Senator Ayogu Eze, the Flagship and the River of Life
In the chat rooms of the FLAGSHIP OF THE NIGERIAN PRESS, we are still bidding bye to Senator Ayogu Eze, 66, who has just been taken away by vicissitudes of the River of Life The “river of life” is another name for human blood circulation. It is a river that must ceaselessly flow, not too light or too thick, and without impediments or cataracts. It is a “river” naturally well equipped with substances, including water, which dissolves or nutralises other substances likely to make the blood too thin or too thick or form blockages or cataract. If the blood is too thin, it leaks out of blood vessels. This may be causing tiredness. We may not know what is going on until the gums in the mouth begin to bleed when we brush the teeth, or when we run some laboratory blood tests. When the blood is too thick, we may experience pain and aches and even heart problem and stroke, which may also occur when the blood is too thin. Therefore, blood circulation must always be on a neutral or even gear. We are informed Senator Ayogu Eze had a stroke!
A “flagship” is the leader in commerce, marine carnival or battle. The “Flagship of the Nigerian Press” is the nickname of The Guardian newspaper which it earned right on the starting block at its debut in January, 1983, overwhelming other newspapers it met in the trade. Ayogu Eze, as he then was, was one of the young men and women who brought this glory to Rutam House, home of The Guardian Newspaper. To be on board, the Flagship of The Nigerian Press of our days, a reporter had not only to have sound academic qualifications of which Second Class Upper University Degree, or Upper Credit Polytechnic Higher National Diploma (HND) were the barest minimum. The reporter had to be, also, reportorially picturesque, be monothematic, avoiding meaningless verbiage. The reporter should link the event to its past species and project it to the future in both astute back-grounding and interpretative writing. Additionally, he or she must have a long nose for news, and be an investigator. Ayogu Eze was all of these. So were the likes of Goddy Nnadi, who could have a file on the table of the Education Minister surreptitiously delivered to him at home in the evening and returned to the Minister’s desk before work began next day, or Jullyette Ukabiala, who could walk past security around President Ibrahim Babangida on a parade ground just to obtain confirmation of some assumptions in her copy, or Etim Etim, who made the Central Bank of Nigeria headquarters in Lagos a leaking basket, not just a basket, or Jide Ogundele who rattled the banks to submission or Shaibu Adinoyi-Ojo who discovered the smuggling in of 53 suit cases of money at the Lagos Airport during the change of currency under the military government of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. I cannot forget, also, Oseni Yusuf, a.k.a Zoom Lens, who brought to us the live picture stories of those 53 suit cases and of the faces of the men in military uniform and Agbada who helped money crooks defeat a government plan. This is an excellent photo news by all standards against the background of Africa’s tightest airport security. Of them all, only Adinoyi-Ojo has departed.
The departure from the flesh of Senator Ayogu Eze was, for me, the third transition in one week of persons who were close and dear to me in one way or the other. Only last Thursday, March 25, this column reported the surprising exit of “Auntie Nurse” (Mrs Inemesit Ekanem), aged 51, through a chest pain from which she did not recover. Just about then from my village came the news that our oldest paternal auntie, Mummy Idowu Adebola (nee Ogunnowo) left us at the age of 90. These events reminded me of The Law of Motion, which prevents stagnation in creation. Everything must keep moving, opening one cycle after another and closing them, including the cycle of birth on earth which terminates in the death of the physical body and birth of the soul into the world that is beyond the comprehension of our physical senses.
Every day I hear about The Guardian Newspaper or of persons who helped to form its formidable link of friends and work men, I remember the admonition that wherever we are, and whatever we do must suppor the purpose of our existence. So, what did Ayogu Eze (as he then was) and persons like me come to fulfill at The Guardian Newspaper? For many persons, the answers would be relative. For me, it was for both personal and group development, ending in the flowering and fruiting of the individual. The name of the newspaper, The Guardian suggest the answer. It was to be The Guardian of its society and, beyond it, of mankind. To understand this guardianship, we must proceed with the question: WHAT IS MAN? since it is man that the Guardian was meant to guide. If we succeed in finding the right answer for this question, we would recognise that man exists and he is proceeding from one point to another in his existence. Man therefore needs guardians in order not to miss his goal. What does it mean to be a guardian of this man? I do not wish to elongate this aspect of the purpose of man’s existence as regards the story of The Guardian Newspaper when it made its debut on the news stand in 1983, for not all members of its staff knew what attracted them to Rutam House. Simply, a job had to be done for which they carried deep within them ability to perform. Only later may the spiritual bandage over our eyes, which separates the past from the present and the present from the future give way to permit conscious understanding of where they were and why they were there. They had to have been inwardly homogenous with the mission for them to be aboard The Flagship, going by the adamantine laws of Nature, including THE LAW OF ATTRACTION OF HOMOGENOUS SPECIES which in every day speech we mention as “birds of a feather flock together”, attracted kindred souls. What was important was for THE GUARDIAN to have a rotating top of goal-conscious leaders who drove the gears of other machinery below it towards the end goal. I was privileged like every-one else to belong to this great Flagship family. So was Ayogu Eze. Oyinlade Bonuola was the first Editor. I succeeded him. Dr Stanley Macebuh, though not a Journalist, was our boss. Bonuola and I hid in the trenches and fired arrows into the society. The arrows were the greenhorn reporters we were incubating in-house, who pursued the goal beyond The Guardian. Our mission was three-fold, aimed at the body, soul and spirit of the readers and humanitiesl. First, we had to develop an editorial product which, in language, content and quality, was second to none. Having captured the market, we were to turn society’s gaze to higher realms, that is to lofty goals.
