By Nyaknno Osso

This book is meant to immortalize Dele Giwa, one of Nigeria’s most talented journalists, who was bombed out of existence at age 39 on Sunday, October 19, 1986.

He was my friend and my boss. It is aimed at preserving his journalistic legacy for students of journalism, practicing journalists, teachers, researchers, social historians and every intelligent reader. It will also inspire and promote the study, analysis and criticism of his idea, style and contributions to the body of literature on the practice of journalism in Nigeria.

In addition, it is believed that the publication will encourage critics, analysts and public commentators to examine his ideals; patriotism, commitment to social justice, fair play and freedom of expression, his obsession with the fine ethics of journalism; and his temperament and personal characteristic.

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It is my belief that indeed the written word, to paraphrase the Biblical Prophet Habakkuk, is ageless, its message is timeless, its relevance is endless. Giwa, a man who wrote more than 300 lively and thought-provoking columns that touched on all aspects of life, cannot and should not be ignored, or forgotten in a hurry. In a sense, he was ahead of his time like the gifted Nigerian poet, Christopher Okigbo, who had foreseen the “going and coming that goes on forever.”

I started collecting materials for this book on Sunday, April 8, 1979, which was the day his first article—with the headline: Golden Fleece? I think I got it!—appeared in Nigeria’s Sunday Times. It wasn’t until early 1980 that Giwa and I met in Calabar during the annual conference of the Nigerian Guild of Editors. Ray Ekpu, who was his friend and my editor at the Nigerian Chronicle, brought Giwa to my office to cross-check information on a story he was doing. Giwa was extremely surprised to realize that I had a comprehensive and meticulous documentation of all his writings, entitled Dele Giwa: An Annotated Bio-bibliography, April 1979, some of which have been updated and published in this book.

We became friends instantly. Later, I was invited by him and his team to join Newswatch magazine in August 1984 not just as a pioneer staff but equally as the first senior management staff in charge of Research, Library and Documentation. Giwa had great confidence in me as a rigorous collector and preserver of facts and figures and consequently handed over everything he had written up to 1984 to me for conservation. I decided to preserve the materials in a bank vault in Lagos until when the Newswatch project took off.

At the Daily Times, where he worked shortly after his return to Nigeria from the United States of America, Dele, as features editor, maintained two columns on the famous Page Seven which he created: Press Snaps and Parallax World (later renamed Parallax View), which appeared every Wednesday and Friday, respectively. In many a week, Giwa wrote four times. At times, according to Dr. Patrick Dele Cole, the then Managing Director of Daily Times, “we found that the circulation figures for the days on which he wrote rose.” When he eventually moved to Sunday Concord as the editor in February 1980, the two columns fused into Parallax Snaps and became a regular feature every Sunday from March 2, 1980, to March 11, 1984. At Newswatch, he retained the title of the column, Parallax Snaps, writing from February 11, 1985, to October 1986.

His creative force was fierce and incomparable. He wrote hundreds of outstanding columns but only 79—most of which deliberated on journalism or the practice of it—were selected for this book. In the Bio-bibliographical Section, which comes as an appendix before the index; articles denoted by an asterisk are those used in this publication.

Apart from the first six chapters, which are deliberately blended to form a literary biography, all other materials are arranged according to the dates of publication. Each chapter begins with a quotation from the succeeding piece as an appetizer and ends with a citation—indicating the title of the publication and the date the column first appeared. I admit to dusting off several deadline typos and recasting a few headlines. The editing was carefully done to highlight the timelessness of the message without distorting the context and perception of the ideas.

Two interviews, one by Ely Obasi, first published in Vanguard newspaper, and the other by Kelvin Ejiofor in JUST A CHAT, a radio Nigeria 2 personality programme, which appears here for the first time in print, are brought in to bridge the period of his transition from employee to employer; from editor to publisher; and from Concord to Newswatch.

