Oyebola Replies Dele Giwa
“I believe that for journalists and journalism as a profession, the farther we go, the farther the end of our journey will continue to remain out of sight in this country, for as long as people like you can so maliciously, viciously but ignorantly write about a senior professional colleague the way you did about me.”
Dear Dele,
After reading your article captioned “Mr. Oyebola’s Blah and Other Blahs,” which appeared in your issue of November 22, 1981, my immediate reaction was to ignore it. For one thing, I had, in my columns, feature articles and investigative reports, written critically about our society, its institutions and individuals since 1964. For another, it was good for a writer to be at the receiving end occasionally. This explains why throughout the period I kept my Frank Talk by Omo Oye column in the Daily Times, I gave prominence to all highly critical opinions and even abuses of some of my readers. I did this whenever I deliberately raised controversial issue in a bid to provoke thought and stimulate debate. That’s how it should be. However, I was writing this rejoinder not because you criticized me but because your article contains a great deal of falsehood, pettiness and prejudice.Also, your derogatory comments on my ability and other matters reveal a complete ignorance on your part about me and the issues at stake in the Daily Times crisis. Above all, I hate to think you were instigated to write the way you did about me by a very senior editorial executive in your establishment and my former colleague on the Daily Times, who hated me for a strictly personal reason for which no normal, rational and mature person would grudge a fellow human being.
If you were a mere front for the vendetta of this now highly placed former colleague, and a few others I will not name at this stage, then journalism was clearly but sadly travelling down an inclined plane in our country. Also, the public may eventually be told details of this person’s pettiness and gross misuse of professional opportunities. You gave the impression in your article that the Daily Times and Alhaji Babatunde Jose did me a favour to have employed me on the basis of my “pamphlets on economics.” That was a blatant lie. By the time the Daily Times decided to engage its first graduate editorial trainees in 1968, it advertised the position in all its publications. I applied in response to these advertisements. These were about 1,000 applicants. After a series of interviews by a panel of Nigeria’s most renowned media executives, eight of us were selected for a written three-hour test. On the panel of interviews were an expatriate representative of the London-based IPC, the then largest shareholder of the Daily Times; Mr. L.N. Namme, Mr. Emmanuel Adagogo Jaja, the present managing director of the Times Group; Alhaji Alade Odunewu and your former managing director, Mr. Henry Olukayode Odukomaiya.
I came first with such a wide margin that Mr. Odukomaiya confided in me on my resumption of duty that I did so well that the management was surprised that I accepted, without further negotiations, what I considered the fat salary they offered me. And believe it or not, in one of the questions, we were asked to write a news story to our editor in Lagos about a riot in the present Cross River State! I had never written a story before that time. You can check these facts with the Daily Times. Besides, until I reported for interview and later when I resumed work on July 1, 1968, I had never personally met Alhaji Jose, Mr. Jaja, Alhaji Odunewu or any of the three other interviewers. So that the possibility of lobbying for a job did not at all arise. I don’t even know how to do that. You also gave your readers the false impression that I was never trained as a journalist. You and your sponsors are either very malignant or both on this point. I was amazed that you didn’t know that I was in the Daily Times Training School from 1968 to 1969 and that I learnt all aspects of journalism, its theory and practice. The former managing director of your group of newspapers, Mr. Odukomaiya, was then the training managing. Further, I and some senior Daily Times journalists, including the person Daily Times editor, Mr. Martin Iroabuchi, and the editor-in-chief of the Punch Group, Mr. Sola Odunfa, attended an intensive course in advanced journalism in Plymouth and London from 1971 to 1972. I obtained distinctions, including one in Teeline Shorthand which makes me still capable of writing 150 words a minute today. That’s not all. During the end of course party arranged for us in London, I received a special verbal commendation from Lord Huge Cudlip, the then chairman of IPC, Britain’s biggest newspaper establishment. I leave the general public and thousands of Nigerian students to assess your claim that my books are “pamphlets on economic.”
However, I wish to inform you that one of such “pamphlets” titled: “A modern Approach to Economic of West Africa,” a 429-page book, has been recommended for all Colleges of Arts and Science and HSC classes throughout the country by the Federal Ministry of Education. Another “pamphlet,” my controversial book, “Black Man’s Dilemma” which sold 20, 000 copies within the first year of publication, today has three new editions published in Europe, USA and India – a book now recommended for Afro-American Studies departments in several American universities. I also proudly have eleven similar “pamphlets” to my credit. Furthermore, by the time I was employed by the Daily Times in 1968, just four years after graduating from Ibadan, I was already an author of five widely accepted books. One of them, “A Textbook of Government for West Africa” (436 pages), was already on WAEC’s reading list and had become the Deputy Chief Examiner for WAEC’S G.C.E. Advanced Level Economics examinations. I was next in rank to the then chief examiner, Nigeria’s renowned economist, Professor H.M.A. Onitiri.
