October 19, 1986 remains unforgettable.
I can’t ever forget. It was a Sunday; I still remember vividly.
We just returned from Sunday service and we’re about to settle down to the traditional Sunday meal of rice and stew, when father broke the news.
“Won ti pa Dele Giwa”
“Dele Giwa has been murdered”, father announced with so much sorrow and a deep sense of loss. Trust my father, he had the gift of transporting the weight of national tragedies from wherever to our living room. But that tragic event was different; his favourite journalist had just been murdered at Ikeja, Lagos.
I was only 9 years old when it happened but that incident went on to shape my life in many ways. Through my father, an avid newspaper reader, radio listener, street current affairs analyst and historian, I had been in constant contact with Dele Giwa and his exciting and reinvigorating Newswatch team.
Father was an unrepentant buyer of Sketch newspaper, Punch newspaper, Lagos Horizon and Newswatch magazine. Being my first hero, I naturally followed in his footsteps, ferociously consuming newspapers and magazines at a very tender age (the story of how my father had shaped my reading and writing skills will be told some day).
That day, elevated sorrow enveloped dad as details of the gruesome murder of Dele Giwa through parcel bomb by suspected state agents filtered in. The site and sight were gory; his living room, where he had opened the letter bomb was blackened and bloodied, with Dele’s body badly mangled.
At that point in time, Dele Giwa (a smooth skin handsome man) was perhaps the finest and most daring Nigerian journalist. Expectedly, the country was left in shock as many grieved not only over his death, but more over the manner of its execution.
Because Nigerians loved him, Dele Giwa metamorphosed into an instant folk/pop hero. Popular arts celebrated him and gave him a secured place among the pantheon of martyrs. The street took over. Songs were composed to mourn and immortalize him as well as comfort his family.
But something had happened to me. I lost my innocence as I got my first dose of the now famed Nigerian tragedy. It was Nigeria that happened to Dele Giwa on Sunday, October 19, 1986. Like a deranged hen, Nigeria ate her own egg.
I remember how hard Gani Fawehinmi fought to bring the culprits to book and keep the matter on the front burner of national consciousness and discourse. But we all know how that ended.
35 years after, the greatest tribute we can pay to that wizard of a journalist is to reopen the case with a view to solving it as a fitting start of national rebirth. The fact that that murder is unsolved is an open sore of the nation. Nigeria needs closure as much as the Giwa family, whose son was gruesomely murdered.
Thank you, Dele Giwa for being an important part of my childhood. You inspired a young mind to become a journalist, writer and seeker of truth. It still pains to remember you but the memories of sweet things past have helped.
On this day and always, may the memories of the horror they inflicted on you traumatize your killers into a confession.
Adieu, country man.
Written By: Olumide Olugbemi-Gabriel
MBHS 95 Alumni Association 