Few days later, Maxim came to me breathlessly excited and screamed that he didn’t know what a hell of a man Sunmi was. Sunmi is indeed a hell of a man! Many times we waste a lot of ink and space celebrating nonsense people whose greatest achievement is that they have cheated the society, stolen us blind, had the privilege of public office and helped themselves with public funds, swallowed condoms stuffed with hard drugs or are scions of those whose depravity has turned our society into a cesspool of corruption. To put it mildly, we sometimes hold out the wrong people as role models and thereby unconsciously elevate knavery to a national culture!
Man of many parts
Sunmi has been working since the age of 15 when he started life as an elementary teacher. On 25 September 2011, Sunmi turned 70. In all of his 70 years on earth, he has never held a public office, yet he has wined and dined with the high and mighty, shaken the hands of Royals and Presidents. Above all he has lived a very fulfilling, in fact enviable life as gardener, environmentalist, horticulturist, barber, jazz drummer, multiple award winning photographer, editor, author and publisher! He has provided for himself through hard work, all the material desires of his dream, including a comfortable home.
The fascinating thing about the man I fondly call SSC is that he is a quintessential self made man. When he was a barber, he taught himself how to barb. Barbing, for SSC, went beyond the pragmatism of grooming oneself. It was another form of art. One of the many ways he influenced the social scene in Lagos was by introducing us to the Kennedy style haircut. He was the only one who could do it at that time and his barber’s shop, called Sunmi’s Place, somewhere along Alagomeji area of Yaba, Lagos, became a rendezvous for hippy youths. Any time you came in contact with SSC, the part of your anatomy that came under immediate scrutiny and drew comments from him was your hair. Sometimes he would insist on giving you a haircut, almost by force! He is that sensitive. He cut, and still cuts, the hairs of many prominent Nigerians. And that drew him into a unique intimacy with very important Nigerians. It was therefore given that every important acquaintance wanted him to cover his or her events. Such high level contacts, coupled with his professionalism, helped him become the society photographer he is today.
SSC taught himself the tricks that have made his photography unique. For many years, he was not persuaded to do colour photography. For him the art intrinsic in photography was only achievable in black and white, with the interplay of light, shadows and silhouettes. It was to satisfy socialites who wanted his work that he began to do more colour photography. I am aware that SSC did not accept photographic engagement just because one came knocking with a bulging wallet. He complained to me a few times how insulted he felt by people who thought that because they had money he would come running to their son’s or daughter’s wedding or birthday. To him, his photography was a statement of integrity, a devotion to art and a chronicling of history. He has thus documented the history of Nigeria, its people and places, through his lenses. Through his lenses he has taught us how to look at ourselves with different eyes.
Legendary Peter Obe gave photojournalism recognition as an essential part of news just as Kenny Adams pioneered political cartooning as an essential form of news commentary. But the generation of SSC and Jide Adeniji-Jones gave photojournalism panache and respect as a profession, just as Bisi Ogunbadejo (Cracks!) has done with political cartooning. People began to look up to, not down on people who carried the camera or brushes. That is why a delectable and multi-talented lady like TY Bello, instead of decorating the front office of a bank or oil company, could drop her university degree and pick up her camera and today become a multi-million Naira presidential photographer, creating jobs for herself and others; this after she had like SSC, had her stint as a successful musician. Following on the footsteps of greats like Jackie Phillips and his contemporaries, SSC and the generation following him have taken studio photography to a dizzying new height. The importance of this is that in a country afflicted by necrosis, there is a generation keeping hope alive!
SSC taught himself how to drum. He was a founding member of one of the popular bands in the country in the sixties, the Soul Assembly, led by Segun Bucknor (adorin sogba sogba, oko iya al’amala!). SSC went on the play and feature in jazz gigs with legends like Fela, Dizzy Gillespie, the incredible Jimmy Smith and Cannonball Arderly, and other jazz greats. SSC played music to give joy, just as his involvement with gardening and horticulture was mainly to give pleasure to society.
Capacity for hard work
When he trained at age 17 as an architect draughtsman, he did not attend an Ivy League school of architecture! But he had the privilege of designing the country home of late Sierra Leone’s Prime Minister Sir Albert Magai. When the Guardian handed him the responsibility to edit Lagos Life, it was not because he was minted in one of the best journalism schools in the world. It was just because the organisation believed in his capacity for hard work. He made the publication one of the formidable soft sale newspapers in the country. He was later to launch his own magazine, Photonews, in 2004. Photonews is now an online magazine. Many things SSC has done in life he did with minimum supervision and maximum determination to succeed! He simply drove himself fortified by self discipline, hard work and grit.
The irony is that SSC who delights in giving to society, has had to contend with the greed of the society that consistently tried to take the little he had been given. For example, every time a Governor of Lagos State allocated a piece of land to him, a succeeding Governor revoke it! This arbitrariness, though, is not peculiar to Lagos or SSC. There have been victims in other states and in the FCT Abuja! SSC has also seen the ups and downs of life. Twice armed robbers broke into his home roughened him and stolen his property, including, most painfully, his treasured cameras.
Unusual life
Anybody could ask what is so unusual about the life of SSC that makes it worthy of being celebrated. This is not a biography, so we cannot possibly chronicle the humble beginnings of SSC and the challenges he had to overcome to make his life a fulfilling one. Former US President, Richard Nixon, said that whenever he was awarding the Medal of Honour, he often used to reflect on how many of those who won it must have appeared to be quite ordinary people until they had risen with supreme valour to an extraordinary challenge. Without the challenge, he said, they would not have shown their courage. Many lives are flavoured by the challenges we face and how we rise to overcome them.
We are today preaching about how the youths can make their own world. Often we exhort them to follow their dreams. If they want to see those who have followed their dream and made success of their lives, we can point them to the likes of SSC and TY Bello. If they want to see those who pulled themselves by their bootstrap, we can point them to the likes of Eddie Iroh, Genevieve Nnaji, Omotola Ekeinde etc. If they want to see those who have shown exceptional courage and succeeded in this society without cutting corners or stealing from us, we can point them to the likes of Pat Utomi.
Given how easy it is now to die in Nigeria, I will be devoting some time to celebrate and pay tribute to both ordinary and exceptional Nigerians doing extraordinary things; those giving of themselves and their talents to society instead of stealing from us and those silently influencing a new course of life, so that they can read it while alive and know that they are appreciated. I do not want to wait till they die. I don’t want to compete with hypocrites in writing obituaries and elegies.
Last Saturday, 23 June 2012, SSC launched his latest book titled “Sunmi’s Lens—A Medium between Man and Nature” which foreword was written by Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka. An exhibition of his photographic works spanning 36 years followed the book launch at the Harbour Point, Victoria Island, Lagos. I could not be there because the event clashed with the burial on 23 June of our son Prof. Celestine Onwuliri who was killed in the Dana Airline crash. This is my humble way of celebrating SSC, a man who has exhibited in four continents graced by Presidents and royalties, and all those ordinarily people rising daily with supreme valor to extraordinary challenges.