"People said I was next to be attacked after Dele Giwa was killed" –Ekpu

Veteran journalist, Mr. Ray Ekpu, clocked 70 recently, and he was celebrated by friends, colleagues and well wishers across the country. In this interview with   TUNDE AJAJA, the celebrated journalist talks about his growing up and career.

The torrent of articles and encomiums that greeted your 70th birthday was huge, courtesy of your colleagues and eminent persons in the society. Did it all come to you as a surprise?

It’s amazing. I didn’t know that Nigerians generally appreciate my excessions in the industry. Loads of people, including those I didn’t know in person, have been writing, commenting, texting and phoning me and I asked myself what did I do to deserve all of these? It means Nigerians are very appreciative persons. And the surprise of it came from President Muhammadu Buhari. It was a kind of message that I would not expect from a President that I have subjected to severe criticism on a number of issues. Of course, I have also praised him on some policies that I believe are right. I thought politicians may not react like that to people who are courageous enough to speak the truth to them, but I was pleasantly surprised to get that message from the President. It means that at his non-partisan moments, he does appreciate what Nigerians do for Nigeria, even if they are opposed to the position that he or his party holds on those issues. So, I thank him immeasurably for his gesture and I thank all the Nigerians who have said very kind things about my excessions in the industry.

When you look at the journey so far, would you say you are fulfilled?

I am fulfilled, in two ways. I have a good family that is very stable. I have a good wife and three lovely children. Two of them are married and I like their spouses. I have three lovely grandchildren and when they come around, we box ourselves and play with one another. The kind of feeling you get as a grandfather is amazing. I love my children and they too love me. So, as a husband, a father and grandfather, I feel I have performed my role. That is one aspect. Then, I’m fulfilled that I’m a journalist. When people ask me my major achievement, I say to them that my major and most important achievement is that I’m a journalist. I wanted to be a journalist and I’m one and I’m staying there. I’ve stayed there for 45 years and I’m going to stay there forever. Journalism pumps my adrenaline; it’s a passionate thing for me. It’s the most important profession in the world, and that’s why I’m in it. If you could, you as a journalist should pay your employer, because you know, comprehensively, a lot about what is going on in the society; you’re the first to get information; you send information out to the world; you help in moulding the world and the way people think on a daily basis because you provide information for people to take decisions every day. It’s an extremely important role. And for me to be a journalist at all, I consider myself extremely lucky.

What inspired your interest in journalism?

My dad was a member of the Customary Court of Appeal, which existed in the Eastern region in the past. It was the cord in-between the customary court and magistrate court. He used to come back late and before he came back, I would have returned from school and the vendor that used to supply him newspaper – Nigerian Outlook – would have brought it. The paper was owned by the Eastern Nigerian government. So, I would read before my father came back. I was in Standard three or four then. I used to see Nnamdi Azikiwe’s grandiloquent speeches. The editor then was Udo Awah, and he also had a column. But it was MCK Ajuluchukwu, who was a famous journalist at that time. So, I used to memorise some of the things I was reading. I didn’t know what I was doing, but that, I guess, was the beginning of it. I had an obsession with words, and when I got to secondary school, it continued. I would report a sporting event that happened in school; Ibibio State College (Akwa Ibom State) and post it on the board and call myself ‘Pressman Remy’. When I got to higher school, Holy Family College, Abak, I started the first student publication, called ‘The Nightingale’ and I called myself Editor-in-Chief (laughs). I would cyclostyle the news gathered, staple it and sell. And it made a lot of impact in the school because there had never been a publication like that, and the principal, Mr. G.H. Udoh, assigned our English teacher, who was a Reverend Father from Ireland, to be supervising what I was doing. Also, in those days, there used to be vacation jobs for students. I did my first vacation job at the Cross River radio in Calabar, under a woman called Mrs. Hart. She was very good and she taught me some basic things in reporting. The second vacation job I did was with the Nigerian Chronicle, under the leadership of Mr. Moses Ekpo, who was the pioneer editor of the paper, owned by the Cross River State government. Moses Ekpo was my mentor and he led me by the hand into the land of print media journalism. He taught me a lot. He’s now the deputy governor of Akwa Ibom State. During that vacation, I was shown how to design a page, cast headlines, write captions for photographs, etc. So, I would consider that these were the seeds of the journalism tree that emerged later. Of course, I went to the University of Lagos to study Mass Communication and as they say, the rest is history. When I finished my National Youth Service Corps programme in Sokoto, it was natural for me to return to The Chronicle, where I was employed as a reporter on the features desk in 1974. I later became the features editor and I became editor of the paper in 1977.

