Dele Giwa: 31 Years of Anguish and Questions
October 19 2017 By Abiodun Giwa
Dele Giwa
Exactly 31 years that my eldest brother, Dele Giwa, a notable reporter, writer, editor and journalist, was forced out of existence by a letter bomb. The dastard incident happened in Lagos, Nigeria, at peace time during governance of General Ibrahim Babangida, a gap toothed officer, who helped pilot Nigeria almost permanently into a land of backward dance.
According reports, many Nigerians believed that the government killed my brother, but the government said it did not, and the assassination remained unresolved. The police has said that the case will be reopened anytime, if there is a new lead about the assassination case. What can I remember about my brother, the life that we shared together as members of same family, and the momentum eight years he lived from 1979 and before his assassination on October 19, 1986?
First, he pulled me out of the slum in Maroko, where I had lived when I worked as a bedroom steward at Eko Holiday Inn at the Victoria Island, prior to his arrival in the country in 1979. He taught me the act of good dressing and why you must dress well. I lived in a room in his house that contained his books and the books in turn became my closest pals. But before his act that transformed my life into living in a room with books, there were some developments.
I lived in the slum because the place was the closest to my work place and I moved in there from where I had lived in Sari-Iganmu, in an uncle's house, to avoid late arrival to work. I was a resident in the slum when my brother arrived from the United States, where he had bagged a Bachelor's degree in English and Master's degree in Journalism and worked at the New York Times. On the night of his arrival, he was lodged at the Ikoyi Hotel. While he went to cover a ceremony at Abonemma in River State, I stayed in the hotel room. While leaving in the morning of his departure, he looked at his suit and said, "I can meet anyone now." His words registered in my consciousness. One day, he just called me over after he had settled down in a three bedroom apartment at Ifako-Ogba and said, "Biodun, you have to move over and live with me," following a robbery in his house in daylight and the arrest of the robbers.
While I lived with him, I saw how he managed the issues arising from multiple marriage situation that circumstances had placed him, that later seemed like the springboard for the trouble he later ran into and his eventual assassination. Earlier, he worked at the Daily Times as features editor. One day he called my attention to a new job he said he was considering at the Concord Press owned by Moshood Abiola, a politician and a popular enabler of military coups.
I told my brother that it was better he remained at the Times. I thought about Abiola's politics in the National Party of Nigeria, Abiola's stout opposition against Obafemi Awolowo's - leader of the Unity Party of Nigeria, an apostle of free education in the country and our own background as a struggling family. Based on my knowledge of discussions between my brother and Dr. Stanley Macebuh, one of the top media personalities in the country, I knew my brother wanted to get out of government controlled Daily Times, to ensure his freedom of thought was not endangered. When he told me he had already taken the job as Sunday editor at the Concord, I shut my mouth.
His new job at the Concord gave him access to a bungalow duplex and a new chauffeur driven Peugeot 504 with a ready power generator installed in front of the house. The improvement in my brother's status was manifest compared to his earlier situation in a three bedroom apartment and when he drove his own Volkswagen car. He became more popular at the Concord than he was at the Times. He was detained by government on three different occasions over scoops published against government's misdirection during Shehu Shagari's inept regime. There was a closeness between my brother and Abiola more than any other journalist in Abiola's employment, except Doyin Abiola, editor of the National Concord, who became Abiola's wife.
Suddenly, the issue of my brother's unmarried status, while he struggled to overcome the separation from his marriage with one of Nigeria's most successful women, led to a female news reporter falling in love with him and him in love with her. But unknown to my brother, Abiola also had interest in the female reporter. Abiola sent words to my brother for my brother to take his hands off the female reporter, whom he said belonged to him. My brother sent words back to Abiola that since Abiola had many wives and he had none, he should allow him to have the one who had fallen in love with him and him with her.
Consequently, Abiola immediately reshuffled his editorial department and dumped my brother from the Sunday editorship into the editorial board. The matter generated lots of news frenzy about what may have happened that made Abiola embarked on the changes in his organization. The cause was shrouded in secrecy and no one knew the truth of what led to the changes, save close insiders. The matter led to my brother's eventual departure from the Concord Press late 1984 and began the Newswatch magazine in 1985 with some of his professional colleagues. And that ended the formal and informal interactions between Abiola and my brother, his finest editor.
Six months into the Newswatch magazine's successful debut, my brother received a telephone call in the night from a highly placed government official, who revealed to him that someone had given the government some dangerous information about him and that he should move to render the act of the source of the dangerous information impotent. My brother immediately called his deputy next door, and they both sat behind their kitchen windows and discussed about who could have given government the so called dangerous information about him.
