I Was A Mad Young Man
“In Newswatch I’ll pay attention to grace of language. I’ll pay attention to style. I like elegance. You know, chic elegance. I’ll see that enters my work.”
When he faded out he did so with that typical Dele Giwa drama. Just one Monday morning last March, the ticker tapes started to run and the newsflash was that the man who had almost personified the Sunday Concord had lost his job, redeployed merely to the editorial board of the newspaper group. And with that move came the death of Parallax Snaps, a column which over the years has gained a lot of followship. Neither Dele Giwa nor his employer was ready to account to the nation what had killed the Snaps. Not until a few days ago when the 37 year-old journalist sat in a new and relatively smaller office in Oregun area of Lagos and allowed his heart to gush out.
“I stopped writing the column because I stopped being the editorof Sunday Concord. And I was no longer in the right frame of mind. Chief M.K.O. Abiola is the only person who can tell the country why I was redeployed, but I know it was not for professional or occupational reasons. Whatever were the reasons, no one told me. I had the chance to find out but I chose not to ask. But actually it is not totally correct to say that I was no longer writing. Well, okay, I was no longer sitting down to write, but each time something happened I sat down and wrote four pages in my head. I felt bad that I was no longer communicating with those who were reading me. But I felt they should feel a sense of my crisis at that time. And prepare, knowing that I would definitely write again. I will write a column in Newswatch, and I will still call it Parallax Snaps.”
He looked aroundhis small office and considered the answer to the next question. Four potted plants stood at the side of the room as small barely-perceptible droplets of sweat brike out on his forehead. The room was air-condirioned but the public power supply was off, so a slow mid-afternoon heat was creeping in.
“I wrote very personal things. You see, it is fallacy to deny the existence of self. I could not be silent when I had my life to sort out. So I was concerned with the rites of passage. The personal journey. I examined the things I had written, and the criticism of my work as given by readers both friends and foes.”
Come to think of it, fate was perhaps petting Dele Giwa when it sent him the March tribulations which made him now write for himself alone. For it was shortly after he stared his hibernation that Decree 4 was promulgated. Some watchers of the Nigerian press belive that, going by the outrage that many times was manifested in Parallax Snaps, Giwa would have been the first person to go to jail on account of that decree.
“I would not have gone to jail. What’s the point in getting involved in a death wish? With the incident of Decree 4 any journalist who wished to continue doing his job had to do it so he will live to fight another day. Because if they put you away it is a loss to you and to your readers. I would have found a way to do it. With Decree 4, to be a journalist calls for expertise. Sometimes I look at this government with understanding. And sometimes with understood anger. I know that one must not destroy this government because we don’t know what is round the corner. I told the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon, that it would have been good to let the press abuse the government, even unfairly. But by this I don’t mean name-calling. I think the important thing is to convence the men that you mean well. So that when you criticism them they will take it in good faith. I do not agree with the information minister, Group Captain Omeruah, on his statements about the press being out to bring all governments down. The press had a duty to call any bad government to fall. It just happens that many governments in Nigeria have been bad. Especially, the Balewa, Gowon and Shagari governments. But nobody called for the fall of Obasanjo nro has anyone called for the fall of Buhari, whatever the bring-down syndrome is. I think government and press must develop mutual trust and prove that one is not out to destroy the others. The government cannot afford to give up on the press. I was very saddened about Decree 4 the first time the Head of State, General Buhari, mentioned it. And when Idiagbon mentioned it again at a press briefing, I stood up in the open room and told him it should not be done. The government is proud and the press is proud. Decree 4 is now in the cooler and as long as does not provoke the government it will not be invoked again. I do not see it being used again.”
Was Dele Giwa not being too optimistic about Decree 4 and government’s attitude to the press, considering the symbolic fact that the briefing of senior media executives has shifted from Idiagbon and Dodan Barracks to Meruah and the National Theatre?
“It is just unfortunate that the media has not found a way to deal with that. In other places editors meet with their president regularly. That change was government’s decision. The press should be able to decide how it wants to cover this new styl of briefing.”
Dele Giwa swung in his swivel chair and went back to January 1980, the month he resigned from Daily Times to start editing the Sunday Concord. It was the height of the parallax when Giwa revealed that he had walked out of the Times for the very opposite of the popular briefing: he was running from the NPN.
“I knew the NPN would pounce on Daily Times. I used to tell the Editorial Adviser, Dr. Stanley Macebuh, and the Managing Director, Dr. Dele Cole, that the type of intellectual group we had then was too much for any government. I knew the editor, Tony Momoh, would be removed. And Momoh was the only type of editor who would stomach my madness. I was a mad man then. I was only lucky Concord came out.”
But Abiola whoo owns the Concord was an NPN heavy weight then. Dele Giwa counters: Yes, but you see, Abiola is in class of his own. I will not take anything from that gentleman. As big and as rich as he is, he still says I’m sorry. I used to tell him that his party was a useless party, and he will say jokingly, get out of my sight. He was amused that I could keep saying it. I was never a sympathizer of the NPN.”
There were times when Parallax Snaps looked like the works of a man who was courting suicide, like times when Giwa took on the former Inspector-General of police, Mr. Sunday Adewusi. Dele Giwa recalls: “I was ready to die then. I thought he was reprehensible and I didn’t care whet happens if I say so. I liked Shagari but he was hurt by the things I wrote about him. The man in him I liked but the politician I despised. I saw him as pitiful and pitiable and I didn’t see why I shouldn’t say so. I canot help being sincere in what I write. I can’t trust myself to write about Abiola. The emotions are strong and conflicting. I choose to remember only the pleasant about him. I don’t worry about the consequences of my actions because I operate from a very thoughtful depth.”
Paradoxically again, this outspokenness has never hurt Giwa in any way. “Everybody’s been nice to me. I met Dikko, whom I had great cause to write about, about two months before the coup and he said he would like to be my friend. Awo’s son came to my wedding.And I get on well with Chief Ajuluchuku and Ebenezer babatope. Everyone has shown appreciation. That gladdens me and makes me more humble.”
The small office Giwa sat in that afternoon was that of the editor-in-chief of Newswatch, a weekly newsmagazine which hopefully would have hit the stands by the time you are reading this. Will the Newswatch Giwa be the same dare-devil we used to know? “I have not changed. No one fills a form to see me either in the office or at home. The only change is that in Newswatch I’ll pay attention to grace of language. I’ll pay attention to style. I like elegance. You know, chic elegance. I’ll see that enters my work.”
Dele Giwa’s romantic life has gone through some measure of variety. Was journalism and his no-nonsense lifestyle the reason? “I’m an adventurous kid. But I’ve just ended my adventure. (He married Funmi Olaniyan, his third, last July). My first marriage in America did not work because there was a clash of personilities. My second wife and I had very strong personalities. I belive now that I’ve found a compatible woman.” It is interesting that Dele Giwa’s only regret in life has to do with his romantic life. He paused long, drummed his feet on the floor before he replied: “My only regret is that I did not think deeply on the implications and complexity of marriage. I am not proud of these multiple marriages. But I am perfectly satisfied with my career.”
The last reply Mr. Giwa gave that afternoon was a surprise in both the speed with which it came and its contents. The man had been asked what animal he would wish to become if God disallowed his remaining a human being. “A dove, peaceful, clean, graceful and fearless. I would like to fly! Holding out the peace reed to mankind.”
–Interview by Ely Obasi,
©Vanguard January 29, 1985
(Pp.243-246)
