Shagari, Up, Up Close
“I didn’t try to attend the NPN caucus meeting because I knew that they wouldn’t let me attend. I begged the president to let me go home, it was nearly 9 at night, I was tired; but the president joked ‘this young man was supposed to cover my whole day, and see now, he is running away when my day was not over yet.”
It was on November 3 that I decided to send a letter to Charles Igoh, the chief secretary to President Shehu Shagari. “My dear Charles,” I scrawled in my near illegible hand-writing at the beginning of the type-written letter, “please recall our various discussions on my desire to spend a day with the President, starting with having breakfast with him in the house, spending the whole day with him in the office, and ending with having dinner with him. “As you can see,” I continued, “this will mean an intense interview and discussion with the First Citizen that should constitute a lengthy article on the administration. As envisaged, the President would be kind to let me observe much of his meeting with his visitors and cabinet members, with the exception of those meetings that touch on national security …”
The letter was sent off and I sat back and waited. Less than one month from the date the letter was written, on Wednesday, the 2nd of December, to be precise, I went to the State House for the quarterly luncheon of news executives with the president. Charles Igoh scanned the room for me, saw me, came over, pulled me aside, and slapping me on the back, said that President Shagari had agreed to meet me on my terms. “C’mon,” I told Charles, “are you saying that the president would, indeed, meet me, that intensely private man, and agreed to speak about his family, how many wives he was, how many children, talk about the decision-making process in his administration, are you saying that he agreed to all of this?” Charles smiled and said, “Yes,” nodding his head vigorously, the way a man could only do who has scored a big point. Charles then told me that the meeting would indeed take place less than a week off, on Monday, December 7, starting at 7 a.m with a breakfast with the president and so on as I had requested.
When I sent out the letter, I told a few of my journalist friends, and they all said it could not be done. In fact, Ray Ekpu, my opposite number in the Sunday Times, said that the State House would insist on my sending advanced questions. That was probably one thing that I would never agree to do to get an interview: send advanced questions, thereby allowing the object of an interview to dictate the ground rules. Even for the President of Nigeria, I told my colleagues, I would not agree to send out a list of questions in advance of an interview. Thus, when Charles Igoh informed me on that Wednesday afternoon that my request for a full day meeting with the nation’s president was in order, I had to rub my eyes and call a couple of fellows around at the time to make sure that I was not in a dreamland. Although ambivalent, I sent out the letter, not knowing what exactly to expect. But I told myself that if I didn’t hear from the State House, I would write a strong column calling the State House and the Shagari administration secretive and inaccessible, despite all the protestations to the contrary. And I told some of my colleagues that much.
At 7 on the morning of Monday, I was admitted onto the grounds of the State House, Ribadu Road, after I had identified myself at the well-guarded gate. Charles Igoh was in his office going through the day’s paper when I showed up. A couple of minutes later, my photographer, Segun Adebayo who covers the State House on a daily basis, soon joined us, and we moved to the president’s residence which was about 30 yards to his office block. By 7.15, the president came down, I won’t describe his house or the table or the breakfast that we had and what we said at the table, suffice it to say that he came down and we had a breakfast, he, myself and Charles Igoh. The president refused to let us move forward with the food without the photographer joining us for breakfast, and he refused to listen to our argument that the young man was on duty and that he could not join us at table. Without saying so, the president must have reflected what were these young fellows getting at, Charles and I, when we, too, were also working, although we were also ready to eat. I was there to spend the day with him because I was a reporter, and Charles was there to make sure that everything worked according to plan as the president’s chief press secretary. So, the president couldn’t see our reasoning, and really I couldn’t see it too once the president insisted, and so the photographer joined us for breakfast, as he did for lunch and dinner. At dinner, top members of the NPN came in. Chuba Okadigbo, the voluble Presidentail Adviser for Political Affairs, joined us at meal. We were taking our dessert when Chief A.M.A. Akinyoye, the NPN chairman, came in with Chief Richard Akinjide, the attorney-general. It was past eight in the evening.
Alhaji Umaru Dikko also stepped in. He is the minister of transport and the man in-charge of the presidential task force on rice. But he didn’t sit down. He whispered some sweet matters to the president who chuckled before the minister stepped out to have a talk with BalaTafawa Balewa, the son of the late prime minister. He had come on a scheduled appointement. By the end of the dinner, the president’s main living room had filled up with shakers of power: the vice-president Dr. Alex Ekwueme, came in safari suit; Mallam Adamu Ciroma, the minister of industry, came in his buba; and so also was Senator Joseph Wayas, the president of the Senate; Sule Takuman was also there, he is the NPN’s party secretary. It was the night of the NPN caucus. I didn’t try to attend that meeting because I knew that they wouldn’t let me attend. I begged the president to let me go home, it was nearly 9 at night, I was tired. President Shagari, 56, joked that this “young man was supposed to cover my whole day, and see now, he is running way when my day was not over yet.” The president was earnest when he asked me to wait until the end of the party’s caucus so that we could continue our meeting. But I knew I would have passed out, since that caucus didn’t break up until past one in the morning. So, I begged off and went home.
We met again on Wednesday, the president and I, to finish the encounter, because the Monday’s 14-hour meeting was designed more to enable me to see President Shagari at work and not really to interview him. It was at the 135-minute interview on Wednesday that we found time to talk. I won’t tell you the number now, but I met the president’s wives; I won’t tell you the number now, but I also met some of the president’s children and took photographs with a few of them, and one with the youngest who was born in September, she’s called Saudat. The president answeres all my questions forthrightly: his administration, his family, friends, his party, hisviews on Chief Obafemi Awolowo, his views on Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, his views on Mallam Aminu Kano, his views on Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim. But I won’t tell you now. Wait until I write the series on the 17 hours I spent with the president. You will be given ample notice before the commencement of the series.
©Sunday Concord, December 13, 1981
(Pp.138-141)
