If she did not carry herself as a rarity when she was alive, that must have been a gesture of modesty rather than lack. Otherwise, she was and remained a rarity.
She had physical beauty which the society recognised in her winning a beauty contest. She was a princess. She will remain in the history books as the first female Senator in Nigeria.
On a continent in which majority of the women are poor, powerless and mostly pregnant, the above defining features of the late Franca Afegbua cannot but be interpreted as nature smiling on her with a ‘Most Favoured Person’ status. As such, hers is not burial but celebration of transition to transition.
The cover graphic has all the temporal and spatial details of this signifying rite of passage. It is still most a month away but one can already imagine the many stakeholder in Afegbua’s transition process in a countdown mood: the gender warriors, the beauticians, the Edo empire cultural network, the senators and perhaps the prayer warriors from whichever sect she belonged.
By the way, could this be the same Afegbua family from which came the Afegbua who was head of the Ahmadu Bello University Press in Zaria at a point? That Afegbua was a wonderful person. He could spend hours explaining whatever one was looking for or not clear about. Intervention sends warm greetings to him, wherever he may be!
