24 Dec 2006 |
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Godwin Agbroko, (1953 - 2006) Godwin Agbroko, a tested and experienced journalist, and Chairman of the Editorial Board of ThisDay is no more. It is difficult to believe. On Wednesday, we had met at one of those end-of-the-year come and chop events at the Sheraton Hotel in Lagos. He was full of life as always, genial, and avuncular. He went from table to table, pumping hands, saying hello in his usual quiet manner. A few of us joked about his pair of trousers which was a feet metres off the ground. No one knew that that would be one of his last public appearances. All of us who met him at that event are in a state of shock. On Friday, he was said to have left his office in Apapa around 9 .40 pm to go back to his home in the Isolo area of Lagos. An hour later or so, his colleagues who were still in the office received a phone call reporting that he was dead. His car was found with the engine still running, and the airconditioner on, by a group of ThisDay staffers who were going home in a company staff bus. When they saw their oga's car by the roadside at Daleko, with lights on and engine running, they became curious and stopped to find out what Oga Agbroko could be doing by the roadside. They met him inside the car; lifeless. He was seated with his seat belt intact. He had been fatally shot. Around the same spot, there were other corpses lying on the ground: three policemen and two unnamed persons. The initial conclusion is that he must have run into an armed robbery operation. But he was he killed by armed robbers or by assassins? This is a puzzle that the police must unravel. The Isolo area like every other part of Lagos, has become notorious as a den of armed robbers. Those of us who work in that neighbourhood leave our offices every evening with fear in our hearts. But who knows? Agbroko's death reminds us painfully, of the crisis of insecurity in the land. A few months ago, journalists had mourned the death of Omololu Falobi, our colleague who was also killed by persons suspected to be armed robbers. Now, Agbroko's death has given this Xmas season, a cloak of pain. It is one thing to read about armed robbery in the newspapers, it is another thing to know the victim, to feel the pain, to have the normlessness of the Nigerian situation brought home to you. The pain suddenly becomes real; the images more haunting. Agbroko was a diligent and fair minded journalist. He was regarded with respect by the boys for his experience and maturity. He had given the profession more than twenty years of his life. He was once editor of The African Guardian where he honed his skills as a reporter and public affairs commentator. He was also at other times, editor of Newswatch and The Week. As Chairman of the Editorial Board of ThisDay in the last four years, he wrote a well-received column on Tuesdays titled This Nation in which every week, he subjected the shenanigans of Nigerian public officers to searing scrutiny. He produced precise sentences in measured tones, bearing definite declarations. No person was considered too sacred for him to interrogate; his commitment to the Nigerian nation was not in doubt. He railed against our collective failures. He painted pictures of an ideal nation that this nation could have become and can still become. His commentaries were topical and direct to the point. In his last column titled "Magic as Primaries" (Tuesday, December 19), he had dismissed the PDP Presidential primaries which produced the Yar'Adua-Jonathan ticket as "electoral magic". He wrote: "In the case of Yar'Adua, his emergence was obviously a hide-and-seek game instigated by one man. Outside Katsina, and probably a few other proximate states, Nigerians including the aspirants who stepped down, cannot claim to know Yar'Adua well. So, while one was the product of a democratic consensus (no zoning to the north and no anointing), the other is more like the handiwork of a garrison compulsion. Not to worry. As long as voting and vote-counting were done in the open, the form of democracy (never mind the substance) has been satisfied. If PDP didn't do things this way, then (like panadol), it cannot be PDP." The same day, there was also a rejoinder to a piece he had written on "Aviation Hysteria" (ThisDay, November 21, 2006) but in a footnote, Agbroko dismissed the rejoinder from the office of the Minister of Aviation by raising further questions about aviation security and the sincerity of the Ministry of Aviation. Journalism offered Agbroko a scope of self-expression and an opportunity for radical interventions which ordinarily might not come across in personal interactions with him. He was a reserved avuncular figure whom younger journalists addressed as "sir"; oga", or simply "Mr Agbroko". He had reached a stage in his career where he was surrounded by younger men who looked up to him and who held him as one of the untiring soldiers of the profession. He was a man with a keen sense of duty and responsibility. Once, we had scheduled to travel together out of Lagos, in the company of others, and some of our colleagues had decided to play a prank on him. He was already at the airport when one of his colleagues at ThisDay told him that their Chairman, Prince Nduka Obaigbena, had just phoned to summon an emergency meeting of the editorial board. This particular colleague had told everyone to watch Agbroko closely because he would rush to the office immediately, without asking any questions, but he, the trickster, had a mind of stopping him before he embarked on that futile