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  • Peter Pan: Ode to the best columnist of yore

    Peter Pan: Ode to the best columnist of yore

    By Abdu Rafiu

    A leader and a giant in the world of journalism has discarded his earthly cloak and departed earthly life. He is Peter Enahoro more known as Peter Pan. The news of his exit has reverberated around the world. His was a distinguished career in journalism.

    He joined the Daily Times in 1955, a year after leaving school, Government College, Ughelli, armed with love of reading and mastery of English language. And fearlessness. He rose rapidly and became the editor of Sunday Times in 1958 at 23, the editor of ubiquitous Daily Times in 1962 in succession to Alhaji Babatunde Jose at the age of 27. Driven by the melancholic temperament inherent in all youths at a particular period in their development, he saw the world upside down and resolved and, indeed, strove to straighten it, to prove to the world that, in the words of Playwright Edward George –Lytton, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” It is the age of idealism; it is the age of dreams. It is the period all young men and young girls can easily tell right from wrong. It is the age a young girl looks at her mother full in the face and says, “Mom, that was your time, not mine; so forget it.” As for the young man, he is set to take the next available flight to fetch the moon.

    By the age of 30 still smarting under the grip of his temperament, Peter Enahoro had become the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Times. Now, he was poised to do battle with evil in our land. The crisis that began in the Western Region in 1962 had festered and was reaching a crescendo. His column, Peter Pan which he ran twice a week, became fiercer, hard-hitting and unsparing. He was in the right place, the Daily Times, the home of independent journalism, restrained only by the law of the land and law of decency. The Daily Times was the biggest and flourishing newspaper empire in Africa, south of the Sahara. He also had the management who thrust their chests out, standing as an unfailing bulwark between governments, indeed between the jackboots of the military and the journalists in their brave world–up to the time of Dr. Patrick Dele Cole.

    I recall an incident when the Federal Authorities got wind of a report in preparation in the Sunday Times with which they had issues and asked Tunji Oseni, the editor, to pull it out of his paper. It was a report on the then Nigeria Airways. Oseni rejected the directive saying his line of reporting was not to the government, but to his managing director. Dr. Cole was reached and he stood by his editor. The story led the paper the following morning.

    Anastasius Okotako Enahoro, the father of the Enahoros had told his children that they should go into the world and unfold their talents and abilities. An educationist, he had said to them that whatever they found themselves doing, they must do it well. He was wont to say that what was worth doing at all was worth doing well. As Peter was to say, this charge by his father was an energy tonic for him, and ringing every time in his ears. Three of the children were into journalism– two, Anthony and Peter into print while Mike Enahoro settled for broadcast journalism. Edward, the immediate younger brother of Anthony Enahoro, was a diplomat, while Henry, Peter’s own immediate younger sibling was an educationist, taking after their father. One would have thought that because Anthony Enahoro had made a huge success of his career in journalism, his younger brother would live under his shadows. It was not the case. Peter Enahoro resolved to find his own niche spectacularly ending, arguably, a more towering figure in journalism.

    Anthony Enahoro was editor of Southern Nigerian Defender in Ibadan at the age of 21, setting the record as the youngest editor ever in Nigeria. He was editor of The Comet in Kano and editor of West African Pilot in Lagos, all Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s newspapers. Indeed, he was also Editor-in-Chief of Morning Star in Lagos. He used the papers to battle the colonialists in the struggle for independence. He was in and out of jail for his writings and his convictions. When he switched into politics, and what he did not wholly achieve much as he packed heat on the colonialists in his writings, he was later to table on the political platform of the Action Group led by Obafemi Awolowo. He moved the motion in Parliament for Nigeria’s independence in 1953.

    Peter carved out his own path. He cut his teeth in the media in 1954 as an assistant publicity officer in the Department of Information that is today called Federal Ministry of Information. It was his encounter with Dr. Azikiwe, the then Premier of Eastern Region that proved to all present at Zik’s Press conference that he belonged elsewhere other than the ministry where rules of engagement place certain restrictions on civil servants. His boldness and drive putting civil service ethics aside to ask Dr. Azikiwe an inconvenient question impressed the celebrated columnist, Abiodun Aloba who wrote under the pen-name Ebenezer Williams. Aloba was then also editor of the Sunday Times. He saw in Peter Enahoro more of a pressman than a press officer. Abiodun Aloba immediately offered him job in the Daily Times. Peter Enahoro resigned from the ministry and joined the Daily Times as a sub-editor in 1955 at the age of 20. A man with a keen sense of fairness, he resigned in 1957 from the Daily Times in solidarity with workers who were fired following a trade dispute in the company. He said he should have been considered a ring leader as well and sacked. He took up job as Assistant District Manager at Rediffusion Services at Ibadan. He was, however, prevailed upon to return to the Daily Times by the Editorial Adviser of the paper, Mr. Jeffrey Taylor and Alhaji Jose, the editor.

    He got back to the Daily Times and was appointed Acting Features Editor, a position that provided him opportunity to sharpen his writing skills, for at the Daily Times, the Features Editor was the Chief Leader Writer, that is chief editorial writer with Alhaji Jose as editor in whose office issues deserving of editorial comments were discussed and under his chairmanship and direction. The editor had the last word and if he liked he could write the editorial himself. This was the practice until the coming of Dr. Patrick Dele Cole who established an Editorial Board to replace the old system which saddled the Features Department with writing of editorials, what has become the practice in practically all newspapers in this country. Dr. Stanley Macebuh was the first chairman and had as members, the Features Editor Dr. Doyin Abiola, (Nee Aboaba); Levi Okoroafor, Olu Akaraogun, Sam Oni and Dele Giwa, the last two coming from the United States.

    Peter Enahoro did not stay more than two months when in 1958 he was redeployed as Acting Editor of Sunday Times to deputize for Tonye Willie-Harry, the editor who was away on a course. No sooner Peter Enahoro got into the editorial suite than he increased the circulation of the paper significantly. It was there he started his column writing, first, as George Sharp which instantly gathered a huge following. Because the newspaper was a business, the management had no hesitation, indeed wasted no time in confirming him as the substantive editor. A reward for exceptional performance that lay in wait for Segun Osoba, too, when he was sent to Lagos Weekend as Acting Editor to hold forte for the substantive editor who was away on leave. Within two weeks of his assumption of office the circulation of the paper doubled and it rose rapidly even more before the return of the editor. Osoba was simply asked to carry on. He was confirmed as substantive editor.

    Before Peter Enahoro was kicked upstairs to become editor of the Daily Times, the organization’s flagship, at the age of 27, he had started his iconic column, Peter Pan, for which he was renowned in enlightened circles all over Africa. He took over from Alhaji Babatunde Jose as editor in 1962. That was the year crisis began in the Western Region with the leaders of Action Group charged with treasonable felony reaching a crescendo not just with the jailing of Chief Awolowo, Chief Enahoro, Lateef Jakande, LKJ just to name a few.

    The Daily Times had the tradition of featuring great columnists, with the Sunday boasting of most of them starting from Ebenezer Williams; Peter Pan; Allah-De; Sad Sam and Gbolabo Ogunsanwo. In later year brandished Gbolabo Ogunsanwo before readers’ gaze; Haroun Adamu and Dr. Olu Onagoruwa. In the Daily there was the additional column, “Thinking with you”, by Dr. Tai Solarin, a non-conformist educationist. When the Sunday newspaper was conceived by Mr. Percy Roberts, the Daily Times General Manager/Chief Executive at the time, Cecil King who was Chairman was not keen on having a Sunday edition of the Daily Times. He acceded after much pressure by Percy Roberts on the unstated understanding that the paper was going to be not more than a light-hearted, mass appeal Sunday Pictorial. Such was the situation that when the paper was to take off, Percy Roberts did not give his editor, Theophilus Awobokun, the first editor any brief. He was to be content reading Percy Roberts’ lips. And that was exactly Awobokun did: The newspaper was to do interpretative reporting, story behind the story and serious features. Unknown to him he had played into the hands of his editors who were roaring to go—to give a damn good Sunday newspaper that was to combine mass appeal with doses of seriousness.

    The editors gave the Sunday newspaper character with each of them stamping his image on the paper. First assignment was to drive the colonialists away. So, when the national Independence came on October 1, 1960, Ebenezer Williams, the second editor wrote to welcome the Independence in his column which he captioned “Be Happy”: That we go into Independence, in spite of everything, unafraid …The truth, of course, is that benevolent foreign rule can never be as good as the worst form of self-government. Man is ordained to look after himself.” The resolve to hold the Nigerian politician accountable came next. Let’s listen to Sad Sam:

    ‘Monkey Dey Work, Baboon Dey Eat’ (May 6, 1962)

    “M.P.s who won’t sit in Parliament make me angry. One thousand pounds a year we pay them to serve us earnestly for fewer than 90 days a year. So they come to Lagos for a session in fine, fine cars and live in fine, fine flats at Victoria Beach.

