artistes rather than those from my profession and most evenings we would meet at one pub called Golden Mother on Tafawa Balewa Crescent off Adeniran Ogunsanya Street in Surulere.
Sammie and I became friends at first because we had several things in common. We both grew up in Warri and as soon as we met, we threw out the Queens English and lapsed into Warri pidgin which could best express our deepest predilections and self-deprecatory humour. It also made us feel as though we were back home
We also worshipped in the same church, House on the Rock, although at the time we had one leg in the church and one leg in the night clubs, but as we grew older, we became more consecrated and left the night clubs behind.
As I got to know Sammie, I felt my guard drop and the usual walls of protection I had built around myself were discarded, because I saw a Delta man without guile, who spoke the truth even when it hurt him and who owed no man nothing but love.
On my wedding day, Sammie transported his entire band, together with their instruments to the venue and played and sang from the beginning of the occasion to the end and never took a dime from me.
And as we grew, I began to see him in a deeper dimension. I got to understand, not through my mind, but through my spirit that this my scattered friend with his crazy sense of humour, his life contradictions, with all his foibles, his controversies, all through the many times he would fall and rise up again, this my friend that looked just like any other man in the flesh, had something very precious inside of him and to me, it was wonderful to behold.
I saw then, when my eyes had become enlightened, that just like the God who made him and whom he served, Sammie had the capacity to produce something out of nothing. With sound and with words, he would conjure divine melodies out of his soul and render them in the night time, at dawn with the rising of the sun, in pain and in sorrow, in troublous times, in joy, in peace and in plenty, in crusade grounds swirling with the dust of ten thousand human feet, and in packed mega church auditoriums, in stadia, on the streets, before common men, and before kings and governors, saints and sinners in all the continents of the earth.
And he also worshipped alone while weeping in his closet when life dealt him many cruel blows.
And as Sammie would sing, the purpose for which Sammie was born would suddenly be made manifest, but the frenzied crowd, lost in the melody, were not disposed to philosophize: but I knew that his gift was to use his melody to give unto them that mourn in Zion beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, to invoke the Spirit of the Living God unto the earth when he touched the garments of the King with his songs of worship.
And he would change Nigerian contemporary Christian music, and give it a local flavour and a groovy, zingy beat, and with it drag all the youths who had become alienated from the church because of staid routine and mournful music, he would drag them all from the night clubs back into the church and with his life he would give us all a glimpse, a sneak peek, at what it would be like when the saints triumphant worship the King in Heaven.
Nobody told me Sammie, but I knew it in my knower, that no man can sing the way you do, no man can worship God the way you do, except the Spirit of God be in him.
From the cradle to the grave, you worshipped God and when you opened your mouth to sing, God honoured your worship.
Hallelujah!