Ayogu Eze was one of the vibrant stars of the flagship. He worked with Mr. Ted Iwere, founding Features Editor. Mr. Iwere, passed the baton to Mr. Tommy Odenwingie, he to African American Mrs. Harriet Lawrence, the wife of a well-known Nigerian journalist from Edo State.
The Features Desks of those days were designed to wage war on weekly news magazines published on Mondays…Newswatch, Tell and Newbreed. They were merely amplifying our news breaks, pretending with high sounding prose to be giving the market something newer and better. They made more money every week from tiny investment in four publications a month. They made much more money than The Guardian made in one whole month and lured to themselves our brilliant staff, thereby piling on us the pressure of training and retraining of new staff. Chief Chris Okolie was Chief Executive Officer of Newbreed Magazine. He was son-in-law of the Ibru family and was on the Board of Directors of The Guardian Press Limited, owners of The Guardian Newspaper. He recognised that the market battle was instalmentally killing Newbreed. Mr. Chuks Okuwa, former Editor of the Nigerian Observer in Benin had just been removed from office by military Governor Tunde Ogbeha and gone to work at Newbreed, from where, without resigning his appointment, he came to work as Production Editor at The Guardian. As Secretary-General of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Mr. Onyema Ugochukwu, NGE President, and I had met Governor Ogbeha in Benin to request a review of the termination of the appointment of Mr. Okuwa. The mission failed. Mr. Okolie asked Mr. Alex Ibru, Publisher of The Guardian, to fire Mr. Okuwa. Mr Ibru was in a fix. His sister was Okolie’s wife. He expected me to show understanding. I could not fire Okuwa who did nothing wrong. That would be contrary to spiritual ideals we were struggling to propagate. I had to be a diplomat. I got the Night Editor, Baba Mac Alabi, now of blessed memory, and Mr Razaak Adedigba, Chief Sub Editor, to accompany me to the home of Chris Okolie one evening during the Christian Lenten season. Mr. Okolie welcomed us warmly. When he later learned of our mission, he was wild with anger. Baba Alabi, a Moslem, was the first to prostrate, begging for mercy for Mr. Okuwa. All of us followed. I was Secretary-General of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) then. How would I explain to the Guild that I fired a fellow member who did his job right only because I was under pressure to save my job from the matrimonial problems of my bosses?
Mr. Okolie agreed to let go if Mr. Okuwa would admit guilt in writing and apologise. He did. Mr. Okolie requested that I help train Newbreed staff like Guardian Features Desk staff. For the sake of peace, I agreed. So, most weekends, he and some of his staff came to my house where we discussed and planned the Newbreed cover stories for one or two weeks ahead. As part of the compromise, The Guardian kept out of these areas.
Ayogu Eze was a critical element in these features fireworks. So were Tommy Odemwigwe, Abel Oshevire, Felix Abugu and Mike Asuquo. What was so special about the strategy of this team? They belonged to what Editor Oyelade Bonuola called the INSIGHT TEAM. He missed industry plums such as Onyeama Ugochukwu and Dele Alake, now a Minister. The News Magazines merely popped up on Mondays to feature or opinionate on exclusive stories which any newspaper broke during the week. The Guardian was the leading EXCLUSIVES newspaper. Some of these stories which Seun Ogunseitan has been trying to bring back to our memory through WIKIPEDIA are (1) Olusegun Obasanjo’s failed bid to become United Nations Secretary-General (2) General Ibrahim Babangida’s formation of two political parties out of about 28 applications i.e the SDP and NRC (3) The 53 currency suit cases scandal (4) The American toxic waste dump discovered by Seun Ogunseitan. Once the exclusive story was broken, Ayogu Eze and his colleagues dug up “the news behind the news”. In today’s Dollar embattlement with the Naira, they would have told us which Nigerian was hoarding how much Dollars? They would have gone into the Dollar business, stripped it bare by working with the lords of the manor, learning the game and playing it with them as investigative journalists. They would have been in the forests, filing reports from there, telling us who and who were behind insecurity and for what purpose. What would they not have told us?
