From 1859 when an Anglican Missionary Reverend Henry Townsend founded the first newspaper, “Iwe Irohin”, in this part of the globe, till date, no media practitioner shares martyrdom with late Dele Giwa, the pioneer Editor-in-Chief of the trail-blazing Newswatch magazine which maiden edition hit the newsstands on January 28, 1985.
Over the years, a number of Nigerian journalists have, in the course, of discharging their reportorial duties, been subjected to degrees of harassments, intimidations and detentions at worst cells at different part of the country. A few even paid the supreme price. However, none was murdered in the manner Giwa was got inside his living room on October 19, 1986.
The Edo State-born, who as an English Literature lover, began his media journey from Oduduwa College, Ile-Ife, his place of birth in 1947, was brutally killed through a bomb professionally tucked inside an official envelope innocently handed to him by his unsuspecting 17-year-old son named Billy, the heir apparent he had as a secondary school pupil in 1969.
That rare explosion went into history as first of its kind, and 38 years after, no semblance of it has ever been experienced by any journalist in this country.
TheTabloid.net gathered that two days to that Sunday of smoke, the flamboyant editor had dreamt and saw himself in an auto-crash with his Mercedes Benz. He narrated it to his wife, Mrs Funmi Giwa who was said to have advised her hubby to give the car a break, an advice which Giwa treated with kid gloves and dismissed outright.
Incidentally, the same night, Giwa’s mother, Mrs Elekia Giwa, who was living in far away Ugbekpe Ekperi, their Etsako Local Government hometown, then Bendel State, also dreamt of the death that would soon snatch her first child away from her.
In her sleep, it was learnt, that the mother saw the family enveloped in grief over a loss of life but had no means of passing the frightening message to her celebrity son in Lagos.
Not only Giwa’s mother that saw that gloomy future, one of his co-founders of the daring magazine, Mr Yakubu Mohammed was also said to have weeks earlier slept and dreamt of a hovering danger on the ceiling of the company. On the fateful day, Mohammed, whose dreams scarcely went off the track, was said to have also dreamt of a tragedy befalling Giwa inside his Talabi Street, Ikeja duplex.
To the US-trained Giwa, who worked with the New York Times for four and half years before his return to Nigeria in 1979, death on duty was not a stranger, and throughout his career, he wrote about it in his column. He acknowledged death as an hazard attached to practice of good journalism. In 1979 as feature editor at the Daily Times, he wrote an article wherein he alerted his fellow media practitioners of killings of journalists while discharging their duties.
In 1983, Giwa also in his column, Parallax Snaps, wrote that “I don’t subscribe to the pen being mightier than the bullet. I know that the conventional wisdom calls it the sword. That is not really applicable in this day and age when people don’t have the gladiatorial patience to swing the sword. It is either the bullet or the bomb.”
Throwing light on the revelations that preceding Giwa’s untimely death was the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Newswatch, Mr Ray Ekpu, who had knitted a bond with Giwa from their days at the Concord titles founded by now late entrepreneur success, Chief MKO Abiola in 1980. While Ekpu, who was former editor of the ‘Nigerian Chronicle’ in Calabar, the Cross Rivers State capital, was chairman, editorial board, Giwa was editor of the Sunday Concord. Both found professional treasure in each other and became almost inseparable and envy of their superior officers who were allegedly intimidated by their guts and glamorous lifestyle found odd in Nigerian media environment.
In his account published in “Jogging In The Jungle: The Newswatch Story” , a 407-page book published in 2010, Ekpu confirmed the exclusive insight with additional information that glorified the power of dream in human life.
Although he was not in the biblical Joseph class of Giwa, his mother and Mohammed, Ekpu, respected for his prose prowess, had a fair share of the premonition of the tragedy that hit his friend.
He recalled, “for one full week, my thumb was twitching violently as if it wanted to separate itself from the rest of the fingers. It had never happened before then or since then. As soon as Giwa died, the twitching died too.”
Ekpu also confirmed that Mohammed was gifted with power of dreaming dreams that pre-determinate occurrences.
He revealed, “On the fateful Sunday, October 19, he drove from his Ikeja residence to the Federal Palace Hotel, Victoria Island, where his friend, Eddy Amana, Chief Engineer with the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, was lodging. Both of them had sumptuous lunch and Mohammed soon dozed off and woke up a few hours later with a horrible dream about Giwa.
“In the dream, a strange object had fallen on Giwa and he was struggling to free himself from it without success. Muhammed woke up, happy that it was only a dream but his pleasure was short-lived. Giwa was, indeed, hit but Mohammed didn’t know.”
Incontrovertibly, Giwa was hit so irreparably and left only with a thiny chance to see life again. The pains were all over him; shortly before he breathed his last in the presence of a team of sweating medics, he was said to have made what turned to his last request which he felt he desperately needed for a relief from his burning heart. He asked for water. Alas, he was ignored; his request was turned down on the strength of the danger of drinking water at that crucial moment of struggle to revive him. At that point, he gave up, Giwa died at 12: 27 pm at the First Foundation Medical Centre, Opebi, Ikeja, owned by his friend, Dr Tosin Ajayi.
Was the brave Giwa also a seer who probably never discovered the gift in himself? It was further learnt that during his regular visits to the hospital where he ended his life adventure, he used to joke with nurses on duty that the day he would be brought to that facility, he would destabilise them. Didn’t he fulfil his promise at age 39? He didn’t only destabilise them, he also attracted a forest of legs to the hospital.
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