Tony Momoh’s Triumph
“Perhaps the time that was golden in one’s professional association with Tony Momoh was when he was the editor of the Daily Times, and Stanley Macebuh the chairman of the editorial board, a time the Daily Times was so cerebral that it caused pains for the less intelligent.”
Tony Momoh’s smile doesn’t reflect the happenings in the labyrinths of his mind, if ever. Tony Momoh will smile when he is angry, and he will smile when he is happy. To understand him, you must not take note of the inflection of his voice, nor allow his countenance to divert your attention. Search for the meaning of what he is saying, and that even takes a lot of concentration. Mr Momoh is man of boundless energy, a man of unfathomable patience, and because he is also a man of quite pronounced features – from his thick Afenmai inflection to his barrel chest – his subtlety is not easily appreciated. But Mr. Momoh is a subtle man. He suffers a Zikist streak of sticking to procedural details. This attribute of his is invariably exasperating, all the more so in that he will not even show any emotion no matter how volatile the situation is. He will more or less tell you that “let’s wait and see,” as he continues to argue his logic. Perhaps the time that was most golden in one’s professional association with Tony Momoh was the time that he was the editor of the Daily Times, and Stanley Macebuh was the chairman of the editorial board of the Times. That was the time that Daily Times was so cerebral that it caused pains for the less intelligent.
Stop for one minute and imagine the type of arguments that raged at the daily editorial meetings of the Times when editorials were being debated. Tony Momoh would be there, always the devil’s advocate, and Stanley Macebuh would becloud the room with philosophical nuances, even as Doyin Abiola would inject galatical theories of communication. Sam Oni was there to inject a good amount of classical theological uprightness, while Andy Akporugo adopted the political science analysis, and all this was tempered with Amma Ogan’s doses of healthy skepticism. It was in this atmosphere of literacy that Tony Momoh’s informed leadership qualities shone brightest, an atmosphere that if not properly and carefully handled could have often led to didactic explosions. For the four years or so that he was the editor of the Daily Times, Tony Momoh came out to be the editor that his subordinates were free to call “Tony,” and not the tiring “editor.” It was during this period that Tony Momoh ran into an affray with the Senate, a time in which the Senate and the green senators didn’t understand their law-making roles, when thought they were all little kings who possessed the powers of life and death over the citizenry.
It was during the period that Ume Ezeoke issued forth from the House of Representatives that he would clobber any journalist possessed of the temerity to say anything that he, Ezeoke, considered to be untowards. Ezeoke’s effrontery caused me to write a column for the Daily Times in which I outlined the limits of National Assembly’s power. Ezeoke felt that my column offended his royal person and took the column to Senator Wayas who then asked the managing director of Daily Times, Dr. Dele Cole, and the editor, Tony Momoh, to come up to the National Assembly. Line of battle between the Times and the National Assembly was then clearly drawn and it was to be a matter of time before the explosion came. It came when the Times carried a Grapevine story exposing the unparliamentary ways of some members of the National Assembly. The National Assembly’s reaction was to send Tony Momoh a letter asking him to present himself to the Senate. Some of the people at the Times argued then that Tony Momoh could just ignore the letter from the Senate, a piece of paper that some argued should be viewed as a gratuitous piece of irritation. But not Tony Momoh. For a man with a complicated personality, a journalist who is also a lawyer, the Zikist streak in him persuaded him to be exasperatingly procedural. He decided to challenge the Senate’s action in court.
From the beginning, the Times management didn’t quite have the stomach for the type of trouble it felt Tony Momoh was looking for by going to court. The initial support was tepid, and even that soon evaporated. All said and done, the Court of Appeal entered a judgment that was clearly a declaration of victory for Tony Momoh and freedom of expression in Nigeria. It was a clear delineation of the powers of the National Assembly. By the time that the case reached the Court of Appeal, Tony Momoh’s attorneys lost interest, a rather curios action, and the journalist was left to dust his bar garment to represent himself against a legal luminary like F.R.A. Williams. It would have amounted to save a sweet justice had Tony Momoh completely floored the legendary Williams. From this parallax view, the outcome was a tie, Williams won his judicial argument on which court had the power to hear the type of suit brought by Mr. Momoh, and Tony Momoh won on the crucial issue of whether the Senate had the power to invite him to disclose the source of his information as the senate obviously wanted him to do.
The poetic injustice in the whole matter is that a good section of the media simply failed to understand how to report the court’s verdict. Here is where the power of discerning judgment comes in: What is important in the verdict of the court? A legal journal can go ahead and bedevil its readers with the clumsiness of the law. But a general purpose publication has to sift the judgment and present a coherent report on it to its readers. The coherent outcome of the judgment is that Tony Momoh could have thrown out the piece of paper sent him by the senate, and that he didn’t have to lose a wink of sleep over it. The other part about which court should hear a case of that sort is something to guide future litigants on such matters. And if all this is not clear enough, this is what it says: Tony Momoh can just go about his business as though he didn’t receive a letter from the senate asking him to come over to Tafawa Balewa Square. And the Senate must lick its wounds for failing to read the Constitution properly even as far as it concerns some of its procedures. It is the sort of judgment that Tony Momoh would cherish, for it agrees with his propensity for legalism. For if the whole judgment were so clear as to be understood in ABC, how then would Tony have been able to smile and painstakingly explain the whole thing to you?
©Sunday Concord, July 25, 1982
(Pp.163-165)