trip. But somehow, the prank went out of hand. Nobody knew when Agbroko left the airport. I ran into him, on my own arrival, at the car park and wondered why he was rushing off. He explained that his Chairman had summoned a meeting, and he had to get to the office immediately. I cracked a joke about his Chairman disturbing his weekend. And he said something about our job being a 24/7, 365 days assignment. When I told the other guy later that I ran into Agbroko leaving the airport, he felt really bad. "It was just a joke" he kept musing. He had proved his point about Agbroko being "old school", but he regretted telling lies and putting a colleague through unnecessary stress. We tried Agbroko's line. He had switched off. He missed the trip. But when he discovered the truth later, he merely laughed it off and grumbled about the naughtiness of younger journalists who do not realise that they too are growing older!. We will miss him, dearly. The management of ThisDay should endeavour to publish a collection of his columns. It is the least that can be done in his honour, to preserve his memory and to document for posterity his contributions to the making of Nigeria, through public commentary, during the Obasanjo years. The rest of us will carry in our hearts raw anger about how this nation wastes its rich human resources. Agbroko's death, like all other deaths in recent times, confronts us with the vulnerability of our circumstances. I have been told that there is so much death and bloodshed because this is the Christmas season and that after Christmas, the situation will be different. Must the season of the Lord's birth also be a season of death? What shall we do about all the lives that have been wasted? Must we fold our arms as the nation implodes across communities? It is a curious paradox. Life in the country has become scary. No one is safe anymore. The fact that you are inside your bedroom does not even mean that you are safe. Our cities have been overtaken by anarchy. Fear stalks the land. Armed robbers and assassins now rule Nigeria. The basic function of government is to guarantee the security and welfare of the people. In this regard, government continues to fail. The police is created as an institution to ensure the safety of human lives and property. But where is the Nigeria police in the face of the serious internal security crisis that this country is experiencing? For the past one month or more, it has been one sad story or the other. In Ibadan two days ago, armed robbers had a four-hour operation in front of the University of Ibadan, and killed seven policemen in the process. The robbers were said to have been as many as 50. The same day three policemen were killed in Port Harcourt. Many more policemen have been killed in different parts of the country. I tried a random check of the newspapers over the past one month: I managed to record about 40 cases of policemen who have been felled by armed robbers. And those are the ones who got mentioned in the news: what of the unreported and unknown cases? These days, when a policeman hears the sound of a gunshot, he takes to his heels. When he is told that an armed robbery operation is going on in any part of the city, he quickly removes his uniform. Most policemen now wear a different shirt on top of their uniforms; even when they are on duty, they prefer to travel incognito. The ones at road intersections directing traffic are always on the look out for any unusual sound or movement. Should they suspect that a gang of armed robbers is on the way, they will vanish into thin air in less than a second. There are no heroes in the Nigeria Police Force anymore. If policemen themselves are this helpless, then it is no wonder that ordinary Nigerians are facing the worst crisis of their lives. It is the people's right to human dignity that has been taken away. What is more disturbing is the realisation that the police in fact sound as if armed robbery is given and there is little that can be done about it. In other countries, when one police man is killed, the police launch a massive hunt for the criminals. When a citizen is murdered, the police look for the killers. Here, the police don't even know how to mourn their own dead. I don't want to sound uncharitable but I daresay that the country's security situation was not as bad as this under the former Inspector General of Police Tafa Balogun. You can call the man a thief, you may say he has been indicted by the EFCC and the courts, but under him there was more security of lives and properties. He drove armed robbers off the streets of Nigeria, and the average policeman under him, was more confident. But what is his successor Sunday Ehindero doing? He had assured us that his men are committed to only one principle: "To Serve and Protect with Integrity". Service we cannot get; integrity we cannot see; protection we don't have. We only see bloodshed and avoidable deaths. The situation is so serious we ought to be calling for the Inspector-General's resignation! The tragedy is so sad we ought to be carrying placards on the streets asking government to protect us or abdicate! In the meantime, we shall mourn our dead, our brother and colleague, Godwin Agbroko, Chairman of the Editorial Board of ThisDay newspapers. His pen has taken a sudden, final salute. His inkwell is now dry. There goes another innocent victim, a fine newspaper man.... "One short sleep past, we wake eternally. And death shall be no more: Death thou shall die" (John Donne, Holy Sonnets, 1609). So let it be.
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