That was just three years after you joined, how did you rise so fast?

Yes, that was rapid but I didn’t get there out of favouritism. The vacancies for editor of the daily and Sunday titles existed and the General Manager, Chief Effiong Essien, a very fair-minded person, decided to appoint people substantively for those two positions. He invited Prince Tony Momoh, who was the editor of Daily Times at the time, to come and set a practical examination for us. We were seven candidates vying for the two positions. I applied for the position of Sunday Editor. So, we took the test and the following day, we did an interview at the Public Service Commission. They said I came first but that why did I apply for Editor of Sunday and not daily and the difference between daily and Sunday and I explained. They said if they appointed me as editor of daily paper, could I do it, and I said yes. In those days, there was fairness and merit. I didn’t know the interviewers. That was how I got the job I didn’t apply for (laughs).

Being a young person, how did you cope managing the older persons in the system?

They gave me a lot of problems and you know there is a lot of ethnic politics everywhere. With a lot of experienced people in the technical department, the dominant tribe occupied many of the positions. Every night, I would be there till about 2am to 3am. My wife could have thought I was doing something else and she was a young wife. One day, I took her to the office to see what I did in the office. After going twice, she didn’t go again (laughs). The position of editor comes with a huge responsibility. They get loads of stories and then separate the wheat from the chaff and then put the wheat on the table. That decision can change the society for good or for ill. So, it’s a big task. However, I got the feeling that those people wanted to drive me out of the job and prove that I wasn’t competent. So, I reported them and the General Manager called them for a meeting and warned them. From that time, I started having peace. I edited the paper for three years and I had to leave when they started saying I would be promoted to Editor-in-Chief.

Why; was that not supposed to be a promotion?

I had just started practising the profession and they wanted to make me Editor-in-Chief, which is like promoting me out of relevance, as I saw it at that time. If you work in an organisation where they have many titles, of course the editor-in-chief, had very important roles to play, but that was not the case. So, I decided to leave. That was 1980. In actual fact, I had only practised for six years, and I felt it was too early to be the editor-in-chief. I’m sure some other persons would have jumped at it because you’d have a bigger office with secretary, big salary but with nothing much to do. Daily Times used to have that method of dealing with people giving them problem. I guess my journalism style also gave them a bit of problem because I had problems with two military administrators. I later left and I got a job as the editor of Sunday Times. By the time I arrived, people were writing petitions against me, saying the National Party of Nigeria had brought a party hack to take over an important paper like the Sunday Times, which was the highest selling newspaper at the time and they said I didn’t have any qualification, when I graduated from UNILAG and went to Indiana University (United States) to do an advanced diploma in journalism. My bosses told me to publish my qualification and I did. I found that Nigerians are inherently fair. It is when you do unfair things or you are unjust that they reward you with injustice and unfairness, and I said that because all those who worked with me were Yoruba and I was the only non-Yoruba person among them. They cooperated with me and I was fair to them. That should be a lesson to those at the higher level.

You, Dele Giwa, Yakubu Mohammed and Dan Agbese set up Newswatch. How did four of you; respectable journalists at that time, come across one another?

Good question. Let me weave the cobweb that linked the four of us. When I was in Chronicle, Dele Giwa, who was editor of Sunday Concord, came for a meeting of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, which was holding in Calabar. We met and became friends. That was in June 1980. Yakubu Mohammed was two years my junior in UNILAG, so I knew him, not closely, but I knew him. He was editor of one of the papers that students published to bite people in those days. He was doing a good job. Then, Dan Agbese was my classmate in UNILAG and we graduated together in 1973. So, that was the link. Yakubu was editor of National Concord (daily) and Dele Giwa was editor of Sunday Concord. When I was moved from Sunday Times to Business Times, I did it for about three or four weeks before I resigned. I wanted to model the paper after Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, where you could have a bit of politics, science and human interest stories, but with emphasis on business and economy. The Managing Director didn’t like the idea; he wanted to retain the model of having it as a strictly business and economy paper, which was not what I, professionally, thought I should do. So, since I couldn’t sack the Managing Director, I better sack myself (laughs). That same day, I typed a two-paragraph letter of resignation and took it to the General Manager, Publications, Mr. Fadairo. I told him the company could take three months salary from my entitlements and give me the rest if I had anything left. That was how I left the Daily Times group. From there, I went to look for job at Guardian, but Dele and Yakubu lured me to Concord and we all worked together before we left to start Newswatch.

So, you didn’t have another job in view when you resigned?

