By Denrele Animashaun

My daughter, Aderenle, asked me: can you write a bit about Alhaji Alade, please? We need to honour him, sir. Don’t you think?

Alhaji Alade Odunewu (Allah De) who passed away on Thursday July 25, 2013 is unforgettable. And no-one will need any prompting.

He left footprints in journalism, administration and politics that cannot be erased. He was a master prose and logic as this fore word from my book- Voice of Reason (Volume 1) will show:

I once sojourned in a small town called Worthing, in Sussex, on the south coast of the United Kingdom. I was an intern working with the local newspaper, THE WORTHING HERALD, preparatory to my moving to London for a schedule professional course. I was a familiar figure on the streets of Worthing as I sauntered between my landlady’s apartment and the newspaper house every day.

I had the habit of reading the posters in the grocery, one of which shouted the question at me: What DOES Cassandra say? That was all that the DAILY MIRROR chose to advertise the day’s edition. Not the robbery at Oxford Street, or the massacre in China. But what the man who says what others wish they could say had in his column for the day. This, to my mind, speaks volumes for the place of the powerful columnist in the print media.

The Mirror treated Cassandra like a film star; they panegyrised him. For writing a damn good column uninterrupted for decades, he was knighted by the Queen and his is the only bust on the ground floor of the MIRROR building; not that of his editor or publisher. On one occasion, the MIRROR celebrated libel by the columnist rather than publish a retraction or an apology.

I once asked the question – who is a columnist?

A columnist, according to one of those terse sources of information – THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF CURRENT ENGLISH – is a journalist who regularly contributes to a newspaper a column of miscellaneous comment on people and events. But I wish to impose a tougher qualification than the dictionary permits. A columnist is one who devotes his entire time to writing a regular column and nothing else for appropriate reward by his employer.

I guess there must be few staff contributors, if any, in our part of the world who can scale through this test. Most journalists of the post-independence Nigeria who took to column writing derived inspiration from immortal William Neil Connor, CASSANDRA of the DAILY MIRROR to whom reference has already been made or his peers in other climes. CASSANDRA, whose specialities were combat and satire, ran his column almost non-stop for 30 years. As the old warrior “introduced” himself after a break caused by illness – “this is Williams Connor, licensed to write a column five days a week under the name CASSANDRA.” And it was common knowledge that CASSANDRA’s salary was the envy of many Prime Ministers.

There were great columnists who fit into the dictionary and publisher/editor category mentioned earlier. I refer to the founding fathers of Nigerian journalism of the colonial era and their immediate successors, whose explosive essays were decorated with hybrids and archaism laced with the sweet smell of words of Greek and Latin derivatives.

A few examples of powerful demagogic writers who qualified as columnist of the time will suffice.

Haratio Jackson and Herbert Macauly were devastatingly polemical in their onslaught against the British representatives in the colonial era. But by far the most remarkable personality on the stage after the missionary role of the Herbert Macaulys of the time was Nnamdi Azikwe, famous for his INSIDE STUFF in the WEST AFRICAN PILOT, It was a favourite reading of anyone who was literate enough to read a newspaper, students scrambled for it to pick up strange words and jaw-breaking sentences.

And then there was WEEK-END CATECHISM, also carried by the WEST AFRICAN PILOT. Apart from reader questions, the author, boycott apostle Mbonu Ojike, asked himself heavily loaded political questions and provided answer. HERE, THERE AND YONDER, by Tom Tinkle was another Zik’s group product. And the Tony Enahoros, the Marshall Kebbys. Ajuluchukwu’s column, MONGER was a classic example of what grammarians call journalese. Monger never spoke of a tail, but a candal appendage, never the nose, but olfactory organ. MONGER’s barber is a capillary artist, an untrue statement belongs to the realm of fiction.

The next generation of columnists consisted of those who want to write like CASSANDRA or Walter Lipman and, of course, we have had the hard core political commentators. The difference should be clear. Whereas the William Connors and Nigerian writers who wanted to imitate them dealt with all manner of subjects, from baby’s toys to insomnia, the political contributors wrote in promotional interest of the parties of their fancy.

I read Kola Animasaun every week. His column does what a good column should do – take on all manner of people as well as all manner of subjects, yes, all manner of subjects, from the sublime to the ridiculous. As I myself attempted to do decades ago, the column is about men and matters; it is history; it is about politics and politicians, morality, about religion, government and the governed, about endless struggle between the powerful and the weak; about man’s inhumanity to man, about Class Divide; about those strange elements you find in George Orwell’s 1984

We look forward to the day when a columnist is a columnist, first and last and remunerated accordingly. If you ask me to award an Oscar for the most durable columnist in Nigeria, it will go to late YPO Sodeinde who wrote his column up to the age of 80 years plus. This book is a MUST for all higher institution where the English language is taught, as well as the various departments that make up the Faculty of Arts or Social Science in our universities.

Hadj Alade Odunewu

Lagos

27 May 1999

Farewell thee Alade. May Allah repose your soul in Aljanah Firdaus.