By Ochereome Nnanna
AT about 10.00am on Saturday, May 4th 2013, I left my room at the Westin Harbour Castle, Toronto, Canada, to see Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Canada, Ambassador Ojo Maduekwe in his hotel, the historic Fairmont Royal York Hotel, venue of the just-concluded Canada-Nigeria Investment Conference.

He had invited me for details about his invitation to spend a week with him in Ottawa before returning to Nigeria.

Two hours later, I was back in my room, not sure if I really wanted to go to Ottawa or simply follow my original itinerary and return to Nigeria that day. I picked up my roaming Glo line, which I had left in the hotel to recharge and saw so many missed calls. Most of them came from my friend, Abbott, with whom I had travelled from Nigeria to attend the conference. He had left the hotel only a few hours that morning to see his family in New York, USA. It puzzled me that he should have reason to call so many times so soon after we parted ways. Just as I was about to return his call, he was again on the line.

“Ochereome, I read Sahara Reporters this morning and came across this horrible news”, he announced, “Pini Jason is dead!”

“What!?”

“Open Sahara Reporters. It is there”

As I reached for my Ipad, I started getting a flurry of calls from around the world, one of which came from The SUN’s columnist, Uche Ezechukwu in Abuja. They all sought to verify the report from me. If there is anybody in the media to instinctively reach out for over Chief Pini Jason Onyegbadue, I am that person.

I have known, and been closely associated with Pini for twenty years. I have religiously read his articles since I was a student in the middle 1980’s. We made our first personal encounter in November 1993 when former Chief of General Staff, retired Commodore Okoh Ebitu Ukiwe and his friend, Alhaji Abdulazeez Ude, were given chieftaincy titles by the Ayangburen of Ikorodu, Oba Salifu Oyefusi. From then we were never parted with each other.

Pini took interest in my
budding career as a columnist. He, in fact, introduced me to Mr Alan Rake, the Editor of London-based The New African and the African Business, offering me tips on how to get my articles published and get paid in pounds sterling. He also offered avuncular editorial advice while I put together the scripts of my book: Power Sharing in Nigeria and moderated when a crisis of confidence ensued between me and the publisher, my dearest sister, Mrs (now Senator) Chris Anyanwu.

By the time I resigned as Deputy Editor of TSM in August 1994, Pini asked me if I would like to write for Vanguard Newspapers. It was in Vanguard I read all those juicy write-ups of his and other iconic pen-masters, such as Bisi Lawrence, Chinweizu, Ely Obasi, Chris Okojie, Dap Dorman, Lipstick, Ikeddy Isiguzo and a host of others. An opportunity for me to join Uncle Sam’s stable of pen warriors was a heady proposition and I did not hesitate.

Pini gave me a note to Uncle Sam. I did not see its contents as it was stapled. The day I came to the newspaper’s rather concealed premises was my first time there ever. That was on October 30th 1994. I saw a simple elderly man with charismatic airs, dressed in a blue safari suit and slip-on black shoes. He was sitting behind a large desk in the far right corner of his second floor office. When he read Pini’s note, he got up, walked past me and said in his small, high voice:

“Come”.

I followed him to the corridor and he stood near the window looking downstairs at the Press Hall.

“Pini gave you this?” he asked, showing me the note.

“Yes sir”.

“Pini is a man whose opinion we respect so much. If he wrote this, then you must be good. Come”.

I followed him downstairs to the first floor into an office. A dark young man of about my age, wearing a white shirt, blue tie and blue trousers got up and greeted Uncle Sam. He glanced at me and I glanced back. He looked somewhat familiar. He later turned out to be Gbenga Adefaye, one of the riotous chaps one year our senior at the Jackson School of Journalism, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in the 1980’s. He was now the Deputy Editor of Vanguard, a very powerful post in the newspaper. The Deputy Editor is the officer who runs the Editorial Department hands-on.s

Uncle Sam told Adefaye:

“Check him out. If he is okay, put him on”.

I was checked out and immediately put on. In fact, I was given this column to write, and my first edition of PEOPLE AND POLITICS (a title christened by Uncle Sam himself) was published on December 9th 1994. It was an instant hit, even if I say so myself, no immodesty intended. I was given two full pages a week with the publisher’s instruction to promo the column on the cover compulsorily.

What am I saying here? My coming to Vanguard owes to Pini Jason. Whatever little contributions I have used the column to make owes to the wide latitude of freedom Uncle Sam mandated to his writers, especially Pini and I. In 1994, Igbo people did not have much voice in the polity as a whole and the media in particular. They were very much in the middle of the unofficial “marginalisation” policy for their role in the coup of January 15th 1966 and the civil war that ended in January 15th 1970.

Uncle Sam told me to speak out as an Igbo and Eastern person. He gave instructions for me to be facilitated to go anywhere of my choice to attend events, meet people and enrich the paper’s content the best I could. Now, you know why I sound the way I do!

More on Monday.