    But in the day time, some go about their business—outside the House. And for the most time, the House cannot form a quorum—like during the last Budget Session. At night, some have good times with the butterflies that abound.

    ‘Monkey dey work, baboon dey eat’. These politicians promise you all God’s Kingdom when they seek your vote; elect them and they let you down. Their good intentions in practice are at a discount because they are professionals—only amateur politicians are consistent. But beware of the amateurs.”

    And Allah-De: “Akinjide my chum.” It was a piece in which he lambasted Chief Richards Akinjide for always defending what he thought was wrong. According to Allah-De, even when all could see that the Western Region was on fire and in chaos and collapsing, Akinjide said all was all right. Years later into military administration that came in 1966, Sad Sam wrote: “Who says Nigeria is in need of being saved—from the politicians or from soldiers?” At the time there were already grumblings that soldiers merely exchanged batons with politicians. There was no difference in public morality!

    That was the environment the powerful editors of the Daily Times functioned. They also had free hands. With the combination of Peter Pan, Allah-De (Alade Odunewu) and Off-Beat Sam (Sam Amuka) in Spear Magazine and later Sad Sam in the Sunday Times, the Daily Times became a formidable institution, indeed. Predictably, the company incurred the wrath of the powerful and the influential. The management itself wrinkled its face occasionally and bit its lips but asked the editors to carry on. The powerful would not leave the management alone. Peter Pan in reaction tried to move away from the characteristic hard hitting of the powerful by George Sharp in view of the occasional discomfiture to management. He thought he could mellow a little by moving away from political commentaries and veer into socials, talk about women.

    He wrote on one occasion: “I keep meeting them –the women of today. Sophisticated, elegant and just right (proportion-wise) here and there. They starve themselves mercilessly to keep their statistics on close link with the latest wonder to step into Hollywood. They carry a luggage of powder and pencils around for use at the slightest provocation…” It was around this period he wrote about the television divas of the era, Anike-Agbaje Williams, the first face on Television in Africa, and Julie Coker, both at work in Ibadan. The switch to socials did not endure. Peter Pan was back in the garb of George Sharp and even fiercer, when he became editor of the leading journal, Daily Times, but not until he had raised the circulation of the Sunday Times to 148, 986 copies, sometimes 150,000. Every issue of the Sunday paper was compelling. The management wrote proudly that if four persons read one copy as experts believed was the case, it meant more than 600,000 people “—over half a million—read the Sunday Times weekly.” As sales rose, so did the external pressure on the management to reassign Peter Pan. By 1962, instead of redeploying him, he was appointed the editor of the mother paper in succession to Alhaji Jose who became Managing Director.

    The indefatigable editor Peter Enahoro wrote his column twice a week. As the hostilities against the newspaper would not abate–the Daily Times had been banned in 1964 together with the Nigerian Tribune in the Western Region by the government of Chief S. L. Akintola–Peter Pan had to step down as editor. He was made Group Editorial Adviser in 1965 and subsequently the Editor-in-Chief in 1966, both positions he saw as promotion to executive joblessness. The developments were largely as a result of the blackmail that because there was substantial foreign interest in the company (International Publishing Company’ publishers of Daily Mirror in London) the Daily Times was an instrument of the colonialists still keen on controlling the affairs of Nigeria. It was even more so that Cecil King, the Chairman of Daily Mirror and Daily Times never failed to commend Peter Pan for his work.

    Nevertheless Peter Pan continued with the writing of his column, trenchant as ever. This gave him fulfillment. The position allowed him to travel within the country regularly. His proposed appointment as Editorial Director was thwarted by the military coup of 15 January, 1966 what he foresaw and against which he warned the politicians. He wrote prophetically: “I venture to give this warning that if you destroy the ballot box, you leave the field clear to the people, to seek other means of restitution. Who wants that in Nigeria? Who wants to sit on a glittering throne built on top of a gun powder?”

    The memoirs of Alhaji Jose, for several years Chairman/ Managing Director, Walking A Tight Rope, attest to the hostilities the Daily Times faced spanning most of the military era. Reflecting on the siege on the newspaper and Gowon’s military junta shutting the newspaper down in 1969; he says Reuters and AFP sent the story round the world. “The students’ union, the academicians and the other pressure groups that usually pontificate on the need for a free Press lodged no protest. One, two, three, four, five days, the Daily Times and its subsidiary companies were closed. Then on November 12, which was the first day of Ramadan, at noon, the detectives invited Laban Namme, Deputy Managing Director, Henry Odukomaiya, Editor of the Daily Times and Segun Osoba, Editor of the Lagos Weekend and I to the police headquarters where we were asked to make statements on our political beliefs, how we saw the Military Government and other irrelevant questions.” They were locked up at the police station on Awolowo Road, Ikoyi. They came out not broken nor bowed. But they ingrained the humiliation: ‘We had been walking a tight rope”, said Alhaji Jose; “the company lost revenue; we were humiliated, our families inconvenienced, the penalty for expressing honestly held opinion.”

    After the coup of January, Peter Pan in his capacity as Editor-in-Chief went on tour of the country to gauge the pulse of different parts of the nation. He wrote a three-part serial which he captioned, “The First 100 Days” in which he said the North was cold to the coup and he could see dark clouds in the horizon. Then came the revenge coup in July of the same year, 1966. Peter Pan fell victim of this as it ended his journalism career in his fatherland, Nigeria. He fled to Germany en route Paris and London. He said he fled because some of his best friends, “people I went to school with, got killed.” He also got wind that some armed soldiers had visited his house at Silva Street, Anthony Village. He was the first to build a house in the estate.

    The Daily Times under Alhaji Jose said he should feel free to return home after one year and his absence would be regarded as leave, that is, leave of absence. He did not warm up to the offer. Yet it was rough for him at the beginning when he got to Germany. Peter Pan said to Muyiwa Adetiba, an enchanting columnist in Vanguard, in an interview on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2015, that his accommodation was first in a student hostel offered him by the Roman Catholic Church. “Picture the scene”, he said: “Here was a former Editor-in-Chief with a house which many considered luxurious now living in a students’ hostel. A friend promised to take me out of there but like a true Nigerian he forgot.” He soon bounced back. He was asked to give a lecture in a small town and among the audience were the bosses of Deutsche Weller said to be Germany’s equivalent of the BBC. They learnt that he had left Nigeria and they offered him a job instantly as Contributing Editor. He was later Africa Editor of National Zeitung in Basel, Switzerland. From there he moved to Ralph Uwechue’s magazine New Africa becoming its Editorial Director in 1978. In 1981, he launched his own magazine, a pan-African publication called Africa Now. Interestingly, when he launched the magazine in Nigeria at the Federal Palace, the cream la cream in the Nigerian society fell one on the other to attend the event and flashed sun shine smiles to rejoice with the celebrant, Peter Pan.

    When he sneaked into Nigeria before then in 1979, it was at the time our legislators in the National Assembly were discussing their remuneration. I wrote welcoming him back to the country and that the legislators had nothing to fear: “It is Peter Enahoro that is back, not Peter Pan!”

    His home coming in 1996 to take up an appointment as Sole Administrator of the Daily Times on the invitation of General Sani Abacha was a surprise to not a few. It dimmed his effulgent image with many asking if age was what had mellowed him to such an extent he would exercise bad judgment and serve Abacha’s Administration, a symbol of all he had spent his entire life fighting. He quickly gave himself a pinch and he went back to live permanently in London.

    He said on the occasion of his 80th birthday: “I have often said that my life has been a series of accidents. I came into journalism accidentally…You see, success came to me too rapidly in Nigeria. I became known wherever I went. I enjoyed myself, but I don’t remember any nostalgia”. Peter Pan shot arrows unceasingly whether in newspapers or magazines into the ribs not just of Nigerian leaders but to African leaders in general. Frank Barton in his book, “The Press of Africa” (Macmillan Press Ltd.) described Peter Enahoro as “arguably Africa’s best journalist writing in the English language.”

    Peter Pan, a colossus indeed, has left our midst. He has departed the world with solemn prayerful thoughts accompanying him, wishing that his path be blessed as he journeys onwards through Creation to the Luminous Kingdom of our Lord and Maker.

    (Peter Pan in one of his classics, the taste of which pudding is not just in the eating but also in the reading and listening is reserved for another day. Credit for some of my assertions goes to First 50 Years of the Daily Times 1926-1976; Femi Ogunsanwo’s Chronicle of 25 years of Sunday Times (1953-1978); and the Memoirs of Alhaji Babatunde Jose).

