Cameron Duodu
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20th December, 2011
TRICKS OF MEMORY (4)
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: I am sorry I stopped you from telling us about a great number of historical characters last week. Did you actually meet Abacha?
ME: No. But I breathed the same air as him once. I was in Lagos doing a story for The London Sunday Times Magazine and Haroun Adamu, Political Editor of the Lagos Daily Times….
SOC: Very interesting chap in his own right, no?
ME: Yes. Haroun was one of the most erudite political writers of the Daily Times at the time (1974). Although Nigeria was still under military rule, Haroun and others refused to recognise that Nigeria could become a dictatorship, and they wrote as if they were living in the vibrant democracy that Nigeria had been before the January 1966 coup.
Going from Ghana – where the media were so sheepish that even the arrest – or dismissal -- of its own journalists could be suppressed by the very newspaper on which they worked, so as not to “embarrass” the government that had victimised them – I felt as if I was in journalistic heaven.
For the Nigerian military officers respected their journalists. Nigeria is such a huge country – and political interests there are of such a heterogeneous nature – that it was dangerous for journalists to become sycophantic to any political “faction”.
Journalists could not tell with exactitude whether a Government measure had been opposed in the Supreme Military Council or not, and by whom. So if they blindly supported the measure, they might offend some very powerful people who had opposed it in council.
And playing a guessing game was an exercise in futility. So the best thing for everyone was for the journalists to write precisely what they thought.
Of course, not every powerful solder could agree with everything written by a journalist all the time, and so, eventually, the bright people in the military came to accept that it would be in everybody’s interest if the journalists were left free to write what they really thought.
The biggest newspaper, the Daily Times was lucky to have as its Managing Director, Alhaji Babatunde Jose, who had been with the paper since it was founded by the Daily Mirror group in London, in the late 1940s. (It was the same company that founded the Daily Graphic in Ghana.) Jose courted young University graduates who had a good turn of phrase, and paid them very well.
It was under him that names that were later to become prominent in Nigeria politics, first surfaced in the newspaper’s columns (for instance, the former Governor of Ogun State, Segun Osoba, was the paper’s “Social Affairs” Editor in 1974!) My own particular friends on the paper were Effiong Essien, an erudite economist with a great sense of fun and Femi Ogunsanwo, a political correspondent who knew everybody in Lagos (it was through his friendship with Chief Awolowo’s secretary, Odia Ofeimun, that I met the Chief one day, flanked by his famous lieutenants, Bola Ige and Lateef Jakande.)
SOC: Wasn’t Ige later murdered when he became Nigeria’s Attorney-general? The case was never solved was it? And Jakande became Governor of Lagos?
ME: Hahahaha. It is now YOU who want to divert my attention to people you would like to know about? I thought you were opposed to name-dropping!
SOC: Hey, don’t get me wrong o! How can a journalist be interesting if he does not tell stories about the people he has been privileged to meet on account of his job? I mean you just mentioned three people whom everyone in Yorubaland –and beyond -- would like to hear something about from first-hand!
ME: Well, I am also an editor, and so I know how to select stories that are relevant to what I am saying…
SOC: So you mean you won’t tell us what Chief Awolowo said when you mentioned that Sam Ikoku was your good friend? You won’t tell us what you remember of Olu Onabanjo’s dancing steps at the Accra Press Club?
ME: Hahahaha. Some other time. Right now, I have to go back to Haroun Adamu and Abacha – remember?
SOC: Oh yes….
ME: Haroun Adamu took me to this party that General Theophilus Danjuma was giving at his residence. The Nigerian top brass are extremely polished; Danjuma knew my name and engaged me in a nice conversation and I was enjoying myself hugely when the place suddenly went quiet.
I looked in the driveway and coming towards us was a very short and broad man with large eyes and a very prominent facial mark, followed by two orderlies, each of whom carried one end of an elephantine birthday card! I thought I had seen that face in some paper before, and I said to Haroun: “Major-General Musa Yar’Adua?”
(Now, I was to meet the real Yar’Adua in 1979. Very good story. For later, ok?)
But it wasn’t him at that particular time. Haroun corrected me: “No!” he said, “Brigadier Sani Abacha, one of the most powerful commanders in the Nigerian army.”
I noted the name to myself: the guy had presence.
And he seemed to be a first-class flatterer – I mean, if he was bringing Danjuma such an ostentatiously huge birthday card, it was because Danjuma could probably help move his career upwards?
My instinct proved correct, of course, for it was Abacha who, a few years later, first announced on the radio, both the coup of 31 December 1983 – which brought Muhammed Buhari to power - and the Babangida coup of 27 August 1985.
He began the second announcement with the words, “And again, I Brigadier Sani Abacha.”
All during the Babangida years, Abacha, as Minister of Defence, was known by insiders as the “Khalifa” (Prince or Heir-presumptive!) and indeed, when Babangida left the scene, after having inexplicably annulled the June 12 1993 election, which Chief M K O Abiola won fair and square, Abacha was seen as the real power in the land, though Chief Ernest Shonikan was installed as the head of the “Interim Government”.
