late Giwa flips through a document during his lifetime
W-O-R-L-D E-X-C-L-U-S-I-V-E!!!
COLD WAR INSIDE DELE GIWA ESTATE
BY ABDULMUMINI ADEKU
………………………………. MEMORIES ARE FOREVER
AT DELE
GIWA’S 30 YEARS LECTURE
………………………………… TEARS LIKE OCEAN OVER
DELE GIWA’S
BETRAYAL BY COLLEAGUES
………………………………….NEWSWATCH SOLD FOR NOT
LESS THAN N225 MILLION AT THE TIME OF SALE
…………………………………DELE GIWA’S FAMILY DID
NOT GET A DIME FROM SALE
…………………………………BABANGIDA MAY HAVE USED
JIMOH IBRAHIM TO BUY BRAND TO SILENCE CRITICS AND WITHDRAW BRAND FROM MARKET
AFTER CREATING AN AIR OF CONFUSION
………………………………BABANGIDA LEAVES IN FEAR
OF THE GHOST OF GIWA
……………………………….YAKUBU MOHAMMED,DAN
AGBESE NOT SEEN AT EVENT BY PAEDIA EXPRESS CREW
……………………………….DASHING ,RICHARD
AKINOLA AND FAMILY KEEPS DELE GIWA’S MEMORY ALIVE
For up to three to four hours that
the event lasted ,there was a pin drop silence in between Mrs Funmi Giwa and
her daughter ,Aisha Ayodele Giwa on one side and Mr Ray Ekpu ,erstwhile partner
to the late husband of the former, Mr
Dele Giwa the slain journalist at the 30 th year memorial lecture of the latter
organized recently by a foundation named after him and the Nigerian Union of
Journalists ,Lagos State Branch.
In 2008, during a forensic
investigations of the Newswatch magazine files by this reporter in the Lagos
offices and Library of the company at Billings way in Ikeja ,Lagos, Nigeria ,it
was exclusively discovered that Chief Mike Adenuga Junior and Chief Alex
Akinyele who was to later emerge a Minister For Information under the Babangida
administration were at some point on the board of The Newswatch magazine thus prompting
this reporter to raising questions back then as to the morality behind such
saying that it was a hoax that messrs Ekpu,Agbese and Mohammed were actually
interested in finding the killers of Dele Giwa and were actually instead using
his name and goodwill to feed very fat.
So when The News Office Desk of
Paedia Express Multimedia Group in Lagos, Nigeria posed the riddle to Mr Tunde
Giwa,the younger brother to the deceased and highly respected journalist it
simply led to revelation of a fresh can of worms..
He confirmed the allegations of
treachery leveled against Giwa’s colleagues by this reporter in his previous
body of work and explained that this was the conspiracy that the family had
been talking about all along that nobody took very seriously.
He revealed that apart from the fact
that the family was not accepted to be on the board of directors of the firm upon his demise
,they also did not receive any money from the sale of the Newswatch brand
Feelers suggests that the trio of Mr
Ray Ekpu,Yakubu Mohammed and Dan Agbese walked away without breaking a sweat
with a whooping sum of not less than N225 Million from the transactions that made
the Newswatch brand to change hands effectively., with each of the them going
home with at least N75million each as against their deceased friend and
associate who paid with the supreme price with his life all in an attempt to
position the brand as the number one in the media market in Nigeria at the
time.
His words:”we went to them to ask
for permission to join the board of the firm,so they asked the family to get a letter
of administration and by the time we did that and by the time we went back to them they told us that
they had
enough people on the board”
“They had Adenuga and when we even
went to the Corporate Affairs Commission [C.A.C],the latter was not in the firms
incorporation and so it was just an arrangement to collect money from the
Babangida regime and continue to hoodwink everybody that they were committed to
finding his killers”
“when they eventually sold Newswatch
magazine recently,we were not even given a dime
of the money that they collected
and in all of this year’s none of us was on the board of directors”
“This event that took place is as a
result of Richard and I putting our acts together so that his memories ,ideals
will not be forgotten,Ray Ekpu and others do not know anything about it at all “He
was an invited guest just like yourself and not part of the organizing team at
all like some people may want you to
believe” he added.
Oladele Giwa was a Nigerian
Journalist and famed Founder of the now
moribund Newswatch magazine.
In the words of Ralph Uwaechue ‘s
Makers of Modern Africa : In 1955to 1960,he attended Ansar deen Primary School
and later at the local Authority Secondary Modern School in Lagere, Ile Ife.In 1964 he was
admitted into Oduduwa College ,Ife and it was here that he acquired his zeal
for and initiation into the world of journalism .
He became one of the editors of the
school journal,The Touch,founded by a West Indian teacher ,Hartley Sutton.
He passed the West African School
Certificate Examination in 1967.
He worked for a year as a clerk at the
Barclays Bank and now Union Bank Plc in
Lagos,Nigeria and for five months at the Nigerian Tobacco Company ,Ibadan
He secured a job at the Nigerian
Broadcasting Corporation ,Ibadan as a news assistant :in a role that meant he had to help to
collate reports from outstations aside from recasting wire services reports and
the monitoring of such stations like the
British Broadcasting Corporation [B..B.C.] ,Voice of America [V.O.A] and the
Ghana Broadcasting Corporation[G.B.C]
He left for the United States of America in 1971 and read for
a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English at Brooklyn College,New York.In 1974 ‘he
secured an employment with the New York Times
from where he was later to move to the Daily Times of Nigeria as its
features Editor att the time.
He was at the National Concord
Newspapers between 1980 to 1984 as its Editor ,Sunday Edition and in 1984 after a row with
late Chieff M.K.O. Abiola over the editorial direction of the National Concord
Newspapers ,he berthed at his newly born
baby:The Newswatch magazine.
The maiden edition of the journal
hit thee vendor stands on the 28 of January,1985 though it dated 4th of
January,1985.
With Newswatch ,investigative and
forensic journalism attained a new height and dimension ,it did not shy away
from sensitive or controversial issues nor did it prevaricate on issues of
major national import .some people may
have disagreed with his style ,a few may have criticized it but none doubted
his patriotic motivation in search of the truth.
It was the nature of his death in
the prime of his life and career that turned Giwa in the eyes of many into a
symbol of resistance and an icon of investigative journalism.
Previous inquests by this reporter on
this subject showed that of a truth a
chanced meeting with a certain drug courier by the who was working for some barons in power ,Ms
Gloria Okon while the deceased reporter was
abroad at the time after the courier had been reported dead in a Kano
prison staged drama was what marked the Late Giwa as a candidate
for the grave as far as the Babangida regime was concerned with General Buba
Marwa said to have been the unidentified courier on a motor bike that delivered
the deadly parcel marked .c-in-c,an acronym for Commander-in-Chief at the Dodan Barracks ,which eventually sent Mr Dele
Giwa to the great beyond.
It’s being 30 years after the demise
of the master story teller but for his family members the pain or trauma they have experienced has been worse since they
keep asking for justice which the Nigerian system continues to keep away from
them
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