  • Why I didn’t pay tribute to Ifeanyi in my new album – Davido

    Why I didn’t pay tribute to Ifeanyi in my new album – Davido

    Nigerian Afrobeats musician, David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido, has cleared the air on why he didn’t pay tribute to  his late son, Ifeanyi Adeleke, in his new album, ‘Timeless’.

    There was no part Davido mentioned or pay tribute to his late son Ifeanyi on any of the tracks in the album.

    Speaking on Monday during a press conference ahead of the upcoming ‘Timeless’ concert scheduled for April 23 in Lagos, Davido explained that his goal was to release a classic album with minimal or no emotional songs to prevent followers from being emotional over the loss of his son.

    He said, ”People who have been following songs for years can attest to this. I have always been a happy person, regardless of what I may be going through.

    ”If sad songs are to come, it will be an entirely different project on its own as I never had plans of combining them.”

  • Ayo Olukotun: Lowering of a War Horse – By Tony Iyare

    Ayo Olukotun: Lowering of a War Horse – By Tony Iyare

    By Tony Iyare

    Even as I struggle amidst deep pains, sorrow and tribulations to scribble an Elergy for departed activist, public intellectual, erudite scholar, accomplished journalist and professor of Political Science, Ayodele Samuel Olukotun, I’m nudged into some hallucination whether this brilliant and highly resourceful scholar, who was a regular face at many high profile conferences is really gone. Don’t blame me. Some persons evoke a larger than life image that I’ve found it difficult coming to the reality of their death. So it was with acclaimed activist and former President, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof Festus Ikhuoria Iyayi whose tribute I only summoned the will to do five years after his passing in 2018. Olukotun was another. Though I circulated the information asking friends and associates to send tributes to a particular e-mail address, it was an uphill task finding the will to discuss him in past tense.

    Olukotun’s self effacing mien belies his intimidating profile and invaluable contributions to intellection and media development in Nigeria but his deep concerns and thoughts on rebuilding our tottering nation negated his joining hordes of Nigerian intellectuals who had taken a walk abroad owing to increasing decrepit working environment in our varsities. From teaching at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, he also taught at his alma mater, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, University of Lagos (UNILAG), Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo, Onabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) and Leads University, Ibadan. I’m wondering how LASU managed with its star studded team when Olukotun was in the Department of Political Science with two of the world’s most published scholars, Abubakar Momoh and Said Adejumobi, Dele Seteolu and others. He was the pioneer Oba (Dr) Sikiru Kayode Adetona Professorial Chair of Governance at OOU. He was also Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Leads City University. Apart from writing a weekly column at The Punch for 12 years, Olukotun was at different times chair of Editorial Board at the Daily Times and Compass Newspapers. He was also a member of the Editorial Board at the Nigerian Tribune, Anchor, Westerner and Daily Independent newpapers.

    Winner of the Diamond Award for Media Excellence (DAME) on Informed Commentary in 2013, Olukotun was a recipient of several international grants from organizations such as The Ford Foundation, Carnegie Endowment and Friedrich Ebert Foundation. He published over 60 articles and authored the “Repressive State and Resurgent Media in Nigeria” (Upsalla, Nordic African Institute, 2004), “Political Communication in Africa” (co-edited with Sharon Omotoso, Berlin Springer, 2016) and his recent edited book, “Watchdogs or Captured Media? A Study of the Role of the Media in Nigeria’s Emergent Democracy 1999-2016”. He has also co-edited, along with Professor Femi Sonaike, a book on the media mogul, Babatunde Jose, titled “Jose: The Ideas Man”. He edited Foreign Policy of the Babangida Government: Muritala Muhammed Times Lecture Series, among others.

    Since our path crossed over 40 years ago when he gave a moving talk at a tribute session for victims of the June 12, 1981 killing of four students of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) by the Police, he had remained a mentor, brother, friend, senior colleague and discourse partner. We later met in the Daily Times in early 1991 where he had joined the Editorial Board with acclaimed Literary Scholar, Dr Chidi Amuta as chairman. I was also then recruited for Timesweek, a new brand that replaced the defunct Times International magazine as an assistant editor. While I moved to Newswatch, The Post Express, National Interest and did work for The New York Times, the Paris based African Report and Choices, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) quarterly magazine, he kept a regular tab.

    When he became chair of the Editorial Board of the fledgling Compass Newspaper in 2008, he reached out for me to join the amiable team of egg heads. Professor of English and later Vice Chancellor, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijebun, Ijebu Ode, Prof Segun Awonusi, International Relations Professor, Kayode Soremekun and Abigail Ogwezi, now professor of Mass Communication at the University of Lagos were members. Others include a Medical Doctor and Politician, Dr Kunle Olajide, a senior media colleague, Lade Bonuola, pioneer Editor of The Guardian, Dr Ngozi Anyaegbunam, a Business and Economy Analyst, Chris Eyinnaya and I. My joining the team coincided with the departure of Abayomi Ogundeji, a former Editor of the now rested Comet on Sunday to This Day newspaper.

    With Olukotun presiding, the Editorial Board was not only a compendium of ideas, but was intellectually stimulating. He was never tired of chewing on engaging discourses which we shared from time to time. He was virtually on my neck to undertake a PhD programme. “I’ve seen your work and presentations and that of your close friend, Lanre Arogundade and can tell that both of you have trod around many interesting areas of research. You should  just work on an area and deliver your PhD,” he always admonished. He related with candour. I recall him asking me to assist to work on a lecture for a high profile gathering because his itinerary was choked. When he finished delivering it, he was full of thanks that I came to his rescue at a critical period but said, “Tony, that’s your work, I cannot honestly cite it as mine”. He also turned down my plea for him to do a forward for a forthcoming book that I had to change its scope. “I appreciate the depth of your work and cannot afford to vitiate that. I have so much on my hands to deliver now and do not wish to do a wishy washy job,” he quipped.

    Olukotun was in the mold of former Zambian President, Levy Manawasa whose mother died in a public bus  and he explained that his mother was like any private citizen who was not elected and could not enjoy state privileges. Riding from Ibadan to Lagos, Olukotun’s son, Tope was once victim of a kidnapping gang that diverted their trip to Delta State. I made some frantic calls after receiving Olukotun’s distressing calls that his som was dropped off somewhere in Igbusa. I wasn’t surprised because he wasn’t that kind of father that would pamper his children with the ride of a limousine. He dined with kings but opted to live his life and kept his integrity.

    When I moved to Benin City in October 2009 to work as Special Adviser, Media and Publicity to Edo State Governor, Mr Adams Oshiomhole, our relationship was further cemented with the courting of Dr Godswill Ogbogodor, his mate at Ife who was then serving as Special Adviser on Policy and Programmes to the Governor. Ogbogodor who had previously served as Commissionser in five ministries in the old Bendel State was in the habit of sharing thoughts on Olukotun in Yoruba. “Se oti gbo lati ore wa,” he would usually say.

    As I shared news of his passing on January 4th which I stumbled on on Daily Times Alumni platform to friends, colleagues and associates and some media platforms, I was moved to tears with the sudden gloom that flowed from the renditions to his death. I also received immediate calls from  former President, Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Gbenga Adefaye and Prof Segun Awonusi who wanted to confirm that Olukotun was really gone. “Haaaaa…..didn’t he just celebrate his birthday?  This is shattering. Na wah ooooo!  Tears have rolled down my eyes……” exclaimed Arogundade, who’s executive director, International Press Centre (IPC). Amuta who was Olukotun’s contemporary at Ife also went down memory lane: “This is a grave loss. Ayo was indeed a fine scholar and fertile mind. I recall our Ife days. He was active in Students Union politics in our student days. He used to come from ABU to stay with me and Adebayo Williams in our modest abodes.
    May his soul rest in peace.”

    As for the last moments of his death, I turned to his close pal and professor of International Relations, Kayode Soremekun. “Just hearing this too. He had been ill-hospitalized in Babcock. A lot of rallying round by his friends and associates. Then the inevitable happened. Only God lives for ever!” was how Soremekun, also immediate past vice chancellor, Federal University Oye Ekiti solemnly puts it. On knowing the cause of his death, Amuta was in shock: “Oh no! May his soul find peaceful rest.”

    Known simply as Ayo Olukotun, not many would ever contemplate he would kiss the dust about now when our environment is politically heated and citizens are ensconced in the process of weaning a new leadership to rescue our dear country from a near rudderless path. For a man who lived and stewed in discourses, I could imagine his pains as he grappled with life on his sick bed as sunset beckons at Babcock University Teaching Hospital, Ilishan where he was rushed to when stroke took a better part of him on the eve of Christmas on December 21st, 2022.