No, I didn’t. However, in those days, it was easy to get a job, particularly if you had reached a certain level and people appreciated what you were doing. So, it was easy to gamble the way I did. The next day, I went to the Guardian to look for a job. I met Lade Bonuola, who was the Managing Director, and I told him I wanted a reporter’s job. He was surprised. I told him I wasn’t coming to fight for an editor’s job. I told him I had contacts and I could give him front page and back page stories almost every day. He said he would talk to the publisher and that I should come back the following day. So, I left and went back to my house.

Did you tell your wife about it?

(Laughs) I did not tell her before I took the action. I apologised to her and that it was not the end of the world. I told her to keep supporting me and God would see us through. Dele Giwa came to my house in the evening and I told him I had gone to look for job at the Guardian and he said I shouldn’t bother. He said since I left, they had spoken to Chief MKO Abiola about me, and that Dr. Doyin Abiola, who was editor-in-chief, and Yakubu were in favour of my coming to join them in Concord. He said they had in fact created the position of the Chairman, Editorial Board for me. I initially declined but when they insisted, I yielded and joined them. Dr. Doyin called me to come and discuss my salary with the publisher, and I told her anything she offered me was okay and that I was happier that I got a job. She insisted, so I told her I gave Dele Giwa the power of attorney to do that on my behalf. Dele said he told chief offer me the same salary he was being paid but that chief said no. So, Dele said he should be paying me N500 less his (Dele’s) own salary. That was what I got. Journalism in those days was not about money, even though the salary was good. I was happy being a journalist and getting a job and I don’t know if I’m an unusual person, and I guess that’s why I’m still here 45 years after. I loved the business of writing, reporting, getting information, putting them together and delivering it to the world.

When you were to leave Concord, how did Abiola receive it?

Normally, you would expect him to be unhappy and hostile, but the day I submitted my letter, I knew the chief would accept it with immediate effect. So I called my staff and informed them.

How did you know he would accept it?

We were already disgruntled and unhappy. People were writing petition against us (Dele Giwa, Ekpu and Yakubu Mohammed). They were just looking for ways to get us out so they could take those positions. They said we were spending the company’s money recklessly and chief asked the director of finance to investigate. After the investigation, he found that it was other people that were collecting more money for various trips while we collected less. I have a copy of the report. So, he felt bad. In fact, we stopped some people, including chief’s relations, from stealing the company’s funds. But, at that point, the atmosphere had been seriously poisoned. There was a day I got to my office and my secretary screamed that I should not enter. She was shouting juju juju. I entered and saw a cock on the floor of my office with some red, black and white stuff. I told my secretary, Rose was her name, to bring me a broom and let me sweep this thing away. She said it was juju and I should go out but I told her not to worry. She said I shouldn’t touch it, but I did because I hadn’t done anything to anybody. She brought a broom and I took it outside. I took kerosene and burnt it myself.

Why were you not scared, especially with the signals you had got previously?

There was nothing; they were just trying to intimidate me.

You later sold Newswatch; why?

We didn’t sell it. All of us were in our late 60s already and we were getting ready to retire. So, we thought doing a weekly publication was no joke and if you want to do it rigorously the way we did it in those days, you can’t do it at that age. I remember the period (General Ibrahim) Babangida overthrew (General Muhammadu) Buhari and we spent 52 hours in the office. We didn’t go anywhere; we didn’t bathe but we only sent for food. Respect for journalists come from two sources; how we do our job and how we conduct ourselves. We called that issue of the magazine the collectors’ edition. If you see it, you would be happy as a journalist. So, producing such quality of magazine was a huge task and we thought we could get some money in and that was why one of the managers in the company told us of somebody who had made massive investment in the media, and so he understands what is involved in publishing a newspaper. That was why we got involved with the guy. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a raw deal. But we are in court, and the court will settle all of that.

You were detained about six times and one of them was in 1983 when you predicted in your article that the Nigerian External Telecommunication building might be set ablaze and that government should secure the building. The following day, the building was razed and you were arrested for arson and murder, because one person died in the incident. Did you truly have any information?

The security agents didn’t rely on logic. If I knew something about it, why should I publish it? That was January 1983. I wrote a column called Sodom and Gomorrah, part 1. It was in three parts and that was the first part. It came out in Sunday Concord. What I did was to look at the trend of corruption and reactions to corruption and I said because some offices where there were corruption cases were set on fire, there was need to be vigilant on that property due to one N54m corruption case there. I suggested in my column that the authorities should take charge of the NET building so that what had happened in other places didn’t happen there. The article came out on Sunday, but the next day, the place was set on fire and they arrested me and said I knew something about it. The court freed me.

All those times you were detained, did your wife at any time caution you to take it easy?