Do you know that I’d met Chief Shonikan twice before he became head of state? First, when he was Director of Research for Barclays Bank of Nigeria, and then as Chairman of the United Africa Company of Nigeria!
SOC: Yiee, Charlie! Na dis be super-name-dropping, abi?! I bet you’re also going to tell us about Abiola’s opponent, Bashir Tofa? No – wait! How many times did you meet General Babangida?
ME: I met him too on two occasions.
The first time was when I went to interview him for a special section Time Magazine was publishing on Nigeria. At that time, I also met “Triple A” (Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji, Minister of Finance). The second time was for the now defunct South Magazine.
That interview was so good that his Press Secretary, Duro Onabule, persuaded me to publish parts of it in the London Observer….
SOC: I can see the Publisher of South, the Pakistani, Altaf Gohar, and his patron, the owner of BCCI, trying to muscle in here…. Not to mention the editor, Andrew Graham-Yool, from Argentina. Gee – what a crowd?
ME: Ah! Ah! You’ve hit the nail on the head. But No Can Do. I’ve had to shut the door firmly. Haroun Adamu – remember him – was very good with words. He invented a word which set the whole of Nigeria laughing.
He called it Kadunitis. He said he’d noticed that when members of the Supreme Military Council had anything important to tell the public, they somehow waited until they got to Kaduna airport and were surrounded by reporters. They then, almost uncontrollably, let the cat out of the bag.
“The Supreme Military Council has been afflicted with a disease called Kadunitis!” Haroun Adamu wrote. The phrase ‘caught fire’ and amused both the sufferers of Kadunitis and its beneficiaries.
Can you see military men in Ghana being amused by something like that? No – my experience, as I illustrated with the anecdotes about General Joseph Ankrah – is that many of our top brass tend to be humourless and pompous.
I mean, imagine a Nigerian Government sacking three editors in one day just because they had all criticised a Government agreement with a foreign company called Abbott Laboratories. It happened in Ghana under the NLC, and the editors who were sacked were Moses Danquah, Ghanaian Times; Henry Thompson, Evening News and Kodzo Dumoga, Daily Graphic.
I was invited to become editor of the Daily Graphic in place of Dumoga, but God very kindly got me out of that…. I would never have been able to live it down – taking the place of an editor who had been sacked because he had taken a principled stand on an issue which put the Government in a bad light.
SOC: Full disclosure another time, another place?
ME: Yeah -- you can bet your bottom dollar on it.
ME: No. But I breathed the same air as him once. I was in Lagos doing a story for The London Sunday Times Magazine and Haroun Adamu, Political Editor of the Lagos Daily Times….
SOC: Very interesting chap in his own right, no?
ME: Yes. Haroun was one of the most erudite political writers of the Daily Times at the time (1974). Although Nigeria was still under military rule, Haroun and others refused to recognise that Nigeria could become a dictatorship, and they wrote as if they were living in the vibrant democracy that Nigeria had been before the January 1966 coup.
Going from Ghana – where the media were so sheepish that even the arrest – or dismissal -- of its own journalists could be suppressed by the very newspaper on which they worked, so as not to “embarrass” the government that had victimised them – I felt as if I was in journalistic heaven.
For the Nigerian military officers respected their journalists. Nigeria is such a huge country – and political interests there are of such a heterogeneous nature – that it was dangerous for journalists to become sycophantic to any political “faction”.
Journalists could not tell with exactitude whether a Government measure had been opposed in the Supreme Military Council or not, and by whom. So if they blindly supported the measure, they might offend some very powerful people who had opposed it in council.
And playing a guessing game was an exercise in futility. So the best thing for everyone was for the journalists to write precisely what they thought.
Of course, not every powerful solder could agree with everything written by a journalist all the time, and so, eventually, the bright people in the military came to accept that it would be in everybody’s interest if the journalists were left free to write what they really thought.
The biggest newspaper, the Daily Times was lucky to have as its Managing Director, Alhaji Babatunde Jose, who had been with the paper since it was founded by the Daily Mirror group in London, in the late 1940s. (It was the same company that founded the Daily Graphic in Ghana.) Jose courted young University graduates who had a good turn of phrase, and paid them very well.
It was under him that names that were later to become prominent in Nigeria politics, first surfaced in the newspaper’s columns (for instance, the former Governor of Ogun State, Segun Osoba, was the paper’s “Social Affairs” Editor in 1974!) My own particular friends on the paper were Effiong Essien, an erudite economist with a great sense of fun and Femi Ogunsanwo, a political correspondent who knew everybody in Lagos (it was through his friendship with Chief Awolowo’s secretary, Odia Ofeimun, that I met the Chief one day, flanked by his famous lieutenants, Bola Ige and Lateef Jakande.)
SOC: Wasn’t Ige later murdered when he became Nigeria’s Attorney-general? The case was never solved was it? And Jakande became Governor of Lagos?