    Like Amuta and many others who are fully bred Great Ife alumni, Olukotun did all his degrees in Ife Varsity where he was an acclaimed student leader and activist. He was Assistant Secretary General climbing up to become Secretary General and President of the Students’ Union in the 73/74 and 74/75 academic sessions respectively. He was the stormy petrel of the latter days of the military regime of Gen Yakubu Gowon and was at the head of the students protests dubbed “We Shall Trek” that  saw the end of the Gowon era particularly after the regime made mincemeat of its pledge to hand over to civilians in 1976. The Gowon regime was on edge as students of the University of Ife led by Olukotun made bold their resolve to match to Lagos.

    Perhaps Olukotun’s close friends and associates led by his Ife classmate, Toyin Falola, professor of History at University of Texas, Austin who had generously pooled huge resources within a short time to save his life, had looked forward to loudly celebrating his Platinum Jubilee on May 12 this year with pomp and peasantry. But the Almighty God had other plans by calling our dear brother home. Only He can explain why good men like Olukotun make their exit in their prime while evil men linger. Thank You Father for providing us the wonderful opportunity to interact with Olukotun while he sojourned here. As we lower this war horse, let’s remember that he casted lot to live his life for a better Nigeria. Adieu our famed intellectual giant until the resurrection morning when we shall meet to part no more.

    Iyare is a Senior International,  Journalist and Communication & Development Expert

  • 60 hearty cheers to Jahman Anikulapo, ‘Nigeria’s Culture Ambassador’ – By Ehi Braimah

    60 hearty cheers to Jahman Anikulapo, ‘Nigeria’s Culture Ambassador’ – By Ehi Braimah

    By Ehi Braimah

    When you clock 60 years just like Jahman Oladejo Anikulapo, actor, art connoisseur, culture activist, journalist and man-of-the-people, it calls for celebration and thanksgiving. It’s Jahman’s Diamond Jubilee and you know what, 60 years looks so good on him and he is wearing it graciously – like his trademark “Adire” outfits, reminding one of his stage production costumes.

    The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc, claiming over six million lives globally since 2020. Clocking 60 years is therefore a rare gift and every day that we live is a bonus. Nigeria’s current life expectancy is 55.75 years, up from 53 years in 2020, according to World Bank data.

    Under the mentorship of late Prof Dapo Adelugba (1939 – 2014), theatre critic and playwright at the University of Ibadan, where he was director of the university’s theatre troupe, Jahman was encouraged to write reviews of plays and films regularly which clearly influenced his career as a journalist.

    Jahman always knew what he wanted to be right from his undergraduate days at the University of Ibadan: an advocate for the art and culture community and defender of the public interest. It was his own way of expressing himself and achieving a higher purpose in life.

    The intersection of art and society fascinates Jahman during panel discussions. It is why he uses his prodigious intellect to explore diverse art and culture themes for robust engagements. For example, music and visual arts have enabled a thriving cultural diplomacy across borders for the creative industry with bountiful harvests.

    But on the flip side of the same coin, Jahman wants practitioners in the art and culture sector to be the voices of the oppressed people, fighting for their rights and insisting on a better society where the government is held accountable. Is Jahman a rebel with a cause?

    Through writing, television appearances, seminars, conferences and festivals, our “birthday boy” continues to communicate the values of a decent society in the midst of contrived chaos around us.

    Going into the general election season, Jahman is clearly not impressed with our political leaders and their shenanigans. He believes strongly that nothing will change because politicians are selfish people who have only one goal in mind: Primitive accumulation of wealth.

    In speaking truth to power, Jahman is always fearless in much the same way as his mentor, Prof Wole Soyinka. Jahman has shared an enduring relationship with the Nobel Laureate over many seasons. Like Prof Soyinka, he cannot stand people who are not true to their convictions.

    Jahman also expresses himself fully in directing, dramatic theories and literary criticisms. Having bagged a degree in Theatre Arts, this should not come as a surprise. He has performed in several plays and acted in Tade Ogidan’s film, ‘Hostages’.

    He could easily have continued on that path as an actor but he opted to be a journalist after his encounter with another mentor, Ben Tomoloju, who had moved from The Punch to The Guardian and established the only Arts Desk of any newspaper in Nigeria at the time.

    That was how our “birthday boy” joined The Guardian as a news reporter, rising through the ranks to become Art Editor, Deputy Editor and Editor of The Guardian on Sunday at Rutam House. Jahman spent close to 29 years at The Guardian before retiring in January 2013 when he was 50 years old. His birthday is January 16.

    Since then, Jahman has been promoting and directing art and culture events with a busy schedule. If he is not directing a shoot or screening a film, you can be sure he is at a panel discussion or anchoring a programme.

    Whether it is the Culture Advocates Caucus where he has been programme director since 2009 or the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) which he chairs or the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) which he founded in 1999, Jahman is permanently in work mode. He also finds time to teach young European students media arts and culture.

    His combined roles in culture advocacy groups cut across literature, film, theatre, visual arts and music, and he uses every opportunity to promote cultural diversity. Over the years, Jahman drew artistic inspiration from a distinguished list of academics, scholars and theatre practitioners who are fond of him. They include Prof Femi Osofisan, Prof Toyin Falola, Prof Duro Oni, Prof Tunde Babawale, Benson Idonije, Odia Ofeimun, Taiwo Ajayi-Lycett and Newton Jibunoh.

    Jahman’s role as a mentor is widely acknowledged and his mentees are forever grateful to him. “Jahman Anikulapo is a great man who sees greatness in people, and then goes out of his way to ensure that his mentees achieve their goals,” says Armsfree Ajanaku, Programmes and Communications Manager, Resource Centre for Human Rights and Civic Education and journalist who also worked at The Guardian with Jahman.

    “He is an energetic mentor,” Armsfree adds. Jahman gave Armsfree the opportunity to cut his teeth in journalism as an undergraduate. Award-winning investigative reporter, Fisayo Soyombo, tells the same story, praising Jahman for his excellent mentorship.

    Andrew Iro Okungbowa, who also worked at The Guardian, says Jahman is highly regarded because of his immense contribution to art and culture journalism.

    “He is well connected, yet he is humble and shy from claiming the podium,” Okungbowa, Tourism and Travel Editor of the New Telegraph, says in admiration of the birthday celebrant.

    In Jahman’s art and culture corner, you will also find contemporaries such as Toyin Akinosho, his long-time friend who is a geologist, journalist and publisher of Africa Oil & Gas Report; Femi Odugbemi, writer, filmmaker and television producer; Dr Shaibu Husseini, journalist, culture administrator and film curator; Dr Yinka Oyegbile, journalist, academic and author; Dr Wale Okediran, medical doctor, author and Secretary General, Pan African Writers Association (PAWA) and so on.

    I have known Jahman for close to three decades and we relate as brothers. He is reliable and dependable with unimpeachable integrity.

    When I wanted to float ‘Naija Times’, our online newspaper in 2020, I contacted Jahman and dragged him out of his self-imposed “retirement” from journalism. Once Jahman agrees to work on a project, his commitment is unassailable. I can attest to his humility, hard work and resourcefulness.

    Although lashing out at sloppy reporters is a way of life for Jahman, he also cares for their well-being because he believes in the humanity that spreads success and happiness.

    Jahman was the one who took on the responsibility of recruiting the team and creating the different sections of ‘Naija Times’ in line with the strategic positioning of the newspaper: journalism in the service of society.

    When I contacted Prof Darren Kew, an American and Director of the Centre of Peace, Democracy and Development of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA, to reflect on his relationship with Jahman, he told me Jahman is the elder brother he always wanted to have.

    “Jahman is larger than life,” says Prof Darren, a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of ‘Naija Times’, in a glowing tribute.

    “He is like one of the archetypical characters he plays on stage except that he is real: full of energy and enthusiasm, charismatic, and a powerful intellect that is only surpassed by his love for people around him,’’ he continues.

    “Like a director, he works behind the scenes, helping people left and right, opening doors when they need them, applauding when they do well, and taking them out for pounded yam, palm wine and good music when their spirits are down.

    “He holds great influence, but you will never know it if you see him, since he won’t talk about his efforts unless you ask him, and he will always downplay his own role. He is always in his car working, so you are lucky to catch him when you do.

    “But when you do meet him, he will smile and make you feel like an Oba (King), make you laugh and share good ideas to help you solve your problems. He will call you brother and even tell this ‘oyinbo’ that he is ‘Omowale’, and remind you that all of our efforts to do some good in this world are not in vain.

    “I can never repay his many kindnesses and friendship, but if someone will teach me the talking drum, I will sing his praises.”

    Family and friends continuously sing Jahman’s praises because he is a great mind and good man. For all his outstanding service in the arts and culture community, Jahman deserves national recognition. But I know he is not craving for one nor is he looking forward to such honour because he will reject it.

    On the occasion of his 60th birthday, it gives me great pleasure to nickname him as “Nigeria’s culture ambassador”.

    Jahman’s son, Oluwaseunrere who was also born in January, told me his father treats everyone around him with care and love.

