“In the last 12 years, Dele Giwa has become the main reference point. He is the guardian angel of the profession, the hero, indeed the patron-saint, of our trade.”
I never had the privilege of meeting Dele Giwa, that 39-year-old super-journalist from Ugekpe-Ekperi who was bombed off, assassinated, one blue morning at his breakfast table on October 19, 1986. Dele Giwa, according to those who knew him personally, was a disarming, affable, and witty young man who took life on as if it was inevitably going to slip away at short notice. He had emerged on the scene at 32, armed with an American University degree, some experience with the New York Times, a voracious appetite for the future, and the friendship of Stanley Macebuh and Dele Cole. Within seven years, he had worked in at least three newspaper houses: Daily Times, National Concord, and Newswatch magazine.
With a combination of hardwork, transparent competence, and a determination to excel, he wrote himself into relevance and significance. Col. A. K. Togun, who was sued by no less a personality than Gani Fawehinmi over Dele Giwa’s death, recently told the Sunday Concord that Dele Giwa talked too much, revealed too much about himself, and that he did not quite have as many friends as he thought he did. That is Togun’s opinion but it is not the only opinion about Dele Giwa. The late May Ellen Ezekiel Damijo, an equally gifted journalist, described Dele Giwa as her hero, the man who lifted her up whenever she was down. Only this week, during the 12th anniversary of Dele Giwa’s death, several positive testimonies have also been given. The thing about post-humour tributes and portraits, however, is that the dead are in no position to speak for themselves. Death forecloses the right of reply.
Although there are many journalists, dead and alive, who may never be canonised but whose careers have been equally exceptional and a ready source of inspiration for the younger generation, it is Dele Giwa who has become the martyr of Nigerian journalism. What matters in the final analysis is not Dele Giwa’s person, not what those who knew him say or do not say, but the manner in which his life and career now define the practice of journalism in Nigeria today. In the last 12 years, Dele Giwa has become the main reference point. He is the guardian angel of the profession, the hero, indeed the patron-saint, of our trade. The failure, the inability of the state and the gods of Ugekpe Ekperi who were commissioned to track down his killers only further foregrounds the risks involved in journalism and the potency of the word. It is instructive that there is total agreement on the cause of Dele Giwa’s death. He didn’t die because of a sexual dalliance that went awry. Not because of a shady deal. Not suicide. He was a committed writer, all else was subordinate to his art.
If he was a politician, he could not have been a temporiser; he would have been a man of action. If he was a bricklayer, he would have built castles. If he was an academic, he would have become a professor. If he was a priest, he would have been a favourite father-confessor. But Dele Giwa was none of these. He was a journalist. His tools were words and the typewriter. That was before computers became commonplace. He imbued words with action. He made them leap off the pages. Those of us who knew him by reading him often wondered how he did it. He could make his sentences behave like a Venus Williams on the lawn tennis court. And he could make them function like a Ben Johnson on the race tracks. He built images that stretched his readers’ imagination. His writings exuded power. Like an academic, his discourse was researched, rehearsed and properly articulated. And he delivered his thoughts with the piety of a priest.
Nyaknno Osso has done us useful service by putting his writings together in a collection. Hopefully, some day, another good Nigerian will also compile the journalism of Sad Sam Amuka Pemu, Andy Akporugo, Lade Bonuola, Tunji Oseni, Mokwugo Okoye, Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, Abiodun Aloba, Labanji Bolaji, Peter Pan, Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese, Stanley Macebuh, Gab Idigo, etc.
At the time we mourned Dele Giwa’s death, particularly the manner of it, no one could imagine that things would get worse in the future. For example, no one could anticipate the creation, existence and emergence of a 5 feet, 5 inches-tall General Sani Abacha. Abacha was in many ways like Stalin, the Georgian who became ruler of the Soviet Union. Stalin, according to Trotsky, his confirmed foe, lacked any intellectual equipment. His sole ambition was to deal with people ruthlessly and demonstrate his naked will for power. Stalin was cunning, mean, avaricious. Pathologically envious of Lenin, a more complete man, Stalin sought relevance by messing up all good things. Stalin once boasted that what he liked best in life is “to choose your victim, to prepare everything, to revenge yourself ruthlessly, and then to go to sleep.” Abacha was like that; perhaps he was Stalin’s reincarnate in another land, another time. Abacha may not have been responsible for Dele Giwa’s death but he demystified it. Today, if a bomb were to explode suddenly in front of Senator Abraham Adesanya’s house, we would no longer be surprised. In the last five years, so many bombs have exploded across the country. Bombs have become part of the popular vocabulary. A bomb is now a tool of social existence in Nigeria. “I’ll bomb you off” is a standard expression.