ME: Hahahaha. It is now YOU who want to divert my attention to people you would like to know about? I thought you were opposed to name-dropping!
SOC: Hey, don’t get me wrong o! How can a journalist be interesting if he does not tell stories about the people he has been privileged to meet on account of his job? I mean you just mentioned three people whom everyone in Yorubaland –and beyond -- would like to hear something about from first-hand!
ME: Well, I am also an editor, and so I know how to select stories that are relevant to what I am saying…
SOC: So you mean you won’t tell us what Chief Awolowo said when you mentioned that Sam Ikoku was your good friend? You won’t tell us what you remember of Olu Onabanjo’s dancing steps at the Accra Press Club?
ME: Hahahaha. Some other time. Right now, I have to go back to Haroun Adamu and Abacha – remember?
SOC: Oh yes….
ME: Haroun Adamu took me to this party that General Theophilus Danjuma was giving at his residence. The Nigerian top brass are extremely polished; Danjuma knew my name and engaged me in a nice conversation and I was enjoying myself hugely when the place suddenly went quiet.
I looked in the driveway and coming towards us was a very short and broad man with large eyes and a very prominent facial mark, followed by two orderlies, each of whom carried one end of an elephantine birthday card! I thought I had seen that face in some paper before, and I said to Haroun: “Major-General Musa Yar’Adua?”
(Now, I was to meet the real Yar’Adua in 1979. Very good story. For later, ok?)
But it wasn’t him at that particular time. Haroun corrected me: “No!” he said, “Brigadier Sani Abacha, one of the most powerful commanders in the Nigerian army.”
I noted the name to myself: the guy had presence.
And he seemed to be a first-class flatterer – I mean, if he was bringing Danjuma such an ostentatiously huge birthday card, it was because Danjuma could probably help move his career upwards?
My instinct proved correct, of course, for it was Abacha who, a few years later, first announced on the radio, both the coup of 31 December 1983 – which brought Muhammed Buhari to power - and the Babangida coup of 27 August 1985.
He began the second announcement with the words, “And again, I Brigadier Sani Abacha.”
All during the Babangida years, Abacha, as Minister of Defence, was known by insiders as the “Khalifa” (Prince or Heir-presumptive!) and indeed, when Babangida left the scene, after having inexplicably annulled the June 12 1993 election, which Chief M K O Abiola won fair and square, Abacha was seen as the real power in the land, though Chief Ernest Shonikan was installed as the head of the “Interim Government”.
Do you know that I’d met Chief Shonikan twice before he became head of state? First, when he was Director of Research for Barclays Bank of Nigeria, and then as Chairman of the United Africa Company of Nigeria!
SOC: Yiee, Charlie! Na dis be super-name-dropping, abi?! I bet you’re also going to tell us about Abiola’s opponent, Bashir Tofa? No – wait! How many times did you meet General Babangida?
ME: I met him too on two occasions.
The first time was when I went to interview him for a special section Time Magazine was publishing on Nigeria. At that time, I also met “Triple A” (Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji, Minister of Finance). The second time was for the now defunct South Magazine.
That interview was so good that his Press Secretary, Duro Onabule, persuaded me to publish parts of it in the London Observer….
SOC: I can see the Publisher of South, the Pakistani, Altaf Gohar, and his patron, the owner of BCCI, trying to muscle in here…. Not to mention the editor, Andrew Graham-Yool, from Argentina. Gee – what a crowd?
ME: Ah! Ah! You’ve hit the nail on the head. But No Can Do. I’ve had to shut the door firmly. Haroun Adamu – remember him – was very good with words. He invented a word which set the whole of Nigeria laughing.
He called it Kadunitis. He said he’d noticed that when members of the Supreme Military Council had anything important to tell the public, they somehow waited until they got to Kaduna airport and were surrounded by reporters. They then, almost uncontrollably, let the cat out of the bag.
“The Supreme Military Council has been afflicted with a disease called Kadunitis!” Haroun Adamu wrote. The phrase ‘caught fire’ and amused both the sufferers of Kadunitis and its beneficiaries.
Can you see military men in Ghana being amused by something like that? No – my experience, as I illustrated with the anecdotes about General Joseph Ankrah – is that many of our top brass tend to be humourless and pompous.
I mean, imagine a Nigerian Government sacking three editors in one day just because they had all criticised a Government agreement with a foreign company called Abbott Laboratories. It happened in Ghana under the NLC, and the editors who were sacked were Moses Danquah, Ghanaian Times; Henry Thompson, Evening News and Kodzo Dumoga, Daily Graphic.
I was invited to become editor of the Daily Graphic in place of Dumoga, but God very kindly got me out of that…. I would never have been able to live it down – taking the place of an editor who had been sacked because he had taken a principled stand on an issue which put the Government in a bad light.
SOC: Full disclosure another time, another place?
ME: Yeah -- you can bet your bottom dollar on it.
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