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The interviews are quite revealing. For instance, how on earth did he get a job at one of the world’s most powerful newspapers, the New York Times? Listen to him: “I was arguing with a couple of Nigerian students in a library one day in New York. I was looking at the front page of the New York Times when I saw an error and I said, even Dele Giwa would not commit this kind of error. And they said, there you go again. Then I replied: How do you mean, there you go again? I can go get a job on that paper. It was a Friday afternoon. They said no way! So on Monday, I got dressed, went to New York Times and got a job.” Again on another occasion, his interviewer asked: “What animal would you wish to become if God disallowed your remaining a human being?” “A dove, peaceful, clean, graceful and fearless—I would like to fly holding out the peace reed to mankind.”

One of the most memorable moments of his career was August 30, 1984, the day he received a public apology from the then Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Etim Inyang, in compliance with a court order, for wrongful arrest and detention by the police, under the late Sunday Adewusi regime in February 1983. It was from his response to the public apology that the famous quotation came out in the Daily Times: “No evil deed can go unpunished. Any evil done by man will be redressed, if not now, then certainly later; if not by man, then certainly by God, for victory of evil over good can only be temporary,” (published in the Daily Times, September 5, 1984).

Perhaps, he would also be remembered as, probably, the first Nigerian reporter invited to observe a President of Nigeria at work, starting with breakfast to spending the whole day in his office and having an in-depth interview and discussions with the First Citizen.

Dele had his fair share of dark moments too, a period of frustration and confusion. In one breadth, he said “I’ve found myself” and went on to declare: “It is as well a way to give notice that this column, after three years, now comes into its own and will simply carry the name of its writer. Bye-bye, Parallax Snaps.” But this was not to be, since Dele later changed his mind, saying: “Every night since last Sunday, Parallax Snaps has visited me in my dreams asking why I dropped it from my column. Perhaps it is one of the vagaries of the mid-life turmoil, but I want to sleep in peace, and I just have to let Parallax Snaps have its way, so here again is Parallax Snaps.”

Giwa wrote with malice towards none. One of his strong points in the practice of journalism was his adherence to the ‘fairness doctrine’. He gave everyone a chance to reply to his column, especially if one was the subject matter of that column. I have religiously adhered to this doctrine in this book in order to maintain a high level of integrity, credibility and balance. Examples are: Awo: Land and Conscience; Recklessness of Dr See Ess Momoh; Oyebola’s Blah and other Blahs; Andy Akporugo’s Diabolical Sense of Humour, et al.

“Giwa was your quintessential journalist,” said the late Dr. Stanley Macebuh, a university teacher. “He was possessed of a robust skepticism about everyone and everything. He had a passionate commitment to truth … He was a compassionate man and having himself come from a lowly background, always ranked himself on the side of the poor and downtrodden and against the rich and power. He had a great zest for life, but did not permit this to interfere with what he saw as his professional duty. He believed in the power and beauty of language …”

Giwa’s uncommon ability to weave ideas into good stories through creativity and wisdom, using picture-words to capture the atmosphere, colour and essence of an event, was outstanding in the annals of Nigerian journalism. “Summer has always been kind to me,” he wrote in Newswatch. ”Summer is my seminal season, my period of creative germination when my thoughts run faster than my fingers on the typewriter. Unlike most others who procreate creativity in spring, the season of rebirth, and luxuriate in summer, I luxuriate in spring and procreate creatively in summer. Muse is kind to me in summer.”

Dele was highly cerebral—an all-consuming reader, a voracious assimilator of information, a walking encyclopedia, visionary, energetic, dynamic, fearless, restless, street-wise, chatty, domineering, clear-minded, full of drive and determination, neatly-dressed, well groomed, he moved and shaped great ideas with complete mastery of what it takes to be a good reporter, which includes a nose for news, eye for great story, language, style, elegance, wit and wisdom.

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“Giwa was a great journalist,” said Dele Cole,” a first-class writer… People envied his success—that was to be.” The greatest tribute we can pay to this courageous Nigerian journalist is to cry out loud like Chinua Achebe’s little son who, on hearing of the death of Nigeria’s finest poet, Christopher Okigbo, screamed: “Don’t Let Him Die!”

…Osso is the Editor-in-Chief and CEO of Biographical Legacy and Research Foundation

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