    “My dad is a great man and he cares for his family in a special way,” Seun says. “He does not give up easily on any assignment, no matter how challenging.”

    Seun is a graduate of computer science but he wants to become a cyber-security expert. His sister, Toluwalase, is based in Germany and they are excited to see their father move up to the sixth floor of his life.

    Congratulations Jahman on your Diamond Jubilee. May your days be long!

     

    Braimah is a public relations strategist and publisher/editor-in-chief of Naija Times

  • Pele turned football into art, entertainment – Neymar

    Pele turned football into art, entertainment – Neymar

    Paris Saint-Germain forward, Neymar has paid tribute to Brazilian football legend Pele who passed away on Thursday after battling cancer.

    TheNewsGuru reports that Pele died at the age of 82.

    In an emotional tribute, Neymar wrote on his Instagram page, ‘Before Pelé, 10 was just a number. I’ve read this phrase somewhere, at some point in my life. But this sentence, beautiful, is incomplete. I would say before Pelé football was just a sport. Pelé has changed it all. He turned football into art, into entertainment He gave voice to the poor, to the blacks and especially: He gave visibility to Brazil. Soccer and Brazil have raised their status thanks to the King! He’s gone but his magic remains. Pelé is FOREVER!

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  • Tribute to Lionel Messi – By Promise Adiele

    Tribute to Lionel Messi – By Promise Adiele

    By Promise Adiele

    His football dexterity is awesome – sleek, smooth, slippery, elegant, and sure-footed. He engineers the game with admiring ease and a dignifying refinement that underscores his modest demeanour. Some people ascribe supernatural qualities to him, arguing his celestial provenance which reminds us of the Biblical assertion in Acts 14:11 – “the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men”.

    People ask – is he human or is he from another planet? On the field, he does impossible things that his fellow footballers can only imagine. Not the tallest man in the world, but he accomplishes feats tall people can only dream about. His football wizardry unites heaven and hell in a momentary embrace, defies the law of gravity, disarms the satanic host, and synthesizes all opposites in humanity. His name is Lionel Andres Messi, the diminutive Argentine soccer god whose personality symbolizes a confluence of innumerable possibilities.

    Football commentators have run out of adjectives describing the little magician. There is no one like him in football. It is difficult to prognosticate if there will be another after him. He has defied all odds to emerge as football’s Greatest of All Times. Like the Shakespearean colossus that bestrides the entire world, Messi has majestically dominated the pinnacle of football hemisphere. He is incomparable and absolutely so.

    Born on the 24th of June 1987 in Rosario Sante Fe Argentina, Lionel Andres Messi is the third child among four children. His father worked in a steel factory as a manager, and his mother augmented the family’s income by working in a magnet manufacturing company.

    Both parents have Italian ancestry and are devout Catholics which is why Lionel Messi always makes a sign of the cross, looking up to heaven each time he scores a goal. Growing up for the little magician was not easy. He suffered birth defects which affected his growth and stature. At the age of ten, Lionel Messi was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency.

    It cost his parents about $1,000 to treat him every month and because his father’s insurance policy could only cover his treatment for two years, the family faced a serious dilemma. His club Newell Old Boys agreed to foot the bill but reneged on their promise. Then the Spanish club, Barcelona came to the rescue. The rest, they say, is history.

    Like the Biblical lamp that cannot be hidden when lit, he overcame all the initial difficulties of birth to emerge the greatest footballer of all time. There is no basis for argument. His story is inspiring and justifies the existence of God in humble beginnings.

    Lionel Messi has won everything on offer in the football menu. In 2005 in the Netherlands, he led the Argentine youth team to win the World Youth Championship, beating Nigeria’s Mikel Obi in the finals. He emerged top scorer in that competition with six goals.

    At the age of 18, he made his first senior international debut in a friendly match against Hungary. He scored his first senior international goal in a friendly against Croatia in 2006. During the 2006 world cup, he featured against Serbia and Montenegro and became the youngest Argentine player to play at the world cup. His goal in the 6-0 rout made him the youngest scorer in the tournament and the sixth youngest goal scorer of the World Cup.

    In 2008, he led his country to win the Beijing Olympic soccer gold. In 2021, he led his country’s national team to win the South American continental showpiece Copa America. In 2022, he also won the CONMEBOL – UEFA Cup of Champions with the national team. Everyone agreed that Lionel Messi would be the greatest footballer of all time if he could win one trophy that eluded him – the World Cup, the ultimate Holy Grail of football. In December 2022, in a classic final between Argentina and France, Messi, against all odds, led Argentina to glory, lifting the FIFA world cup in Qatar.

    At the club level with Barcelona, Messi won ten La Liga titles, seven Copa Del Rey titles, seven Super Copa de Espana, four UEFA Champions League titles and three FIFA Club World Cup. With his current club PSG, he has won the Lique 1 title once and the Trophee des Champions once. He has won the Ballon d’Or a record seven times and FIFA world player of the year once in 2009. In 2019, he emerged as the Best FIFA men’s player of the year. He has won the European Golden Shoe a record six times, FIFA World Cup Golden Ball twice in 2014 and 2022. He won the FIFA Club World Cup golden ball twice in 2009 and 2011. He has been La Liga’s best player six times and Argentina’s Footballer of the Year fourteen times.

    Lionel Andres Messi has been compared to many great footballers the world has witnessed but on a closer, impartial and unbiased scrutiny, all the footballers compared to him unceremoniously pale into insignificance. Shall I compare Messi with any footballer dead or alive? No, because on the ball, he quickens the spirit, energizes the sensibilities, and inspires the despairing soul.

    The Brazilian football legend Pele immediately comes to mind having won the world cup on three occasions. Pele is a great footballer no doubt but he doesn’t come close to Messi. He won the world cup three times, never won Copa America, never played in Europe or won the UEFA Champions League, and never won the Olympic soccer gold. Lionel Messi is the only footballer who has won everything in football.

    There was Kaka of Brazil, considered one of the greatest players of his generation, but he never won anything at the youth level, not the Olympic soccer gold or the South American continental showpiece. There was Diego Maradona. He won the World Cup but never won the Champions League or the Copa America. He didn’t win the Olympic soccer gold too. There was Ronaldo de Lima (The real Ronaldo) but he didn’t reach Messi’s height. There is Cristiano Ronaldo, a great player by every stretch of the imagination but can only dream of what Messi does with the ball.

    He has not won the World Cup, the Olympic football gold or any world youth championship. There is Neymar too who can only wish to be Messi. The new kid on the block is Kylian Mbappe, young with the potential to achieve much, yet, Messi currently stands out as the world’s greatest footballer.

    All hail Lionel Messi, king of football. All hail his womb of birth. His simplicity is disarming. His unassuming disposition is worth emulating. His humility transcends the understanding of mere mortals. He is Argentina’s finest footballer, and the world’s most decorated footballer, the quintessential soccer star who sacrifices personal glory for the collective good of his team.

    When will the world see another? When will the world witness another player with scintillating, crazy, snake-like dribbles? When will the world witness another footballer climb the podium to receive many awards? When will the oceans of the pacific roar in celebration of a football maestro? Will Argentina give us another or will another country produce the next soccer magician? The world awaits with crossed fingers and huge expectations. As Messi slowly glides into retirement, let the heavens continue to blaze his dominance. All hail King Leo.

     

    Promise Adiele PhD

    Mountain Top University

    Promee01@yahoo.com

  • The Silent Technocrat @60: A tribute to Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki, CON

    The Silent Technocrat @60: A tribute to Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki, CON

    By Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi

    “Why should anybody come to Kwara?”

    He asked me as I walked into his office sometimes in October or November of  2006.

    “I don’t understand, sir,” I said.

    Normally a workaholic, but he had been grinding it out really hard in the past  couple of weeks; not just shuttling between Ilorin and Abuja, but to distant parts of  the State. He would set out early and return late in the evening. He would still get  back to the office and work for hours, clearing his desk.

    The previous week, he had summoned me to his office around 11 o’clock in the  night. He gestured for me to sit as he grabbed some tissues from a box and blew  his nose into it. Before I could say anything, he reached for another wad of tissues  and blew his nose again. He whispered a cough and sipped at his water. Ice cubes  crackled gently and clinked at the glass that looked as frosty as his mien. I said it  was not good for him, drinking such cold water in his condition.

    “It doesn’t matter,” he said and sniffled lightly and coughed again.

    “Well, you are the doctor…But sir, you need to give yourself a break. Is it because  of the second term that you are killing yourself like this?”

    He ignored the question. It wasn’t really a question though. For someone who  appeared superhuman to so many people, these runny nose and intermittent coughs are the little reminders that even he could get tired and he could fall sick. He scribbled furiously on a file. The only light in the room came from the ceiling  directly over his head. The rest of the room is wrapped in the delicate afterglow of  that single light. Where I sat in the shadow across the table, I noticed that he had  greyed distinctly at the temple. His hairline had also begun to recede. He now  looked different from the dashing 41-year-old who became governor of our state  three years earlier.