I read your unkind and untrue allegations that I lack courage with considerable amusement and pity. I know that a painstaking check at the Daily Times and Nigerian Tribune libraries would convince you that nothing can be farther from the truth. For instance, on July 28, 1975, less than 24 hours to the Mohammed/Obasanjo coup of July 29, 1975, I wrote in my Frank Talk by Omo Oye column (Daily Times) that Gowon had failed the nation. That he was the main cause of the then serious national drift. That nobody could save him from an impending doom. If writing in that vein about an incumbent head of state did not entail courage, it would be interesting to know what your concept of courage was. Please note that July 28, 1975, writing on Gowon’s impending fall was the Daily Times. For the then Daily Times management believed that to have written the way I did about Gowon a few hours before he was overthrown, I must have got a prior knowledge of the coup which I did not disclose to it. My re-assignment was not due essentially to the deceit or plot of a much liked deputy or the unfortunate over-reaction of a management that had hitherto exercised some genuine gifts of leadership.
Incompetence was also ruled out for I have in my possession three letter of commendation which accompanied the three special increments I was given by the Daily Times management within the year preceding my re-assignment for excellent performance, diligence and good leadership roles. The real reason for my re-assignment was the fierce criticisms of Gowon I wrote a few hours before his overthrow by his totally disappointed and disillusioned military colleagues. Even then, it would have been naïve on my part to have expected a less abrupt re-assignment as editor, Daily Times, when I realized that the late Ebun Adesioye, Peter Enahoro (Peter Pan), Alade Odunewu (Allah De) on my immediate predecessor in office, Henry Odukomaiya for other clearly sinecure positions. Even Mr.E.A. Jaja, at a stage in his career, suffered from the then Daily Times management of arbitrariness. But today, I have no regrets or apologies whatsoever for my roles before, during and after the Daily Times crisis. But all told, I wonder why you couldn’t display my type of July 28, 1975, courage by writing fearlessly about the present glaringly confused civilian administration and the grave errors of the present rulers. Afterall, the point I made in my Sunday Times interview was that the present-day journalists should discuss issues and not individuals. And that journalists much be courageous in a country like ours where the force of change must be fiercely and unpredictably at work and where every idea and belief must be turned upside down and re-examined.
Still on your laughable allegation that I lack courage realizing that you would be quite young during the 1962 to 1966 Nigerian political crisis, I refer you to the Nigerian Tribune issues of the period. You would discover that I was the co-chairman of the United Progressive Grand Alliance Youth Front (UPGA Youth Front) for the then Western Region from 1964 till January 1966 coup. Senator Fasanmi was my co-chairman. He represented the former Action Group while I represented the NCNC. As a Tribune columnist and feature writer at the peak of the Western Region riots, I faced grave dangers but I was undaunted and uncompromising because I believed that truth and national duty pointed that way. I also remained a fierce critic of the then government despite its menacing army of occupation and I joined others in publishing the Tribune, which almost daily carried my articles, even after one of our colleagues and the paper’s editor, Ayo Ojewumi, had been dragged into the jail house. And if one may ask, how, in good conscience, can a man who wrote those fearless articles in the Frank Talk by Ome Oye column and those sensational investigative weekly probes on the wrong doings of our universities and exploitation in the foreign-owned companies, he described as lacking in courage?
Be also informed that some days ago, Tai Solarin, the write-and-be-damaged controversial columnist wrote thus, among other things, in his Tribune column about me:”Areoye Oyebola is a very bold man.” He was referring to what he described as my “fiery Black Man’s Dilemma.” Or are you saying Tai was sort of person who would say white was black? Finally, I believe that for journalists and journalism as a profession, the farther the end of our journey will continue to remain out of sight in this country for as long as people like you can so maliciously, viciously but ignorantly write about senior professional colleague the way you did about me. And maybe the statement of my senior colleague, Governor Lateef Jakande, that Concord was not a newspaper afterall, was in fact under-statement. But please do remember that people who limit their horizon cannot create any moral authority and that Nemesis had never failed to come upon people abandon their dignity.
Yours very sincerely,
Areoye Oyebola
November 31, 1981
Dele Giwa’s Comments
The point at issue in my column in question was journalism courage. When I wrote Mr. Oyebola, I named him. I expected that if he wanted to write back, he would throw away the gloves and fight bare-knuckled. To have failed to name the so-called senior colleague of mine in the Concord Group who might have put me up to the column on him was the best testimonial to Mr. Oyebola’s cowardice. Name the fellow. I have said at every available opportunity that NOBODY tells me what to write in my column. It is my property, and guard it jealously, for it is my freedom to think and writes as I see. Nobody higher than me in the Concord Group has ever demanded my column for editing before publication. Any reaction to any my columns has come after publication. Therefore, it was underhanded of Mr. Oyebola to make an accusation and then fail to be specific. Very cowardly.
The point, really, was that Mr. Oyebola failed in his rejoined to address himself to the crux of my column on him. Where was he on the day that Gown was overthrown? Why did he stay home on the one day that he had the chance to show that he was a man of courage in all its ramifications? Where was he? Let him tell us, for it was the one point that he failed to mention in his well-written and well-annotated rejoinder. But I love Mr. Oyebola’s sportsmanship in writing back.
©Sunday Concord, December 6, 1981
(Pp.128-133)