The matter moved into a more dangerous dimension, when information later arrived from the Directorate of Military Intelligence, DMI, inviting my brother for interrogation. He was accused of plans to ferment socialist revolution in the country and and that he was into gun running. My brother vehemently denied the allegations before the DMI officers. He went to his lawyer and told him to go to court to stop the DMI, because he said he believed that whoever may have trumped such deadly allegations against him wanted him dead. And who could have wanted him dead?
The head of the DMI, Halilu Akilu, called my brother's house on a Saturday, but my brother was not home, and he left a message with my brother's wife that he had called my brother to let him know that the issue of the interrogation and the allegations against him were closed and that my brother should not worry about them any more. He promised to stop over to see my brother the next day on his way from the airport. The next day before noon, a bomb was delivered to my brother's house and that ended his life.
Before their estranged relationship over the woman who became my brother's last wife, my brother had encouraged Abiola's resignation from politics, giving the journalists in the newspaper the freedom they needed to work as journalists without partisanship trappings. But after my brother's assassination, Abiola took back his politics and decidedly ran for presidency, and he won the election.
But his closest friend, Babangida, annulled Abiola's victory in the election, and Abiola was not allowed to resume office as president. The trouble led to Babangida's decision to step aside from power as military president, a position he got through one of Abiola's sponsorship of coups. Babangida placed Ernest Shonekan as interim president. Shonekan was soon shuffled aside by General Sanni Abacha, who thought Shonekan was weak in handling Abiola's protests against military government's decision to disallow him from assuming office as president.
When Abiola's protest continued for the restoration of his election, he was arrested by the military government and was put in jail without trial close to four years. He died the morning that the international community sought to look into his case against the military government.
I know that the military government may have killed my brother. But the question that I have been unable to find an answer is about who may have given a wrong and dangerous information against my brother to the military government. And where are the killers, 31 years after the assassination? Or is there a mystery about the possibility of anyone having access to bombs aside from the military government and their friends? Are developments in my brother's not enough to make it plausible to place his assassins between his former boss and the military government?
I have flourished at my own pace by lessons that I have learned from my brother and his life circumstances. But often, I feel disturbed by not knowing those who may have betrayed and lied against him to the military government, and the fact that his eventual killers are seemingly unmasked, and have not been made to pay for the evil committed against my family, the rule of law and humanity.
According reports, many Nigerians believed that the government killed my brother, but the government said it did not, and the assassination remained unresolved. The police has said that the case will be reopened anytime, if there is a new lead about the assassination case. What can I remember about my brother, the life that we shared together as members of same family, and the momentum eight years he lived from 1979 and before his assassination on October 19, 1986?
First, he pulled me out of the slum in Maroko, where I had lived when I worked as a bedroom steward at Eko Holiday Inn at the Victoria Island, prior to his arrival in the country in 1979. He taught me the act of good dressing and why you must dress well. I lived in a room in his house that contained his books and the books in turn became my closest pals. But before his act that transformed my life into living in a room with books, there were some developments.
I lived in the slum because the place was the closest to my work place and I moved in there from where I had lived in Sari-Iganmu, in an uncle's house, to avoid late arrival to work. I was a resident in the slum when my brother arrived from the United States, where he had bagged a Bachelor's degree in English and Master's degree in Journalism and worked at the New York Times. On the night of his arrival, he was lodged at the Ikoyi Hotel. While he went to cover a ceremony at Abonemma in River State, I stayed in the hotel room. While leaving in the morning of his departure, he looked at his suit and said, "I can meet anyone now." His words registered in my consciousness. One day, he just called me over after he had settled down in a three bedroom apartment at Ifako-Ogba and said, "Biodun, you have to move over and live with me," following a robbery in his house in daylight and the arrest of the robbers.
While I lived with him, I saw how he managed the issues arising from multiple marriage situation that circumstances had placed him, that later seemed like the springboard for the trouble he later ran into and his eventual assassination. Earlier, he worked at the Daily Times as features editor. One day he called my attention to a new job he said he was considering at the Concord Press owned by Moshood Abiola, a politician and a popular enabler of military coups.
