There are deaths that pass quietly like a fading headline. There are deaths that sound like the shutting of a newsroom door that once refused to stay closed against tyranny.
The passing of Yakubu Mohammed, co-founder of the Newswatch magazine, belongs firmly to the latter. It is not just a man that has gone; it is an era adjusting its shoulders under the weight of memory.
Born on April 4, 1950, in Ologba, Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State, Yakubu Mohammed came from a Nigeria that still believed words could wrestle power to the ground.
When he died in Lagos in January 2026, at the age of 75, after an illness, it felt as though one of the last sentinels of principled journalism had finally laid down his pen.
To speak of Mohammed without speaking of Newswatch is like describing thunder without the rain. In 1984, alongside Dele Giwa, Dan Agbese, and Ray Ekpu, he helped found a magazine that did not merely report events but interrogated them. During the long night of military rule, the Newswatch was not just a publication; it was a conscience. It asked questions others whispered in fear. It printed truths that rattled boots and unsettled uniforms.
Mohammed’s journey to that defining moment was already steeped in discipline. He had served in senior editorial roles at the New Nigerian and the National Concord, learning the craft, understanding and mastering the politics of ink and silence.
When he resigned as the substantive editor of the National Concord in 1984 to co-found Newswatch, it was not career recklessness; it was conviction.
He later rose to Managing Editor in 1986 and, from 1994, became Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Newswatch Communications Limited. He stayed the course for nearly three decades, steady as a metronome in a profession prone to drama.
But power, like a jealous god, does not forgive those who expose it. On October 19, 1986, Dele Giwa was murdered with a parcel bomb, a crime that remains unsolved nearly about 40 years later. That moment redefined Nigerian journalism forever, for a scary reason.
But that moment also bound the surviving founders together in shared grief and stubborn courage. Now, fate has returned with a second knock: Dan Agbese, the essayist with a scalpel for prose, died in November 2025. And two months later, Mohammed followed. Three founders. Three silences. One legacy.
History often remembers institutions and forgets the human cost behind them. Mohammed was not only a journalist. He was a public servant, serving as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He sat on boards, including Yadara Nigeria Limited and Lastop Limited. He belonged to the Nigeria Union of Journalists, the Nigerian Guild of Editors, and the Commonwealth Journalists’ Association. Yet, beyond titles, he was something rarer: a man who believed journalism should outlive journalists.
Internationally, figures like Kapuscinski, Woodward, and Fallaci remind us that the press can shape nations. Locally, Mohammed stood shoulder to shoulder with such ideals, proving that courage does not require a foreign accent. Only a stubborn heart.
Imagine the three of them—Giwa, Agbese, and Mohammed, somewhere beyond deadlines, arguing again about leads, headlines, and whether Nigeria will ever fully learn to love the truth. The newsroom lights may be off, but the arguments, surely, continue.
Although his memoir–Beyond Expectations–he launched in November 2025 attracted to him some wave of anger over some of his views contained therein on late Gani Fawehinmi, late Giwa and former Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, Nigeria has lost a watchman, a decent, humble journalist who never flaunted his true status; many never knew he was the engine room when the Newswatch was in the antenatal hours in 1984.
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