BYIKEDDY ISIGUZO, Chairman, Editorial Board

TUESDAY passed without Pini Jason’s column that had become a traditional offering in Vanguard for years. What would he have written? What would he have ignored, rating it inconsequential, or scanning his ever fresh memory to remind you when he wrote about it?

We were waiting for Tuesday’s column, not as the ordinary readers did. The copy was awaited at the office, it never arrived: Pini was already dead. “He rarely missed writing his column,” Vanguard Features Editor, Judith Ufford, said, yesterday, as we reviewed his passing. “If he was not writing, he would inform me in advance. I was still waiting for his copy when Mike Ebonugwo called to confirm from me that he was gone. I could not believe it.”

While we waited, Pini was in the pangs of death. If it was an ordinary fight, if it was a fight the outcome depended on the prowess of his pen, he would have won. It was death whose assignment never misses deadlines. Pini missed the deadline for his column. He did not call to indicate he was not writing. He had no chance to say a farewell, to his family, to us, to his readers. Or did he say the farewell and we missed it?

Worthy advice for everyone

Why did he go into such details in recounting his life in his last piece, A Letter To Yushau Shuaib? Was that the farewell? “Your responsibility as a fine writer is to help this society retrieve those values that made us great in the past which this generation about to take over does not care about any more! If you must be part of that recovery, then, you must not lose your head,” he advised the young man. It is a worthy advice for everyone who loves.

The year started early with deaths of journalists. Last January 15, he wrote, When Two Stars Fell From The Firmament, a tribute to great journalists – Victor Ogundipe (finance and economy) and Ayo Ositelu (sports journalist, later politician, combining both admirably). He had ended that piece thus, “We should worry as the few good men among us are passing when Nigeria is poised to completely fall into the hands of the nihilistic and ferociously predatory generation. I am worried. Think of it.”

He had written a March 26 column, Chinua Achebe: No Need To Mourn, “We need not mourn Achebe. He lived out his destiny and discharged his obligation by telling the story of his generation.” Was he addressing the inevitability of death by telling us to discharge our obligation to society? Who would address issues with the piquancy that Pini brought to them, fearing neither friend nor foe? How would our Tuesday be, his column empty, and many issues passing some unchallenging explanations of their (un)importance?

Like Achebe, who he adored, and whose funeral (billed for May 23) Pini should have attended, Pini could have discharged his obligations to society. We were all too busy demanding more of him that we never dreamt that his time would be up, so soon.

Pini’s articles can be read online @: Pini Jason