Asking Questions By Amma Ogan
“The challenge of Giwa’s death has so far stumped everyone except him. “They got me,” Newswcatch reported him saying on his death bed. Seems the man got a scoop on us all. Perhaps only time can take up the challenge of this story for Giwa.”
Asking questions is for the journalist not just a way of life but an attitude to life. Qusetions are also the journalist’s tools, the spade with which he digs up his roots, the needle with which he kints together his facts. Ajournalist by the very nature of his job has to act very much like an irritating little fly just keeps buzzing around, worrying and worrying at that tiny pimple under your left armpit, until it bursts. In fact, nothing gets a journalistic mind going like meeting a stone wall at the end of a winding path. One impact of the exposure of President Nixon’s Watergate cover by American journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein is that it underlined the importance of taking your questions right to the very top. Like the saucy advert about nothing being able to stop the (Volkswagen) Beetle, the only way to kill a question is to answer it. The stern admonition to “seek to know no more” only fires the inquisitive mind that brooks no barriers to knowledge. Which is probably why God never comes down to earth to give press conferences and account for his governance, but stays in his comfortable heaven where, thankfully, nothing goes wrong, we are told, so nobody needs to ask questions or read newspapers. Hell, one can imagine, must be quite a different place if only one could be sure of getting a balanced report on the situation.
But back to the subject of the journalist’s reason for being, the burning urge to ask why. Monday, October 6, 1986, President Babangida had just announced that his political second in command, Chief of General Staff Ebitu Ukiwe, had been removed from his post. At the Orgun office of Newswatch magazine the staff were hurriedly planning a new cover story. Writing “From (the) Editorial Suite” the late Dele Giwa had said: “The challenge of the story for a magazine was irresistible. The government had given no details of the reasons behind the president’s action which was obviously supported by the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC). By the morning of Tuesday, October 7, many people were asking the question: ‘What happened?’ and rumours had begun to fly around. All the senior of the magazine were thus turned loose to find out from their various contacts in the government and among those close to Ukiwe with whom he had discussed the events leading to his removal from his high office to piece together the story of how he (Ebitu Ukiwe) lost out in the power games of military politics. The investigating team established two factors as immediately contributing to the downfall of Ukiwe, the two factors that came to be known s the ‘Abuja incident.’ Once they were established, the staff were then confronted with the tough task of getting the details.”
“Power Games: Ukiwe Loses Out” was, as Giwa’s billing suggested, an excellent story to my mind and compelling written. The challenge of find out why took Newswatch reporters to describing eyeball to eyeball scence in the AFRC meeting with the “stony silence” in which “only the hum of the airconditioners could be heard” with Ukiwe’s “steady voice” cutting ‘through the eerie silence. “Commander-in-Chief,” he said, addressing the president, “I will like to sleep on that,” meaning the offer of ministrial appointment. “The presient said that was all right. The atmosphere slowly eased.” Not averse to playing little power games himself, Giwa in an earlier “Editorial Suite” had let his readers know of an occasion when government had gone back on a decision because it realized that Newswatch had scooped the story. Giwa would pride himself on having the guts to go further than other editors would go in testing the limits of s military government’s tolerance. He pushed as far as he could and even sought to force into an open debate the definition of the boundaries between press freedom, national security and patriotism, something that more recent military governments often think they have a monopoly of wisdom on. In spite, or perhaps because of its military nature, the wide terrain of ideas and opinions is often approached as something of a minefield by politicians whose mandate has not come from the ballox box. However, this is a universal phenomenon. But that is not eben the irony of it all. For Giwa who made a profession of asking questions, his death is still a pure mystery, full of enigmas and stone walls, providing an eerie challenge for all involved.
From his close associates, there was nothing in his life to suggest the drama of his death by a bomb. No, he did not use drugs, nor is there any indication, the police say of any involvement in the narcotics trade. Poring through past Newswatch stories has not thrown up any vengeance seekers or enraged victims of blackmail. With the strident calls for investigation of security officials who were in contact with Giwa shortly before his death, the security agencies have chosen to keep a clear distance and leave the task of unraveling the letter bomb murder to the police. Doubts about police competence have not been helped by the impression the force has given of being a little unsure of whether, or how, to assert itself. Witness the unexplained and cancellation of a briefing for media executives by the inspector-general in which it was expected that the question of progress on the investigations into Giwa’s death would come up. Witness too police reaction over a new newspaper columnist’s criticism of their response to a publicly acknowledge unsurge in armed robbery. The Vanguard editor and his journalist were asked to report to the police station while the newspaper’s offices were searched for seditious materials.
Curiously, too, there were rumours of a reluctance in government quarters to come out with more facts on Giwa’s activities because some of them were unsavoury. To this his close associates reply – let them tell us. They will have to establish every allegation so made. Theories circulate about the murderers having taken advantage of Giwa’s series of contacts with security officials and set up the bombing to implicate them. While Ugbeke-Ekperians trusting in the wisdom of their ancestors have gone back to base to seek justice for they son, a deputy director of the State Security Service recounted a parable about a week after the event. Giwa, he implied, had reneged on an agreement reached between editors and security agencies over stories capable of damging government interests. The parable about motor cyclists converging around a member of their flock who has been felled symolises the typical herd instinct of the press, in Giwa’s case, not asking enough of the right questions. The other side of the parable – the motor cyclist who ran into the path of an oncoming car suggests that Giwa, in true mosaic law style, got what he had coming. But from whom?
The minister of information and the Director of Military Intelligence had reassured Giwa that he need not worry about the serious allegations of gun-running for which security agencies had called him for questioning. The police by the admission are not working on the angle of this allegation at all since no one has offered it as a serious lead. The challenge of Giwa’s death has so far stumped everyone except him. “They got me,” Newswatch reported him saying on his death bed. Seems the man got a scoop on us all. Perhaps only time can take up the challenge of this story for Giwa.
©The Guardian, October 18, 1987
(Pp.297-300)
