– Says Osoba named him ‘Daily Times Man at the Hot Spot!
Ace photographer and former photo editor at Daily Times, who covered the State House for more than two decades, Dipo Onabanjo, last week clocked 80 years. Nicknamed ‘Man at the Hot Spot’ for always being at the right place at the right time, Onabanjo who now enjoys a quiet retirement in Lagos, shared with Gboyega Alaka stories of some of his adventurous moments covering local and international events.
Former Editor, Daily Times and former governor of Ogun State, Aremo Olusegun Osoba nicknamed him: “Our man at the hot spot,” during his days at the Daily Times newspaper, for his fearlessness, swiftness to be at the right spot at the right time, no matter the risks; and for his tenacity.
For decades, Dipo Onabanjo, now Otunba Dipo Onabanjo – his people in Ijebu Ogbeere in Ogun State found him worthy of the Otunba title and rightly bestowed it on him; ace photographer later photo editor with Daily Times, covered government activities at the State House in Lagos, the then nation’s capital, spanning five heads of state’s tenures.
He also undertook several journalism adventures within and outside Nigeria, some so daring only the brave-hearted could dare.
For these and several other reasons, Otunba Onabanjo is a living history book of Nigeria, and perhaps African affairs in the 1960s, ’70s and the early 80s. And it is for this reason this reporter couldn’t resist the temptation to sit with him for an interview session, especially on this occasion of his 80th birthday.
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Speaking of tenacity, one clear case, as Otunba Dipo Onabanjo regaled this reporter with his exploits during his active days last Monday August 14, 2023; the eve of his 80th birthday, would be his coverage of the hostage taking incident at the Spaghetti House restaurant in Knightsbridge, London in 1975, which has come to be known in history as the Spaghetti House Siege. Some three men, the police insisted they were robbers, had invaded the popular restaurant; and on learning that the police had been called in and surrounded the place, they took the restaurant staff hostages, using them as cover and hoping the police would go away. However, the police stayed put, and hence began a siege that lasted six whole days – September 28 to October 3, 1975; but so also did Onabanjo, who had travelled down to cover the now infamous incident.
Although he told this reporter it was a seven day ordeal, one could forgive the old man, seeing that the incident is now nearly 48 years gone.
Aside that singular mix-up, Onabanjo, though now managing a failing sight, hardly mixed up any other fact in the nearly one-hour interaction. He was also quick to inform this reporter that he still felt young; even younger than when he was 40.
For those six long days and nights at Knightsbridge, Onabanjo laid in wait with the police at the scene, neither moving nor straying, just so he didn’t miss the eventual capitulation of the young men, who would later claim their action was for political reason. Indeed record showed that they had been involved in the Black Liberation organisation before the incident, but the police maintained their stance and made sure they ended up in jail.
If that incident exemplified the tenacity in him, Onabanjo, on several occasions, also demonstrated fearlessness and an ever-present willingness to venture into where many tremble to tread.
An example of this would be his coverage of the failed invasion of Cotonou, Republic of Benin on January 17, 1977 by unknown mercenaries. Onabanjo recalled that his editor had summoned him and his boss and instructed that they covered the incident in the neighbouring country. However, his boss developed cold feet and opted out; but not Onabanjo.
“My boss said he would not go because he thought it was a risky venture and he could get killed; but I told my editor I would go and I left immediately. When I got there, the mercenaries were already at the airport trying to get into the city of Cotonou. So I sought and found a place where I thought I would be able to get good shots of the mercenaries as they entered the town. I found an uncompleted building along the airport road which gave me a good view of the road. I hid there, and as the mercenaries battled the Beninese forces in a ferocious gun duel, I snapped away. Bullets were flying over my head and most of the shots, I took lying down. I took some of the bullets back to Nigeria as souvenir. Eventually, the mercenaries were pushed back to the airport and they retreated. I got the shots and brought them back to Lagos for publishing.”
Onabanjo also had plenty of that nosiness that journalists are known for globally; and it put him in trouble on several occasions. One incident which landed him in trouble and behind bars in the early days of Nigeria’s independence was when he stalked the then Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to the State House in Marina, where the President, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe promptly got him arrested.
Recalling that incident, Onabanjo said: “I started covering heads of state from the days of Tafawa Balewa. Once, I saw Balewa driving a Chevrolet on the street of Lagos. Instinctively the reporter in me told me some news was going to happen, so I followed him with my Honda motorcycle. Unknown to me, he was going to see the President, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe at the State House, Marina. As Balewa got to the gate of the State House, they opened for him, he entered and I followed him. But as soon as Zik came out, he called his press secretary and ordered me to be arrested. I was promptly arrested and taken to Sandgrouse Police Station and locked up until the following day. I was charged for trespassing. The judge at St Hannah’s Court, Tinubu was a retired policeman, Magistrate Agbabiaka. The lawyer who defended me argued that Azikiwe had no right to arrest me for trespassing because the State House was not his personal property. He said it is a government house and a public place, and that I had the right to enter the place as a journalist. So the judge discharge and acquitted me.”
