When a boxing champion takes the gold, his manager is standing ringside to share in the accolades and fame. Editors, even of the most iconic books, are a more invisible tribe.
Yet, some denizens of literature bestride both the editorial and the authorial.
Agbo Areo was such a one, an editor and a writer with a significant influence on a generation of readers. And writers.
Agbo Areo had ‘disappeared’ for decades, but back in March 2023, I felt a strong desire to track him down. He was an important figure in African literature for his role in the creation of the Macmillan Pacesetter series. Not only had he designed our most influential Young Adult pan-continental series, but he had also written the very first book that templated the series. He was therefore an author and editor who had been active in the Nigerian publishing hotbed of Lagos/Ibadan. Yet, for many years I had heard no word from him.
I started my search for Agbo Areo by asking people who should know: my writer, editor, and publisher friends across Lagos and Ibadan.
I got no joy.
Mr. Areo had apparently disappeared into a very private life, post-retirement. I talked to my cousin, Irene Ubah, who had originally introduced me to him. But she had lost touch with him. Tade Ipadeola, my touchstone poet for Ibadan affairs, had not seen him either. Okey Ndibe’s trusty Ibadan tentacles came back negative.
I tried online, of course, and the only reference to Agbo Areo took me to what felt like the longest street in Ibadan. As I drove down this potholed habitat of bookmakers and sellers of printing materials, I got many confident directions from people who should have frankly confessed that they had no clue who I was talking about. As I drove deeper into this bowel of Ibadan I happened upon medieval scenes meet for Yoruba Nollywood, but as for the old man I sought, I found not a trace.
At the back of my mind was the dread that nature had happened to Mr. Areo. He had to be in his 80s, and as a series that flowered in the ’70s and ’80s, many of my fellow Pacesetter writers had already joined the guild of literary ancestors.