I told my brother that it was better he remained at the Times. I thought about Abiola's politics in the National Party of Nigeria, Abiola's stout opposition against Obafemi Awolowo's - leader of the Unity Party of Nigeria, an apostle of free education in the country and our own background as a struggling family. Based on my knowledge of discussions between my brother and Dr. Stanley Macebuh, one of the top media personalities in the country, I knew my brother wanted to get out of government controlled Daily Times, to ensure his freedom of thought was not endangered. When he told me he had already taken the job as Sunday editor at the Concord, I shut my mouth.
His new job at the Concord gave him access to a bungalow duplex and a new chauffeur driven Peugeot 504 with a ready power generator installed in front of the house. The improvement in my brother's status was manifest compared to his earlier situation in a three bedroom apartment and when he drove his own Volkswagen car. He became more popular at the Concord than he was at the Times. He was detained by government on three different occasions over scoops published against government's misdirection during Shehu Shagari's inept regime. There was a closeness between my brother and Abiola more than any other journalist in Abiola's employment, except Doyin Abiola, editor of the National Concord, who became Abiola's wife.
Suddenly, the issue of my brother's unmarried status, while he struggled to overcome the separation from his marriage with one of Nigeria's most successful women, led to a female news reporter falling in love with him and him in love with her. But unknown to my brother, Abiola also had interest in the female reporter. Abiola sent words to my brother for my brother to take his hands off the female reporter, whom he said belonged to him. My brother sent words back to Abiola that since Abiola had many wives and he had none, he should allow him to have the one who had fallen in love with him and him with her.
Consequently, Abiola immediately reshuffled his editorial department and dumped my brother from the Sunday editorship into the editorial board. The matter generated lots of news frenzy about what may have happened that made Abiola embarked on the changes in his organization. The cause was shrouded in secrecy and no one knew the truth of what led to the changes, save close insiders. The matter led to my brother's eventual departure from the Concord Press late 1984 and began the Newswatch magazine in 1985 with some of his professional colleagues. And that ended the formal and informal interactions between Abiola and my brother, his finest editor.
Six months into the Newswatch magazine's successful debut, my brother received a telephone call in the night from a highly placed government official, who revealed to him that someone had given the government some dangerous information about him and that he should move to render the act of the source of the dangerous information impotent. My brother immediately called his deputy next door, and they both sat behind their kitchen windows and discussed about who could have given government the so called dangerous information about him.
The matter moved into a more dangerous dimension, when information later arrived from the Directorate of Military Intelligence, DMI, inviting my brother for interrogation. He was accused of plans to ferment socialist revolution in the country and and that he was into gun running. My brother vehemently denied the allegations before the DMI officers. He went to his lawyer and told him to go to court to stop the DMI, because he said he believed that whoever may have trumped such deadly allegations against him wanted him dead. And who could have wanted him dead?
The head of the DMI, Halilu Akilu, called my brother's house on a Saturday, but my brother was not home, and he left a message with my brother's wife that he had called my brother to let him know that the issue of the interrogation and the allegations against him were closed and that my brother should not worry about them any more. He promised to stop over to see my brother the next day on his way from the airport. The next day before noon, a bomb was delivered to my brother's house and that ended his life.
Before their estranged relationship over the woman who became my brother's last wife, my brother had encouraged Abiola's resignation from politics, giving the journalists in the newspaper the freedom they needed to work as journalists without partisanship trappings. But after my brother's assassination, Abiola took back his politics and decidedly ran for presidency, and he won the election.
But his closest friend, Babangida, annulled Abiola's victory in the election, and Abiola was not allowed to resume office as president. The trouble led to Babangida's decision to step aside from power as military president, a position he got through one of Abiola's sponsorship of coups. Babangida placed Ernest Shonekan as interim president. Shonekan was soon shuffled aside by General Sanni Abacha, who thought Shonekan was weak in handling Abiola's protests against military government's decision to disallow him from assuming office as president.
When Abiola's protest continued for the restoration of his election, he was arrested by the military government and was put in jail without trial close to four years. He died the morning that the international community sought to look into his case against the military government.
I know that the military government may have killed my brother. But the question that I have been unable to find an answer is about who may have given a wrong and dangerous information against my brother to the military government. And where are the killers, 31 years after the assassination? Or is there a mystery about the possibility of anyone having access to bombs aside from the military government and their friends? Are developments in my brother's not enough to make it plausible to place his assassins between his former boss and the military government?
I have flourished at my own pace by lessons that I have learned from my brother and his life circumstances. But often, I feel disturbed by not knowing those who may have betrayed and lied against him to the military government, and the fact that his eventual killers are seemingly unmasked, and have not been made to pay for the evil committed against my family, the rule of law and humanity.
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