The events of the last five years alone have shown us that Dele Giwa’s death was a message and a warning from God. About the future. It was a heavenly word of caution enjoining journalists and all Nigerians to beware of unexpected accidents in their lives. It was a message we could neither understand nor heed because we lived in another Nigeria where the naira was still strong; people could sleep in their homes, and employers were not deliberately plotting to sabotage their employees. Babangida toyed with our innocence. Abacha destroyed it. It is not only bombs that have become common since Dele Giwa died. Assassinations have also become common and, as in Dele Giwa’s case, no one knows who the killers are. The Nigeria Police, as was the case then, remain helpless.
When the question, “Who killed Dele Giwa?” was always posed, it sounded like a major expression of shock. Today, such questions have multiplied. Who killed Rewane? Kudurat? Omoteshinwa? Elegbegbe? Toyin Onagoruwa? Cyprian Ekwensi’s son? Suliat Adedeji? Baguda Kaltoh? Since Dele Giwa’s death, the country has become a vast graveyard of unresolved murders. A nation that does not value its human beings is bound to eat them up one by one. Nigeria has a way of killing its own people. When it does not kill, it makes them so mad that they can no longer worry. Or it blinds them so they no longer see the evil. Dele Giwa was the first sacrifice lamb. Others have since followed.
When mourners trooped to Ugekpe Ekperi in 1986 for Dele Giwa’s burial, transportation was easy; the roads to the Mid-West were motorable. Today, 12 years later, travelling across Nigeria has become a nightmare. It is costly, risky, deadly. The roads are bad. In 1986, there was no such madness as fuel scarcity. But today, there is. The naira in 1986 was still strong, sure-footed and dependable. Today, you need carton-loads of naira to manage a tolerable existence. Following Dele Giwa’s assassination, Wole Soyinka, who had known him and who only two days earlier had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, had lamented the senselessness of our condition. Exactly 12 years later, the same Wole Soyinka is still complaining about the same things. The young ills of 1986 have developed into adult problems with fangs. The Nigerian project is in a state of induced somnabulism.
Ever before Dele Giwa, journalists suffered in the hands of government. In 1916, James Bright Davies, editor of the Nigerian Times, was found guilty of sedition and fined. Davies had written that Nigeria would one day be “free from the cruel rule of Lugard’s administration”. In 1925, Thomas Horatio Jackson of the Lagos Weekly Record, who was the most celebrated journalist in this country in the 1920s, was jailed by the colonial authorities for two months. In 1928, J. A. Olushola of the Daily News was fined £50. Dr. Caulcrick of the same newspaper was asked to pay the same amount while Herbert Macaulay was jailed without option of a fine. In 1945, Anthony Enahoro was jailed for nine months. In 1973, Minere Amakiri of the Nigerian Observer was given a haircut and 24 strokes of the cane on the orders of Alfred Diette-Spiff, the Rivers State Military Governor, for publishing a story which embarrassed Diette-Spiff on his birthday. In 1977, the Obasanjo government banned Chris Okolie’s Newbreed magazine for two years. In 1984, the Buhari administration introduced Decree 4 of that year, an anti-press law under which Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson of The Guardian were jailed for one year each.
The brutal assassination of Dele Giwa in 1986 simply surpassed whatever form of press censorship had hitherto existed in Nigeria. Now we know that it was only the beginning. Within the last 12 years, the harassment of journalists has become sheer routine. Every journalist has had to learn that it is now possible for the government to declare him or her wanted (Tell, The News journalists), to accuse you of plotting a coup with your stories (Kunle Ajibade, George Mbah, Chris Anyanwu, Ben Charles-Obi), and to detain or jail you without trial. Other people refer to it as occupational hazard. Except that the hazards of journalism go far beyond the lot of ordinary folk. Nigerian journalists are sustained by their boundless optimism. In a sense, we are all gamblers and prisoners of optimism. If Dele Giwa were alive, he would be 51 years old. The continued celebration of his life and career proves one major point: the dialectic of history will always favour the journalist. That is what keeps us going.
©THE GUARDIAN, Friday, October 23, 1998 (Page 29)