    “I am sure we will win…we have done very well,” I said.

    “And we still have Oloye,” I added, rather awkwardly.

    He grunted. Then, he smiled. It was actually more of a smirk; the kind you give to  someone who does not know what you know.

    “You are smart, and all. But obviously, you still don’t understand politics,” he said.  He then handed me some files that he wanted reviewed and returned in the  morning. I wanted to ask him what he meant by his remark that I did not  understand politics. But I did not. Instead, I picked up my files and sauntered out  of his office, leaving him to his grumpy self.

    Within a month of becoming governor, he had launched the Back-To-Farm, a  programme meant to jumpstart his plan to make agriculture the mainstay of the  State’s economy. It all ended in fiasco. Coming closely on the back of the elections,  most of the people who postured as farmers simply took the cash and went home.  Deeply disappointed with the outcome of this initiative, he began to doubt the  assumptions behind some of his plans.

    Nevertheless, by the first hundred days, he had laid the foundation for a housing  estate, started and completed a major township road, convened the state’s first ever  education summit, among a few other achievements. But the politicians did not  appear impressed. Even in those early days, they had started to grumble that he  was not doling out the money. They urged him to “throw away the calculator,” in  reference to his growing reputation as a thrifty spender.

    “Do you think our people want development or they just want patronage?” He  would ask me. My argument was always that leadership is about doing what is  necessary rather than what the people want. But for him, there was no easy answer.  He was a young man with an eye to the future, brought to power by a political  system that has been constructed and sustained by patronage. In the end, it  appeared what he was looking for was a balance between performance that he knew  would endear him to the people, and the patronage that the politicians that helped  him to power wanted. It was unlikely that he would find a solution that satisfied  everyone.

    However, on this particular day, he appeared fully recovered and even looked  excited.

    “I mean, if you were not from Kwara State, why would you come here? What  would bring you here?” He asked. I still wasn’t sure what he meant, or what answer  he expected. But he answered the question himself.

    “Maybe you wouldn’t come here, right?”

    I nodded hesitantly, still not sure what he meant.

    Now, this is what we need to do. We need to give people reasons to come to Kwara  State,” he declared and went on to explain in broad details how he planned to make  Kwara State the Central Hub for medical services, education and cargo.

    “We are right in the middle of the country. Why should cargoes that are meant for  the north, first land in Lagos if they could land in Kwara? Then do you know that  the major problem with healthcare services in Nigeria is diagnosis? Why should  people travel to India if they can come to Kwara and get the same quality of service?  Yes, we have University of Ilorin, but we need our own university. Zaria is still the  only place where pilots are trained in Nigeria. Why can’t we train pilots in Ilorin?  Why can’t we set up a world class vocations training college to train technicians?”

    As I listened to him, I began to see why he was excited because I was beginning to  get excited myself. I thought what he had just presented to me was the manifesto  for his second term. But I was astonished to find that within days, he had started to  set up different committees to work on these ideas: the cargo terminal, the aviation  college, the diagnostic centre, the vocation college, and the state university.

    This was not the first time he would be having this burst of inspiration. Around October of 2003, I was with him in Makkah to perform the Umra of that year’s  Ramadan. One day he asked me to follow him to Jeddah, the Saudi Arabia’s  beautiful port city with its wide roads lined by dwarf luxuriant palm trees.

    “If they can make a desert city so green, why can’t we do the same in Ilorin?” He  asked. Then I realised that this was why he brought me to Jeddah. He had seen  this before and had imagined it for his own capital city.

    We returned home and launched the Clean and Green and recruited an army of  men and women to clean and sweep up the city. At the time, Ilorin metropolis was  a filthy place. Within weeks, the type of palm trees that we saw in Jeddah began to  emerge on road medians in Ilorin. In no time, a new culture began to emerge.  People who threw litters onto the streets were rebuked by onlookers and made to  pick up their rubbish. We soon began to boast of having the cleanest capital city in  Nigeria.

    However, what was not immediately clear to everyone at the time was that Clean  and Green was not just an environmental sanitation programme. It was an initiative  primarily targeted at subverting the established order of political patronage. In  numerical terms, the Saraki political system was built largely around women. Oloye  therefore did everything to keep the women happy. Every one of his lieutenants  knew that you could not do worse than give the women reasons to complain about  you. Yet, the growing restlessness about lack of patronage was coming mostly from  this powerful constituency of women who moaned persistently that the new  governor was not taking care of them.

    Clean and Green hired the women in their thousands. But this was not what they  wanted. As they saw it, supporting Oloye and ensuring that he won elections was

    enough occupation for which they deserved to be paid. Now, asking them to sweep  the streets was beyond insolence. But the young governor was not going to back  down. He also ensured that whoever got hired turned up for work by engaging a private company to manage the programme and paid them only through this  company.

    Perhaps, he could afford to stand his ground where other governors would have  buckled because he was Oloye’s son. Nevertheless, with this intransigence, he was  able to create a new level of consciousness among the women who, having realised  that he was not going to budge now began to fall over themselves to get recruited into the scheme. However, I doubt that even he would have envisaged that these  women would even go a step further by organising themselves into cooperative  societies. They contributed a part of their salaries as capital for small businesses that they ran alongside their cleaning jobs, which normally ended in the mornings.

    This was also the time that President Olusegun Obasanjo was announcing different  reforms in the nation’s governance systems. The governor ensured we kept in steps  with most of the Federal initiatives. When the Federal Government set up the  Bureau of Public Procurement or the Due Process office, he followed suit by  setting up the Price Intelligence Unit to make the State government procurement  process more efficient and cost-effective. He also set up the Budget Monitoring  and Implementation Committee to ensure that government got value for its  spending and got things done.

    At the time that he was talking to me about making Kwara State the hubs for many  things, the elections were only five or six months down the line. Rolling out these  initiatives now, it was obvious he was not contemplating a defeat. Yet when the  campaigns started, I was rather surprised that none of these ideas even got a  mention. Perhaps, even more crucially none of the achievements we had recorded  in almost four years was made the subjects of the campaign.

    We had launched the Clean & Green and the Malaria-Free Kwara. With the  Zimbabwe farmers’ project, we had put our state on the world map and attracted  national and global attentions to one of the boldest commercial agriculture  initiatives in the country. We had opened up Ilorin airport and facilitated regular  flights into the state capital, which also served travellers in neighbouring states. We  had also fixed some important roads and completed a housing estate for middle income earners. We were also the first state to submit ourselves to a Fitch rating  and returned with an impressive AA-(minus) for National Long-term rating and B+  for public finance transparency.

    Yet, when the campaign started, it was clear that the governor did not think that  these achievements would be sufficient reasons for people to vote for him. Instead,

    the campaign was premised on the personal benefits that had gone to individuals  and groups since we came into office and the promise of even greater benefits  ahead if they supported us to win the election. The campaign slogan was, “Oun ti  oba se looje.”

    “You campaign in poetry and govern in prose,” was a quote attributed to former  New York Governor, Mario Cuomo. Perhaps, this was what he was doing. But for  me, as I watched my boss dance on stage and shout himself hoarse with promise  of “eating”, I began to think that the contest between patronage and performance  had been settled, and patronage was the clear winner.

    He had worked really hard. He had recorded some very important achievements  in his first term and he had great plans for the state in his second term. But these  were absolutely at his discretion. The system did not demand it. The people did  not really demand it.

    Shortly before the election, I commissioned a survey among students of tertiary  institutions in the State. They were asked if they would vote for Bukola Saraki for  second term. They were also asked to give only one reason for their answer. I was  astonished to find that while an unsurprising number of them responded that they  would vote for him again, only a few could give any reason for their choice.  Majority, especially the female respondents said they would vote for him because  he was good-looking, or because, “he looks like a governor”.

    What this meant was that he could have won the election without doing any of  those heavy lifting work that he did. He could easily have sat back, enjoyed himself and ride back to power on the charm of his father’s name and political influence.  But he did not. I once asked him what the Saraki name means to him. He said he  has carried the weight of expectations that goes with that name all his life, but it is  also a check that he does not like to cash. “I forget my surname, and fight for  everything. That’s what I do,” he said.

    As a politician and a political strategist, everyone knows that you can only  underestimate Bukola Saraki at your own peril. But as a technocrat, not enough is  known about him. Yet, if technocrats are those who think through problems and  find solutions that truly work, he would easily rank among the very best. What he  does better than most politicians and most technocrats, is that he has mastered the  art of creating a balance between hard-nosed politics, and result-oriented  governance. He understands, more than most, that politics is at the heart of getting  things done in government, and that brilliant ideas would remain just ideas, until  you are able to play the politics of it. He repeatedly demonstrated that politics does  not have to be an encumbrance to good governance, but can actually be its prime  facilitator.