Of course he had the management of his newspaper to thank for swiftly coming to his rescue by getting him a lawyer and for standing by him all through the trial.
When reminded that those were risks no one dares take in this day and age, Onabanjo promptly interjected: “I would have been shot. …I would have been shot dead.”
A few years later, the January 1966 coup happened and Balewa was killed, along with several other frontline politicians….
He recalled that it was his boss, Segun Osoba, who discovered the corpse of the prime minister by a footpath in Ota, now Ogun State.
About the short reign of General Aguiyi Ironsi, who took over from Balewa and Azikiwe, all Onabanjo could say was: “The mistake Ironsi made was not removing the Hausa officers that were guarding the ousted president. He should have selected officers from his tribe; they would have been more loyal to him.”
Another occasion when his nosiness almost got him into trouble was on Presidential Election Day in 1979, when he had the audacity to tail the Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo, as he drove around on monitoring mission.
However, he got lucky with this one, as Obasanjo, who recognised him as one of the State House correspondents, only ordered him out of the FEDECO headquarters at Onikan, where he had stopped -over.
“He was driving a Peugeot 504 and I followed him, hoping to get some news. He didn’t notice me until he got into the FEDECO office and saw me. He already knew me very well by that time; I was with him when he went to receive the corpse of his assassinated boss, Gen. Murtala Muhammed at Obalende Praying Ground en route Kano.
The retired photojournalist would go on to say several good things about Obasanjo, but first, his opinion about Murtala Muhammed.
Surprisingly, he opted to be very brief and unyielding about Murtala, whom many came to see as a hero.
“I would not want to talk about Murtala, except that God used death to save his name. Were it not for his early death, Nigerians would have criticised him like they have criticised and condemned other leaders. Mark my words: there is no leader that can satisfy or please Nigerians; because we are the problem of ourselves. I had the opportunity of working with all these leaders, and I can tell you that they all had good programmes and intentions for us but we are too much in a hurry to allow them see them through.”
Pressed further on why he thinks death saved Murtala’s reputation, the octogenarian said, “I will not say more than that.”
Was he a bad person?
“I will not say so.”
Before Murtala was General Yakubu Gowon.
“I was with Gowon for the whole nine years that he ruled. He was so kind; a Christian-minded head of state, but he was surrounded by people who were not loyal to him. He so loved journalists that every Christmas and on his birthday, he would fete us and serve us Champaign. Meanwhile, it was one of his members who always gave us the outcome of their meetings. He, it was, who gave us questions to ask him during press briefings; and it was one of such questions that exposed the fact that he was no longer willing to hand over power in 1976 as previously pledged. I recall vividly that we had asked him that question at the presidential lounge of the International Airport. And that was what made them overthrow him.
“On that occasion, he had gone on international mission to Addis Ababa but could not return because a coup, ousting him, had taken place.”
The ace photographer, however, has great regards for Obasanjo.
According to him, Nigerians, especially the Yoruba, do not appreciate the work of Obasanjo because he did not hand over power to Obafemi Awolowo in 1979. That hatred remains till today. But overall, he was a good leader, who meant well and did well. To me, he is one of the best heads of states Nigeria has had. Obasanjo knows Nigeria very well. Do you know there were some laws Obasanjo made that some states refused to implement? I will not want to mention those states because I don’t want trouble in Nigeria. Obasanjo personally told me this. But when he came back as a civilian head of state, he dealt with those states.”
Would Lagos State be among these states?
“No” he replied.
But he dealt with Lagos State.
“The case of Lagos State is different,” he dismissed.
He would not confirm if the erring states were Northern states either.
Does he think Awolowo won that 1979 election?
“I do not know and cannot say because I did not count the votes. Awolowo felt that he won and went to court, but it was a Yoruba man, Richard Akinjide who nailed him in the now famous 122/3 formula at the Supreme Court. So a Yoruba man was the Yoruba man’s problem. Yoruba people will sit together in a meeting but the same Yoruba people would get up and go and leak the secret of the meeting to the other tribes.”
About President Shehu Shagari, he said, “he was a gentleman; very quiet. He was a good Muslim, but he was surrounded by bad ministers. Most people around him in government were just doing what they liked and he couldn’t control them because, as a politician, he didn’t want to lose their support.”
The beginning
Tracing his early days as a cob photojournalist, Onabanjo said, “I rose to become photo editor of the then Daily Times. Back in school, I loved photography. I started practising photography from my secondary school days. My aunty had given me two pounds pocket money, but rather than keep it for that purpose, I used it to buy a two pounds camera at the then Kingsway Store in Marina. Then I started snapping everything in sight. At a point, some journalist friends started inviting me to follow them to assignments, which I gladly obliged them. I would then cover the assignments, take photographs, which would then appear in newspapers. That gave me lots of joy; so I decided that once I left school, I would become a photojournalist.”
