S.M.O Aka,  Letter Writer, Simbo Olorunfemi,

By Simbo Olorunfemi

This morning, for some rather strange reason, ruminating over Baba’s letter, my mind suddenly did a flip and the name, S.M.O Aka suddenly popped up. I can’t even remember that name coming to my mind in the last 30 years, but memory sure has a way of responding to the most unlikely trigger.

But then, how could I have forgotten about S.M.O. Aka, the iconic Author with such a profound influence, in the early days, on our proper grasp of the English language, an understanding of the often arbitrary nuances around lexis and structure; but even more importantly the art of composition and letter writing.

Back then, the popular Authors personified their books. We had Ababio for Chemistry, Channon and Smith for Mathematics, Ogundipe and Tregidgo for English. There were others like Iloeje, Senanu and Vincent, etc. I do not remember S.M.O. Aka’s textbooks being recommended or supplied by the school, but his books somehow became ubiquitous items in most homes back then.

They came highly recommended and indeed, most helpful. Aka did help us, in a simple and relatable manner to come to an understanding of the use of English language. His simple, easy to remember distinction between formal and informal letters, as well as the semi-formal letter still sticks.

S.M.O. Aka was an household name and one of the players in the then thriving indigenous publishing industry. It is almost impossible to believe now that back then such was the strength of the local publishing industry that we had Omolayo press thriving in Ado-Ekiti, Fagbamigbe in Akure/Ife, Fourth Dimension in Enugu, Aromlaran, Onibonoje and others in Ibadan, and then the ones in Benin-Delta axis. We also had the University Press. And then the big publishers – Longman, Macmillan, Spectrum, Evans, University Press, etc. Then, I think, SAP, among other things, happened to us.

S.M.O Aka was Author and Novelist. He had some of his books published by Longman, Onibonoje and Spectrum publishers. But he also ran S.M.O. Aka and Brothers Press based in Benin city.

Unfortunately, we do not have archives. Even as much as Google tries, there is really only little of digital records of what transpired before the digital age. Even our recent history from the 1990s and 2000s are difficult to come by. Our newspapers have no digital archives we can dig into. While some of the newspapers did some stories on S.M.O. Aka when he passed on in 1999 at the age of 59, we can no longer access them, except through an indirect subscription on a foreign platform. So we only have limited information about the man, S.M.O. Aka and others like him.

I cannot remember those titles that had the most profound impact on us back then. But in my digging, I found he wrote  ‘A thousand errors in spoken and written English’, which was published in 1977. He also had ‘English for JAMB Candidate’, which was published in 1982. A list of some of his novels here attached.

S.M.O. Aka was quoted to have said in a preface to one of his books that, “Although mastery of the English language may not be a passport to heaven, it is indeed a passport to some heavenly places such as the Universities and handsome pay packets…”

I don’t know if mastery of English language is a passport to anything, but what we learnt, courtesy of S.M.O. Aka has helped some, especially those of us who didn’t have any formal training in the use of the language beyond secondary school, to get by.