Thus, every day, The Guardian Features Desk made nonsense of cover stories the magazines were planning, and hence weakened them in the market.
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I noticed Ayogu Eze was showing more interest in events in Enugu State of today and I am not surprised that he became the Senator who represented Enugu North constituency. All good things, like the bad ones, have an end. This is in the lawfulness of THE LAW OF THE CYCLE. Nightfall must give way to daylight, rainfall to sunshine, war to peace, work to rest, death on earth to birth in the beyond, death in the beyond to life on earth. Thus Ayogu Eze had to leave The Guardian someday and start a new career in the political minefields, for which work in The Guardian had adequately prepared him. The trigger was a training programme in Germany by INTER NATIONS. The Guardian was so good that three of its editorial staff were honoured with this programme. They were Ayogu Eze, Wole Agunbiade and Niyi Obaremi. Incidentally, they were the three persons who had become custodians of The Guardian’s news writing style developed by and restricted for some years to Lade Bonuola and Femi Kusa. Femi succeeded Lade Bonuola as Editor. All three told the Management of their intent to travel. The Management appealed that they go in turns under a company-brokered agreement with the sponsors. They declined and went. It was a dare the management knew would cause other dares if it buckled. Our hearts were in our mouths. It was like the structures of a beautiful house was going to give way. Razak Adedigba, Chief Sub Editor, and Gbenga Omotosho, Senior Sub Editor, now Commissioner for Information in Lagos State for five years, were handed the batons. I hid my face somewhere when they mounted the saddle, expecting a rough day and perhaps several night-outs as well in the office. To my shock, however, there were no dents anywhere in the work process, either in home style quality or deadline schedules. It was the beginning of a new era in newsroom quality management. On their return, Ayogu Eze went into politics, Wole Agunbiade to Chevron and Niyi Obaremi to IGI. This was the Law of Motion at work. One door opens as one closes! Mr Gbenga Omotosho (as he then was), would become editor of GUARDIAN EXPRESS, The Guardian’s afternoon newspaper from where he became Editor of The Comet newspaper and , later, Editor of The Nation Newspaper from where he became the Commissioner for Information. I did not know Senator Ayogu Eze had a stroke. Our skin hides a whole world of events going on inside our bodies. Elevated blood pressure (hypertension) may have foreshadowed a stroke. Hypertension itself may have been foreshadowed by atherosclerosis (hardening of the blood vessels), caused by Calcium deposits on their soft muscles, hardening them, or by atherosclerosis, (blockages in the blood vessel system by fat and other plaque). Important organs such as the liver, pancreas, spleen and the kidneys may have been getting blocked and hardening as well.
We cannot rule out constipation either. It is not for nothing that it is said that DEATH BEGINS SLOWLY BUT SURELY IN THE INSTESTINE. Simply because they move their bowels at least once a day many persons believe they are not constipated. They may have a rethink if they realise that the transit time of any food in the intestine should not exceed 24 hours. Eating three “square “meals in one day should warrant three expulsions each day. Sometimes, it may be a question of the tendency of the blood to easily clot. Diet may help, instead of prescriptions such as Hesperidin, Aspirin and Warfarin, if it is rich in turmeric, garlic, cranberry, cayenne, orange peel, Lecithin, soyabeans, Vitamin E, Vitamin C, Selenium, Black pepper, Ginko biloba, Gotu Kola, Vida Max a proprietary extract of tomato which in eight clinical studies guaranteed freedom from blood clot for 12 running hours per dosage.
Constipating foods should be avoided. Digestion aiding foods are important for bowel health. One of them is PAWPAW LEAF. It has all the enzymes required for the digestion of all the classes of food. . The leaf and the seeds, have a rich supply of an enzyme named PAPAIN. This is a chemical cousin of PEPSIN, the enzyme produced by the stomach to digest protein. Pawpaw fruit has less papain.The stem and the unripe fruit are papain-rich. Another proprietary product called BETAINE-HCL is worth trying, too. So is the APPLE CIDER VINEGAR brand by BRAGGS (WITH MOTHER). Diatomaceous Earth (DE) DIATOM for short is equally good. However, it has to be the “food grade”, never the “pet grade” which would be harmful. It loosens the stool. We cannot forget MAGNESIUM, whether oil or capsule or powder. Nor can we ignore fiber food supplements. Orange peel pops up again in my mind, as Banana peel, plantain peel grated and cooked with the unripe fruit as plantain porridge. Psyllium husk is always at my beck and call when it comes to proprietaries.
Good bye Senator Ayogu Eze. You cared for your health. You remembered your friends, low or high in the Flagship under the trustee chairmanship of Fred Ohahawa. All shall remember you always. May you awaken to joyful life as you continue your journey home to the luminous garden of Paradise…Aaamen.
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