No, she was always supporting me to do what is right. She has been an anchor in my life and profession. Once she knows that I’m fighting on the basis of what is right, she supports me, being a very fair-minded person. She went through a lot because of my excessions in the media industry. I always say that she was doing a rectangular journey; from our house to her office, to the children’s school and then to the detention centre to see me. She’s a very strong and supportive woman. I call her my Rock of Gibralta and it’s no flattery. She stood firm by me all through. People said to her that her husband was doing those things so he could be famous, but she always replied them to leave me alone and that it was God who gave me the light to see those things. She went through a lot because of me and I hope I have been able to also be a factor in her life. I pray God will continue to keep her for me.

You were very close to the late Dele Giwa and you were even neighbours when he was killed through a letter bomb. Would it be right to say that was one of your dark moments?

My saddest experience was the assassination of Dele Giwa and the proscription of Newswatch. Those were responsibilities that I did not anticipate. They fell on my small head and my slim shoulders. I did not expect them at all.

Can you recall what happened that day?

It was on a Sunday; I went out early in the morning with my wife to Surulere to see some family friends. I called him before I left. We were occupying two wings of a duplex and I told him I was going out. He asked if I remember that we had a meeting by 1pm and I said yes. I told him I would be back before then. So, I was rushing back for the meeting when I saw Kayode Soyinka in a night wear splattered with blood. I asked him what happened and he said Dele had been bombed. I didn’t understand what he was saying. I told him to enter the car, so we drove to number 25, Talabi Street, Ikeja, where we lived. I saw a huge crowd and smoke. I asked what happened and they told me. I asked where he was and they said he had been rushed to the hospital. I told my wife to alight. As I was about driving to the hospital, I hit somebody’s vehicle. I wanted to move the second time but I hit another vehicle and then one lady came to me and offered to drive me. She said she could see that I could not drive in that mood. So, she drove me to the hospital. I met Dr. Tosin Ajayi, who took me to where Dele was. He was covered with blood. I saw him and I started screaming his name; ‘Dele! Dele!! Get up, I’m here! Can’t you see me?’ His eyes were still open, so I thought he was still alive. But the doctor told me he had been certified dead. Tears rolled down my face. I had always thought I was a tough guy, but tears came out. This tough guy became like a jelly. I then composed myself and started making calls, reaching out to the directors of Newswatch. So, we met at the hospital and did a press release on the events of the past few days that culminated in his assassination. I didn’t know where that strength came from, but I knew we had to carry the burden; a multi-dimensional burden – his family, the magazine itself, the public and the government. We were inconsolable, but we picked up the courage wherever it came from. It must be God who provided that source of courage. And because I was very close to Dele, people were telling me to leave and that I was next to be attacked.

Did you at anytime consider it?

They said I should leave the country and go and practise somewhere else, but I said no, that’s not me. I wouldn’t leave the young people working for us all alone. I vowed never to go anywhere, and I said if I was next, truly, so be it. But I knew they were not God, who is the one who knows who is next. My colleagues and I kept holding meetings. I lost 10 kg within three weeks, without doing anything. I lost my memory for nine months. I could sit down with you and we could talk for one hour and it would make sense. After that, everything would just vanish. It took about nine months for me to recover my memory. So, that’s the depth of the feeling of what we went through.

Was it entirely because of your activism that the military proscribed Newswatch?

No, we published the report of the bureau that Babangida set up over the return to civil rule. He sat on the report and didn’t release it. We got a copy of the report and published it. They used that as a pretext to proscribe Newswatch. We think it also had something to do with Dele Giwa’s death because of our big push for those who masterminded the assassination to be brought to justice. We were crusading and every week, we were publishing it ‘Who killed Dele Giwa’ and that didn’t let them sleep well. I’m sure that rankled them, so they found a way to destroy the magazine. They proscribed us on a law that never existed at the time. They just sat down, crafted a new law and backdated it to criminalise the magazine and its founders. Luckily, we had some money in the reserve, so we paid the staff for those six months and then we created a human interest magazine, called ‘Quality’ and we registered it under a different company name. That was how we survived and our directors were very supportive.

Are you very sociable?

Yes, Dele and I used to go to parties. Lagos is the home of entertainment, or you could say home of parties. You can’t even do business well here if you don’t relate with people at a social level. They invite you to their function and if you don’t go, they may not give you business. So, yes, I was sociable. We drove Mercedes Benz and we worked hard to get it. Some people thought as a journalist you have to walk around on your bare feet and with tattered clothes, but journalism has changed and people have to change. We could rub shoulders with people in other professions and speak to them authoritatively.