    As he clocks 60 today, I celebrate this great technocrat called politician, President  of the 8th Senate, Waziri of Ilorin and the Commander Order of the Niger, CON,  Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki.

     

    Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, former Minister of Youth and Culture

  • On sighting Sammie Okposo’s photo, wife, Ozioma Breaks Down In Tears At Night Of Tributes

    On sighting Sammie Okposo’s photo, wife, Ozioma Breaks Down In Tears At Night Of Tributes

    Wife of the late gospel singer Sammie Okposo, Ozioma could not hold back her tears immediately she sighted her husband’s photo at the night of tributes held the demised gospel singer.

    The event was held on Tuesday night at the La Madison Place, Oniru in Lagos.

    Ozioma began shedding tears when her husband’s pictures popped up on the screen during the ceremony.

    In a video from the event uploaded on Instagram, the widow could be seen crying while those close to her tried consoling her.

    The night of tributes was attended by actors, comedians and gospel singers like Segun Arinze, Ali Baba, Chinedu Ikedieze, Charles Inojie, Tope Alabi, Tomi Dakolo, Apororo, Mike Abdul and Efe Nathan.

    Segun who spoke the night of tributes, recounted the happy moments he shared with Sammie and the times they worked together.

    The actor popularly known as Black Arrow described Sammie as an “extremely funny guy”, adding that there was never a dull moment with the latter.

    The event also witnessed emotional performances by Tope Alabi, Mike Abdul and Efe Nathan.

    While Tope sang a farewell and worship song, Mike led the choir in high praise.

    Sammie Okposo, aged 51, died in his sleep on Friday, November 25.

    He will be buried at a private ceremony on December 16.

  • Tribute to Professor Charles Okigbo at 72 – By Emma Esinnah

    Tribute to Professor Charles Okigbo at 72 – By Emma Esinnah

    In May this year, I received a message that my uncle was involved in a car accident the previous day and had passed on that morning, at 82. He was a good man. Though I had always tried to show him kindness from time to time, I had planned bigger things I would do for him in December 2022. But he passed on in May.

    That experience further drove home to me the aphorism about life: that kind word you need to say to someone; that good deed you need to do to someone; do it today. 

    Today, I choose to say just a few words about one of the most remarkable professors of mass communication that Nigeria has ever produced. He is Professor Charles Chiedu Okigbo, who turns 72 today, December 6, 2022. 

    I do not have to wait until his 75th or 80th birthday. Or worse still, when he is no more. I have learnt that it is better for a man to read the tributes to him on a flimsy postcard than that great epitaph on his tombstone that he would never read. And who knows between the two of us, who will go before the other. Earth’s journey is not “First Come, First Go”. And in the case of Okigbo, one might have to wait for long because longevity genes run in his veins – his mum departed only recently, at over 100 years. 

    Those who studied Mass Communications (in the famous Jackson Building) at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, during the eighties could never forget the youngest of the herd of true academics in that department. The pack was led by the enigmatic Professor Sylvanus Ekwelie, who is perhaps the greatest teacher of communication still alive in any corner of the globe today. Following him, in no particular order, were Okonkwo, Idemili, Agba, Ume-Nwagbo, Ogbodo, and the youngest of them at the time, CC Okigbo.

    If Ekwelie was enigmatic, Okigbo was simply charismatic. Every student in the department fell in love with him at first sight. At 35 then, he already possessed five degrees – two Ph.Ds, two M.Scs and a bachelor degree. He has since gone ahead to acquire additional three, bringing his total haul of degrees to eight, from five different universities, in three continents.

    A scion of the famous Okigbo family of Ojoto in Anambra State, very handsome, with so much  qualification, Charles Okigbo had every reason to be an arrogant lecturer, but he chose to be humble and treated everyone with utmost courtesy and decency.

    He was very brilliant and everyone knew it. Even Professor Ekwelie once described Okigbo to our class as a “big brain.” Such validation from the oracle himself doesn’t come cheap!

    Okigbo’s lectures were so practical and enchanting one never wanted to miss them. No one wanted to miss his classes on Advertising and Public Relations or International Communication or Communication Research. The glamour he brought to his work made many of his students to fall in love with teaching and the subject areas he taught. He loved the lecturer job. And he loved the university community. Everyone could see he was not struggling financially. Even at that time, he had three cars – his beloved Toyota Celica car that had boldly on the number plate:  “Nsukka – the University City; a Peugeot 504 and a VW Beetle. For this generation, those cars may not sound like great acquisitions, but if one gets to know that some professors then had just VW Beetle or Citreon or even the Peugeot 504 as their only car, perhaps it might register a little better.

    Okigbo was not your academic who pretended about money or cars. He loved and still loves cars and he doesn’t hate money (don’t forget he is from Anambra State), but not cheap money. He believed in the American model of gown meeting town. Before side gigs (not side chicks o) gained currency in business lingo, Okigbo was already master of the game! He was always writing proposals for image research consultancies, as much as ethically allowed. Some of his proposals clicked once in a while.  And some of us who were close to him were brought in to work on the projects. On one of the occasions he even paid us some money. When I told someone how much he gave me for the project, the person told me “this man is just using you people.” My answer was “I would like to be used more often!” He was a special breed. Most lecturers then and now would not as much as acknowledge their student who contributed to a project, not to talk of paying anything from the proceeds of the effort. 

    Okigbo is not the Professor who doesn’t know what is happening in town. He encourages you to take interest in the budget or any government policy and ask yourself, what “can I do for myself in spite of how things look.” He would never have got involved in some of the mean things some lecturers are associated with today. He always believed his brain would give him the money he would need. And he has been proved right. 

    When he takes interest in a student he goes all the way to encourage that person. In 1988/89, I was doing my NYSC programme in Bori, Rivers State.  Professor Okigbo had something doing in Port Harcourt, and from there he drove the 60km from Port Harcourt to Bori to see me. I was thrilled!

    Okigbo recognizes and celebrates others ahead of him. Accomplished in his own right as he is, he remains in touch with his former senior colleagues at Nsukka. He reaches out often to the oracle, Professor Ekwelie, as well as to Ume-Nwagbo, who is now in his 90s.

    What is actually most remarkable, thinking about Okigbo on his 72nd birthday today, is that he was only 34/35 years old then when he was so full of knowledge and wisdom and made so much impression on us then in Nsukka. It’s a challenge to us all, 34 years after graduation (not of age!), no matter what our sphere of influence might be.

    It is saddening that the later crop of the UNN Mass Communication graduates never experienced Okigbo and people of his ilk, because the system soon proved unworthy of him. Soon after we left, the world outside spotted him. In 1990/91, he was hired as the founding Registrar/Chief Executive of Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON). That was double portion of blessing for me, because he was also adjunct lecturer at University of Lagos, and taught me in my M.Sc. class as well. On completion of his term at APCON, he became Executive Secretary of the African Council on Communication Education (ACCE) in Nairobi, Kenya, and then back to US where he had studied. He rose to become head of department of Communication at North Dakota State University, Idaho, where he is now an emeritus professor of Strategic Communication.

    Okigbo is a genuine family man. You couldn’t have been close to him if you didn’t know his wife, Carol, (now a professor too) and “Charlie’s Angels”, his three daughters, before his son, Kene, was born. He is proud of them, and rightly too.

    Though still in far away United States of America, Prof is always close-by. He remains in touch with, not just his former students, but the entire Naija. He knows what is happening in Nigeria more than some of those who live and work in Nigeria. And he closely follows the progress of his former students.

    Okigbo’s life shows that there is no end to learning. With all that he knows, he is still reading voraciously, especially in the areas of communication research, strategy and strategic communication – the love of his life. He is the only one who gives books as Christmas or birthday present! From him we also learn commitment to one’s vocation, humility, hardwork, love of family and loyalty to friends. 

    The joy of today is that one is able to tell him how much he is appreciated, while he has a chance to read it. Unfortunately, there is so much to say that one write-up cannot do it. But let’s start at all.

    I know all who have passed through him will join me today to say: Happy Birthday to Prof. Charles Chiedu Okigbo at 72.

     

    EMMA ESINNAH, Mass Comm graduating class of 1988.

