My piece last week, especially the concluding paragraph about Peter Enahoro, has set me thinking again of the special role of columnists in the iconography of the Nigerian newspaper going back to its early days. This has been in connection with some reflective work I have been doing on the special phenomenon of the centenary of Nigeria. It may be a downer to introduce the flat expression ‘amalgamation’, but how useful to have a topic that you can return to all year long. In my Lagos book (which at the risk of annoying readers of this column I am bound to continue referring to) I have a small section on the extent to which journalists have featured prominently as hero figures in Nigerian fiction beginning with Cyprian Ekwensi’s Amusa Sango, musician and reporter for the West African Sensation, to the journalist central figures created by Helon Habila and Okey Ndibe, the “good-hearted cynics who are heroic figures in spite of themselves, more frequently victims than victors”.
The section also make reference to the real journalist heroes who emerge from the zeitgeists of different periods in Nigeria’s post-independence history. Although there have been many more recently, giant among the pioneers was the same Peter Enahoro, whose Peter Pan column in The Daily Times was in its prime when I first visited Lagos fifty years ago, There is more to say about him as no Nigerian helped me to understand the Alice-in- Wonderland nature of Nigerian political parties more than he. His quizzical cynicism was particularly appropriate for taking apart the NCNC at a time when it was trying to be both government and opposition (a little bit like the Liberal Democrats in the present absurd Coalition government we have here in London).
His How to be Nigerian is a wonderfully humorous, text to revisit in this year of lugubrious national stocktaking. He was the role model for those ambitious to rise as a columnist through Nigerian media. His short chapters are brisk and shining examples for a column on such topics as ‘Nigerian Oratory’, or ‘the Mourning Game.’ I still love his sub-title – “A guidebook for natives and expatriates on the conduct, deportment, comportment, bearing, demeanour, mien, carriage, air, port, actions; the misdoings, misconducts and misbehaviours of the Nigerian adult male and female.” The easy confidence of his satire has added to the debate I have been having in diverse quarters about Nigerian-ness in this year of the centenary and of how easy it is to describe something with conviction as being ‘Nigerian.’
If I can (not for the first time) move into nostalgic mode, in the nineteen-twenties West Africa there was briefly one that carried the picturesque legend ‘The Old Coaster’ by ‘Spotted Dog’). But its best-remembered column was one that was maintained through some fifty years of life called Matchet’s Diary. This was the creation of the late David Williams, who gave it a shape and tradition. It was a mantle I inherited with some zeal in 1982, but it was never for very long, as it was so coveted by other members of staff. The model of the diary with two or three separate stories suited my youthful reporting-minded self and I tried to clone it as ‘The Cutting Edge’ by Cutlass in the ephemeral Business Confidential when I came to work in Lagos in 2001. I then experimented with a column that was more of a diary in my early years at Business Day, but for the last seven years I find that have grown into the mind-set of the back-page column, I find it suits my seniority, giving me the chance to draw on long wells of experience, as well as take the liberty of engaging in semi-autobiographical meandering (using the ‘I’ word which never used to be my speciality), for which self-indulgence I occasionally have to beg readers’ pardon.
I found myself hankering for the opportunity to dash off a diary a couple of weeks back, when in the space of six days there was a poignant joint briefing on the worsening situation in the Central African Republic, which looks set to be one of the year’s most dramatic crises, given by the Archbishop and the Imam from Bangui; a considered talk by Prof Attahiru Jega, the boss of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission at Chatham House, reassuring us of how things were going to be further improved at Nigeria’s 2015 elections, but subjected to reasoned cross-examination by a concerned audience consisting of diaspora Nigerians; and the memorial service at the central London church of St Martins-in-the-Fields for Komla Dumor, the Ghanaian star presenter on BBC World, who was tragically struck down by a heart attack at the age of forty-one, as his career as a major figure international broadcasting figure was about to take off. Each one of these striking events could be turned into stimulating carefully-modulated items in a diary. But alas, we cannot live in the past!
This piece was orginally published here on Tuesday, February 11 2014
