By Tony Eluemunor

When Mr. Dahiru M Lawal reacted to my piece, “Yushau Shuaibu on Emir and Air Peace: Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense,” published in this column last Saturday, I assumed it would contain wholesome lessons.

The writing was wild because it lacked civility, uncoordinated because he rambled on and on, jumping from one issue to the other. It was unfocussed because his essay was a confused and chaotic clutter; a total mess.

No single point was interrogated, no idea was pursued to the end, not one gaffe listed against Shuaib, was refuted.

Gaffe number one; Shuaib wrote in the article I replied to: “Sometime in 2021, my mother was denied boarding on an Air Peace plane going from Ilorin to Abuja, even though she was among the first set of passengers who arrived at the airport very early that morning. Apart from frustrating her attempt to board the aircraft, the airline further charged her exorbitantly for the use of the same ticket for the next day’s flight.”

A few sentences later this appeared: “Mama came early but was on the wrong queue at a counter of another airline. By the time she realised the mistake, the Air Peace Counter had been closed.”

Yet, Shuaib still wrote in that article of March 4: “Sometime in 2021, my mother was denied boarding on an Air Peace plane.”

Is that not a blunder in reasoning—blaming A for B’s mistake. Then, Mr. Lawal called Wikipedia a journal Haba Mallam, haba! It is an online encyclopedia while a journal is … no I will leave that undefined for Lawal may want to debate me, too, on that.

No wonder Lawal mocked me for using Wikipedia as research material. Yet, what did I search the Wikipedia for, if not for Strategic Communications and the like. And in the disordered style of that article, Lawal failed to point out what wrong was in the explanation Wikipedia gave.

I will again pass this over for lack of space for there remains three important issues to deal with; his attack on my person as a journalist and Chief James Onanefe Ibori’s defender and the awards Shuaib has been winning annually.

Yes, in the heat of the Ibori “war” some nonentity once derided me as being incapable of working for “reputable” newspapers such as the PUNCH, Guardian or THISDAY and winning any journalistic awards instead of defending Ibori.

I replied that I worked in the PUNCH for two weeks and left to pursue an M.Sc. degree in Mass Communication at Unilag.

After that, Dele Giwa invited me into Newswatch (and I add for Lawal’s benefit that within two months there, I won an award for Initiative and Excellence. “Oga” Ray Ekpu wrote the citation that tagged me: “A child of promise.” My next place of work was THISWEEK where I won a double promotion, rose from Correspondent to Assistant Editor within months and headed two different Desks at the same; National News and Politics and once wrote cover stories for three consecutive weeks, perhaps a first globally in a well-seeded news magazine. In 1990, my fourth year in journalism, Harvard had issued its famed telephone call and I became a Fellow and Ford Foundation scholar at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, the first academic fellowship anywhere and the most prestigious one for journalists.

I was the second Nigerian there, after Segun Osoba in 1975, a past Ogun state Governor). And for you Lawal, I joined the Guardian in August 1999 and within a month or two the Saturday Editor, Banji Adisa, asked if I could turn my essays into a full-fledged column; that was the birth of Abuja Notes column.

Do I need to add that I acted as a West African Correspondent for the second-largest newspaper group in Africa then, The Daily Nation of Kenya or that Dr. Stanley Macebuh invited me to be Deputy Editor at the Post Express? Ah! I borrowed the “Less sense and more nonsense” from Macebuh.

He used it as title of a piece where he decried the lack of sense in what some journalists contributed to a national discourse. Or that I have toured Eastern Europe at European Union’s expense in the service of journalism in those parts?

If you want more about me, please say so and I may tell you how I was contributing to the Daily Sketch twice a week by 1976 and ’77 ever before I went to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, for my first degree.

Yes, I was contributing to the opinion and sports pages and was paid N7 for each article.

Thank you, dear Kayode Ojo, who was Sports Editor then. You gave me my break, though before then Daily Times Women’s Page Editor, Dupe Ajayi, had published me.  Please take on me on this for I have more to say; the money the Editor of Monthly Life paid me saw me through Unilag; thanks to that Editor—Mr. Wole Olaoye, now a columnist for Daily Trust.

You said that I shamelessly defended a most corrupt politician in the country. My reply is in two parts; one, only simpletons doubt that Ibori was targeted because of his politics. He supported the late Dr. Alex Ekwueme’s presidency bid in 2003 and Obasanjo “did him in” as someone as reputable as Dr. Patrick Dele Cole once wrote in the Vanguard.

Also, only self-deceit can make a journalist think that there was an anti-corruption war during Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidency and Nuhu Ribadu’s time at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. 

Somebody was willing to be someone’s attack dog and he attacked Ibori. It is likely, too, that you may have heard of a third term bid.

I wrote on Sunday May 30, 2004 (or so) that someone would attempt to change the constitution to allow himself become president for a third time, and that it would fail. That was in a special presidency series that ran in the Daily Independent, two pages daily for a week.

I told you about myself because I have spent days trying to learn about you and Shuaib, to appreciate your achievements. You stated that THISDAY heaped tributes on Shuaib. I searched for days and saw where a lady interviewed Shuaib, not a THISDAY editorial, not a news item. THISDAY? I forgot to tell you that by 1995/96, I sat on the Editorial Board of THISDAY.

So far, checking for the awards, reminded me of what Achebe said about a bad dictionary; you would take a confusing word to it and it would give you a more perplexing one.

Remember that you wrote that Shuaib (or his firm?) won “the Most Creative PR Agency Worldwide 2020 by Global Creativity Index GCI and Statista, the world-renowned statistics portal.”

This popped up for Global Creativity Index. “The Global Creativity Index 2020” which listed countries, not individuals or PR agencies; “Australia takes the top spot, followed by the United States and New Zealand. Canada is fourth, with Denmark and Finland going for a joint fifth. I looked up those behind this reputable GCI and saw in BLOOMBERG,  “Richard Florida is a professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management.. (He said) I identified the world’s leading nations on innovation, technology and the creative class. My team and I have created the Global Creativity Index.”

Then, I saw mutations of GCI akin to variants of the Covid-19 virus. I have to stop here to await Lawal’s reply and then, I will proceed on my hunt for the powers behind the GCI award and how it led to Statisa and then PRovoke.

So far, I found no mention of the body/bodies and the award in Reuters, Associated Press, reports or in any American or British newspaper or any reputable newspaper. There must be an explanation, and it will come. I know that there are awards and there are “awords—just hot air.When Mr. Dahiru M Lawal reacted to my piece, “Yushau Shuaibu on Emir and Air Peace: Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense,” published in this column last Saturday, I assumed it was with the best of intentions and the wholesome lessons it could contain.

Vanguard News Nigeria