  • Tribute: Prof. C. O. Okonkwo, SAN (1934-2022) – By Sonnie Ekwowusi

    Tribute: Prof. C. O. Okonkwo, SAN (1934-2022) – By Sonnie Ekwowusi

    The towering figure saunters toward the law lecture room. Always impeccably dressed in his somewhat dark-bluish suit with black shoes and multi-coloured neck tie to match. The expressions on his face, his loud voice, the fires sparkling from his eyes, lucidity of his thought, fecundity of his mind and his stoic steady steps are evocative of his great learning and his brilliance in expounding and expanding Criminal law and Company Law for decades. Among his numerous achievements, he is the first and oldest law teacher in Nigeria teaching law in the oldest law faculty in Nigeria. As he enters the lecture room, he stands momentarily at the door like a fine firmament ostensibly trying to recollect and reassure himself that he is the teachers’ teacher. Then almost instinctively, everybody in the class turns and looks at him in awe. Then silence descends and envelopes the room. No noise. No murmuring. No whispers. No shuffling of feet. Stepping forward and clearing his throat, he opens his mouth and delivers his lecture ex-tempore without occasionally glancing at any law book or law handout. All could hear him. He is the embodiment of the law, the law drops behind his fingers. He is a moving encyclopedia, a repository of Criminal Law and Company Law.

    The foregoing could fit into the reflections, reminiscences, imaginations or tributes of thousands and upon thousands of lawyers, judges, political leaders, politicians and different people from different walks of life who were former students of Emeritus Professor Cyprian Okechukwu Okonkwo, law teacher extra-ordinnaire, law author, legal icon, doyen of legal education in Nigeria and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who quietly slipped away on 8th October 2022 aged 88. Prof. Okonkwo’s death is profoundly a sad one for the faculty of law, University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus (UNEC). Prof. Okonkwo unarguably was one of the finest first pillars of law teachers of UNEC. The faculty will mourn Prof. Okonkwo by recalling his works over so many years at UNEC, first as a diligent law teacher, a Dean of the faculty of law and a mentor to his brother lecturers. Already a beautiful bust has been strategically erected in the Rotunda of the Law Faculty main building, UNEC. When the sad news of the demise of Prof. Okonkwo first broke. I remember sharing the news with a former Dean of the faculty of law, UNEC, Prof. Joy Ngozi Ezeilo OON, SAN. On receiving my WhatsAPP message, she wasted no time in sending to me a historical photograph of herself together with Prof. Benjamin Chukwuma Ozumba, former UNN Deputy Vice-Chancellor and one other posing beside the bust. He was very celebral. He was brilliance personified. He knew how to deconstruct any complex legal problem and how to effectively impart it to his students. He was the greatest teacher of all times”, she wrote in her WhatsAPP message.

    I was a student of the faculty of Law, UNEC at the time Prof. Okonkwo together with taciturn Prof. Gaius Ezejiofor (SAN), Prof. E. I. Nwogwugwu, Prof. D. I. O. Ewelukwa (SAN), Prof. B. O. Okere, Prof C.U. Ilegbune SAN, Prof (Justice) Okay Achike, Prof. G. O. S. Amadi, Prof. M.C Okany, Retired Court of Appeal Justice Chinwe Iyizoba, Sampson Owusu and others ruled the law faculty. That era could be dubbed the golden age of the Faculty of Law, UNEC. That was when students were really students, and lecturers were lecturers. “Study or perish.” was our unofficial motto. Prof Okonkwo taught us Criminal Law and Company Law. He prided himself as having been taught by Professor Laurence Cecil Bartlett Gower MBE, the renowned UK Company law expert. Prof Okonkwo was a simple man. He was approachable albeit he was very strict and demanding on students. He was in love with section 24 of the Criminal Code. Hardly would he utter two phrases in his Criminal Law class without mentioning section 24. At that time I thought Criminal law was section 24 and section 24 was Criminal law. Woe to you if Prof. Okonkwo’s roving eyes descended on you in his class. First, he would ask you a seemingly simple law question. And if you fail to answer it correctly, he would pause momentarily, take a contemptuous studied look at you, and thereafter query: “So, what have you been doing in this University?” ostensibly to remind you that you were not measuring up to the motto of the University of Nigeria (UNN): “To restore the dignity of man”.

    Prof (Justice) Okay Achike was the professors’ professor. Listening to his 30-minute Contract law or Commercial Law lecture was tantamount to listening to a Princeton University Law Professor for three hours. He was erudite. He was cerebral. He stood out for his exceptional intellectual versatility. Small wonder he rose from the classroom to the Bench. He later became a Justice of the Court of Appeal from whence he was elevated to the Supreme Court. Prof. G. O. S. Amadi taught Industrial Law. Justice Chinwe Iyizoba taught Evidence. Prof. Ewelukwa taught Constitutional law. Prof. Nwogwugwu taught International Law and Family law. Prof Okany taught Commercial law, and, if I am not mistaken, law of property. Prof Ezejiofor taught Land Law. Prof. Ilegbune taught Contract law and introduction to legal system. He was an amiable man. He was kind. He was patient with students. He dressed impeccably in his black suit and black neck tie to match. Prof. B. O. Okere taught Jurisprudence. He was a tall, elegant-looking man. He wore a disheveled grey hair ostensibly as a sign of his legal wisdom and legal scholarship. He was a grammarian. You could attend a Prof. Okere’s one-hour-Jurisprudence lecture without assimilating anything at all because his deliveries were woven with high-flown admixture of English and Latin grammar that was difficult to untangle.

    Owusu, the Ghanaian, taught Equity. He was diminutive in size. He was always flying his shirt as if he were a protesting student. A very unassuming man, he dressed scantily. He walked like someone who would never hurt a fly. He religiously wore slippers or flapping sandals. But law students dreaded him. He was notorious for his frugality in scoring students high marks in Equity. His students hardly scored an “A” in Equity. Once upon a time a student demystified him and scored an “A” in Equity. In his reaction, Owusu almost wept in an open class room before his students because it was a feat no student had achieved for decades. I don’t know why all sorts of apocryphal stories were woven around Owusu at that time. One of such apocryphal stories was how Owusu stopped the wife of a UNEC lecturer from graduating from the law faculty and eventually attending the Law School. This lady was a final year law student at UNEC. She had passed all of her law courses except Equity. She needed to score just a pass in Equity to enable her to graduate from the faculty of law and proceed to the Law School. But unfortunately she scored only 49% in Equity, that is, I% short of the pass mark of 50%. All entreaties and pleadings to sway the mind of Owusu to score this lady the 50% pass mark in Equity so that she could join her colleagues and graduate from the law faculty and head for the Law School were unsuccessful. Owusu simply refused to score the lady 50% notwithstanding that the lady’s husband was also a lecturer at UNEC at that time. In his defence, Owusu stated that he had retrieved the lady’s answer script and after re-marking and re-marking it he was unable get the additional 1% which could have given the lady the requisite 50% pass mark. To cut the long story short, I think the lady eventually re-sited the Equity exam, and, of course, lost the chance of going to the Law School that session. Another apocryphal story was how Pastor Chris Okotie encountered Owusu in the Equity exam. Pastor Okotie was not our class mate but he our contemporary at the law faculty. He was graduating in law when we were barely being admitted into the law faculty. At that time he owed a sportish-looking red car. He was a rich student. He dressed well. Above all, he was a talented musician. He sang and sang. I can’t remember now, but I think it was in his days at UNEC that he released the number: “Carolina in mind” or “I need someone” or “Fine Mama”. But he failed Owusu’s Equity exam. Ostensibly trying to make Owusu happy, he approached one day and I offered to buy him a pair of shoes ex gratis so that he could start wearing shoes to class instead of his worn-out slippers or sandals. Infuriated by Okogie’s imprudent offer, Owusu swore that Okotie would never pass his Equity exam again.

    Anyway, back to Prof. Okonkwo. As strict as he was, he inculcated in us a sense of hard work and mission in life. I last met Prof Okonkwo in 2012 or so at a Conference at Sheraton Hotels, Abuja. He was still his old self. No sooner had I introduced myself as his former student than he immediately extended out his right hand to give me a warm handshake. I noticed that even though he was still the same stern man, his sternness was commingled with charity. Our memories of Prof. Okonkwo will never fade. His death has indeed robbed the Nigerian legal system and even the world legal systems the edifice of legal wisdom. In his death we have lost a fine gentleman, a passionate law teacher, a legal icon and a friend. Supreme Court Justice Chukwudifu Oputa (of the blessed memory) was of the view that a proper university education transcends mere academic education and instead entails the education of the whole man. To Justice Oputa, a proper university education is such that informs characters, inspires good behavior, balanced judgment and trains the body, the mind, the intellect and the will.

    This, arguably, was the quality of education that we received under the tutelage of Prof. Okonkwo. Within the faculty of law precinct we were granted a vision of the ends of life that surpassed our expectations. I stand in awe at the designs of providence which gave Prof. C. O Okonkwo to our generation.

    On Friday, 25th November 2022 when the casket containing the remains of Prof Okonkwo is being be wheeled out for committal to mother earth, tears of joy and sorrow shall roll down the cheeks of many upon remembering that he was a diligent and consumate law teacher. But let those tears not roll down in vain, rather let the tears give rise to a resolution to live the ideals which Prof. Okonkwo lived for and died for.