He started school in Lagos, but later went to St. Saviour’s School, Ita Olojada in Ijebu-Ode; and then Muslim Boys School, Isoku, Ijebu-Ode. Between 1959 and 1963, he went to secondary school at Commercial College, which was later merged with Olu-Iwa College and later become Adeola Odutola College. On finishing at Commercial College, he joined an international news agency in Lagos as a photographer. From there, he joined the Daily Sketch, before the eventually joined he Daily Times.
Notably, he said he has his editor, Segun Osoba to thank for giving him the chance to work at the Daily Times.
“He was the one that employed me into Daily Times. And within six months, I had covered very important assignments, such as the Mathieu Kerekou coup in Cotonou, Republic of Benin; the attempted invasion of the Beninese capital city of Cotonou by mercenaries in 1977; later I covered the Jerry Rawlings coup in Ghana in 1979. Of course, there was also the siege at the Spaghetti House Restaurant in Knightsbridge, London, which I covered for seven whole days.”
The Kerekou coup, Rawlings coup and Acheampong’s execution
“I was physically present in Accra when Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings executed Ghana’s former Head of State, General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong. I was the only photojournalists at the execution ground, and I got the shots for Daily Times. Acheampong was shot in the midnight, but the information hadn’t gone round. However, the information got to me that he was going to be executed at the Tema Beach, so I went there and laid in wait. At the end of the day, Rawlings became my very good friend. One of our reporters, Akindele (I can’t remember his other name) and I interviewed him at some point. Akindele was in Ghana and had had a brush with Acheampong who was then looking to arrest him; so he ran to Nigeria. When Rawlings took over and I was going to Accra, I asked him to come with me, but he was afraid. I told him there was nothing to fear, that Acheampong was no longer in power.
“Another unforgettable adventure for me was when I went to Cotonou for a scoop during the Kerekou coup in 1972. I got to the Nigeria/Benin border and discovered that it had been closed. I had travelled on the back of a dispatch rider’s motorcycle. One of my friends tried to dissuade me from going in but I told him not to worry, that I would come back; so I found my way into the country. When I got to the Presidential Palace, I was not allowed in; I however saw some workmen- bricklayers, working at the entrance of the palace; so I disguised like one of them, hid my camera inside a block and found my way into the palace. As soon as I got inside, I took out my camera and started taking shots.”
Was he not arrested?
“No,” he replied. “There were some journalists from Paris, whom the new president had invited to come and interview him; I simply joined them. Of course Kerekou and his officials thought I was with them and nobody bated an eyelid. I took my shots and sent them to the dispatch rider, who took them back to our office in Lagos. It was on account of this and my other exploits, that Segun Osoba named me ‘Our Man at the hot spot’.
“Again, it was only Daily Times that got that Kerekou coup story in Nigeria.”
When reminded that he took so many risks, and if he didn’t fear for his life, Onabanjo replied, “I was never afraid. Because I loved the job, I never bordered about death. And if I had been arrested, I would have taken it as part of the risks of the job. Besides, I always believed that nothing would happen to me.”
Asked how he was able to send photos taken in distant countries back to the Lagos office for timely publication, Onabanjo said, “I take the films to that country’s airport and dispatch them to Lagos. There was always a Lagos bound plane; and then our airport correspondent would receive them and take to the office.”
Love for the camera and journalism
As far as Onabanjo is concerned, ‘journalism is the best job in the world’. “It is a job that gives you the chance to stand face to face with kings and heads of states and even ask them questions. The man with the camera commands the presidents and kings; he tells them ‘do this, do that; stand this way, stand that way’; and they obey him. And if you get good shots, you become their friend. I became a friend of many heads of states and many obas in Nigeria because of my camera. Because I took good pictures of them.”
As a retired photojournalist, Otunba Onabanjo, going by his standard of life, can be said to have done well for himself; but how did he achieve that? Is it because he worked with heads of state? Save for the glamour and exposure, journalism, by Nigerian standard, has never been a high paying job.
His reply: “I am not rich; but I thank God I am enjoying the care of my children. They made me what I am today. They make me what I have today. I have nine children, five boys and four girls. The one that just left is Adewale Onabanjo, my first born. He lives in London.”
On how he remains so hale, hearty and sharp, he said, “When you’re young, make sure you join a social club; create time to relax and socialise. I love going to parties; I love enjoying music; I don’t waste my time thinking. Anything that comes to me, I take in my stride. In fact, it is when I don’t have money that I dress well. I also love my job, I invested so much interest in it and it made me happy. Like I said earlier, my own life begins at 80. If at 79, I could build another house, what else could I ask for.”
His other half “I am happily and legally married to a faithful woman. Her name is Chief Mrs Margaret Onabanjo nee Akintola from Odosida in Ondo State.”
