By Prince Osuagwu

UNTIL the passing away of Vanguard’s Entertainment Editor, Mr Amadi Ogbonnaya, last week, not many people knew that he actually started his journalism career as a telecommunications reporter.

Incidentally Amadi was not just an ordinary reporter, he built bridges between the telecommunications operators then and their customers, thereby endearing himself to the top brass of the industry. This gave him accesss to stories at a time when breaking major  telecommunications stories was like squeezing water out of stone but Ogbonna made it look easy.

No wonder his friends with whom he plied the trade as a crack telecom reporter still refer to  him as Amadi the scooper.

The man bestrode the telecom industry as a reporter between 1985 and 1990. These were days when the scope of news coverage was limited to the Ministry of Communications, NITEL, Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) and a few private companies such as Siemens of Germany, Ericsson of Sweden, Marubeni West Africa of Japan and GEC of United Kingdom.

Late Mr. Ogbonnaya Amadi , pioneer ICT journalist

He, along with a band of other reporters including Mr Aaron Ukodie, who is now the Publisher of eWorld Magazine, Fidel Otuya, now Chief Executive of GLOBANet TV, Enyi Moses, Publisher of IT World International magazine, Goke Odeyinka, Chief Operating Officer of Numbers Communication and Ebhohon Ikhurionam of Tell Magazine, could be described as pioneers of ICT reporting in Nigeria.

As the news of his death broke, these colleagues stormed Vanguard, wearing long faces, shedding tears with total disbelief that their colleague could bid them bye in such a bizarre manner. But that is death!

At a point, everybody including this writer broke down in tears as Mr Ukodie went down memory lane narrating the stuff that earned Amadi the scooper tag.

“You guys may not know what you have lost to death. Amadi was a journalist in all sense of it. In 1985 when Amadi was asked to cover the telecom beat, he joined me, then of the Guardian, Olu Adebayo of New Nigerian Newspaper, Waheed Odusile, of Concord, now Managing Editor of the Nations and Waheed Olagunju of NTA, now General Manager, Corporate Communications, of Bank of Industry (BOI).

“Subsequently, Otuya, Ikhurionam, Enyi Moses and Goke joined the train months later. Then, we tried to outdo one another in search of stories but everybody could still confess that Amadi was something else.”

Ukodie also recounted that because press releases were virtually absent at the time and News conferences and press briefings were few and far between coupled with the fact that editors at the time would  not take excuses for not getting a story, Amadi had to employ all known tricks in the trade to gather a pool of stories that can sustain him and his colleagues.

“ Amadi was a leader in exclusive news gathering, but most of the news stories that could not be accommodated in Vanguard, he would quickly send them out to us. He witnessed the evolution of the telecommunication industry from the creation of NITEL in January 1985 to the early days of  commercialisation, liberalisation and privatisation of the telecommunication sector.

“He provided valuable input to the creation of the industry regulator, NCC. He was a torn in the flesh of public officers who were not willing to be accountable to the Nigerian people. We can vividly recount one incident when Amadi and some of us were invited by a top official of NITEL, who  wept profusely while begging us to reduce our unearthing of goings-on in the organisation because his job was at stake.

“Senate President, David Mark and Major-General Tanko Ayuba, who were Ministers of Communications between 1985 and 1990, no doubt would have very fond memories of  Amadi who gave them no breathing space with his reporting.

“Even as we covered the telecom beat then which was more about what the minister said or did, it was by and large about what NITEL and NIPOST were. We bonded well with one another and also worked our separate efforts in search of exclusive stories for our newspapers. Our desire was to write stories that made front page or back page lead.

“Amadi was never found wanting. And it is difficult to describe Amadi in one sentence because he was fun to be with. Amadi was not selfish even though he was not materially loaded. He was caring and would ask about your family whenever we met”.

Ukodie was right because Amadi’s biggest asset was to crack jokes. He was an extrovert that desired to be on the go all the time. This might have accounted for why he was drafted to the Entertainment desk.

Truly if every account his friends had given of him, were true, Amadi deserves better burial rites from the ICT industry because the best standard practice he left is what other reporters who have used their pens to shape this industry inherited. People like Okoh Aihe and Reuben Muoka, now of NCC and the latter crop of reporters in today’s Hitech desk.