E.T OKERE
This column will be rested for some time to enable this columnist carry out an assignment somewhere else, albeit in our overall collective interest as a people.
However, it is a development I receive with mixed feelings because I will be, once again, missing the great fun of being inside the commentary box.
What a wrong time to step out back to the turf. But it is a feeling I believe I can still handle because it has happened to me before.
In 2007, I had to sign off from my weekly (Friday) column in the Daily Sun after four years, to serve in the government of my state, Imo.
That was not my first column but the transition was difficult. What helped the matter was that I was taking up a job that still kept me within the media.
As Special Adviser to then governor of my state on public enlightenment and documentary, my beat included strategic media interventions; which meant that I was always writing articles for publication, either to proactively tell the world what the administration was doing or to refute erroneous or wrong information about the government, and they came in torrents.
The Daily Sun column was actually my fourth. My first column in a daily newspaper was in the Daily Champion where I worked as Business/Economics Editor and member of the newspaper’s Editorial Board.
Like every other member of the board, I maintained a weekly column on economy and business under the name, THIS WEEK. It was on Wednesdays, just like now. I later left for the Financial Post, a weekly magazine also on business and economy but I did not do a column there.
My next column was at Satellite newspaper where I was Deputy Editor and at a point Acting Editor. The column was named Dream Merchant. When the publisher of the newspaper rested it in the midst of the post June -12 controversy – I signed the last edition of the newspaper – I moved over to THIS DAY newspaper as a pioneer staffer.
There, I not only wrote a column but I was also the first editorial writer of the newspaper, prior to the coming of my friend and colleague, Sam Omatseye, the current chairman of the editorial board of The Nation.
Omatseye came to join I and Dr. Omogbodo who visited every weekend from the University of Benin where he was a lecturer. We usually met in his room at Ikoyi Hotel which was close by – THIS DAY’S first office was off Awolowo road, Ikoyi.
From This Day, I moved over to the Daily Times first as a member of the Editorial Board but shortly after, I was appointed the Deputy Editor of the daily title.
At the Daily Times, I also did a weekly column. I was later posted to the training arm of the Daily Times Group, Times Journalism Institute, where I taught for about one year before relocating to Abuja to establish a weekly magazine, ABC.
I was doing ABC until 2003 when The Sun newspaper came out and I was invited to write a column in the daily title. As I mentioned earlier, I rested the (Daily Sun) column following my appointment into the Imo State government.
At the end of the assignment in Owerri, I took up a weekly column with National Life then edited by Loius Odion who had earlier edited the Sun on Sunday. National Life was short-lived and it also happened that I rested ABC magazine.
But sometime in 2012, or thereabout, Daily Newswatch came on board and I took a weekly column in it under the name, HAPPENING NOW, the name I adopted for this column when I took it up sometime late last year.
It has been over eight months of fun in The Nation, easily one of the most widely read newspapers in the country. Contrary to what many believe, The Nation is not read only by the elite.
Yes, it commands a lot of attention from the intelligentsia but it’s readership cuts across sections of the society. How I knew was that just last December, a few months after this column debuted, I met a group of local government councillors in my state and promptly one of them said, “Oga, if you like change your name hundred times, we will still read you.”
The fellow was referring to the fact that I chose to use the initials of my first name, “E.T” instead of the full “Ethelbert”. Before that, a student at the University of Maiduguri had called me, using the mobile phone number on my logo, to inquire if I am the same Ethelbert he had been reading. Those two incidents reminded me of the experience I had while I was doing one of my previous columns.
That day, sometime in 2006, I had arrived Owerri from my base in Abuja and went to a popular suya spot to get some of the delicacies.
Once there, one of the boys greeted me so warmly. I thought it was all because I had asked for a N1,000.00 worth of suya but he had something else in mind. He said: “Oga no be you dey for newspaper?” Whereupon he tried to even pronounce my name.
Before I could come over my surprise, he went to the back of the kiosk and brought cuttings of my column. Incidentally, that column appeared on Fridays and I noticed that the lad, from the northern part of the country, also had cuttings of the newspaper’s weekly column on Islam, “MARRY MUSLIM”.
As I noted at the beginning, it is painful – so to speak – to leave the commentary box especially at a time like this when there are so many issues to talk about. When the COVID-19 matter came up, I suddenly discovered that there appeared to be nothing else to write about.
One Monday – I write this column on Mondays – I was struggling with how to get a topic outside COVID-19 and at appoint, I nearly ended up with “What Else Can We Write About?” But just then, there was a news flash on television on the almighty COVID-19 but giving it an entirely new vista. I promptly settled for that but even so, the next two editions were still on CORONA…
This week, I was going to go back to COVID-19 – after two editions of writing on something “else” – to interrogate the apparent unofficial complete lifting of the lockdown; the apparent dilemma faced by government. To return to a formal lockdown appears difficult, if not impossible.
Yet, the cases are increasing as a rate higher than when there was total lockdown. Meanwhile, Nigerians on the streets are now beginning to show total disdain on the rules and guidelines put in place by government in the fight against COVID-19.
The ban on interstate movements exists only on radio and television. The churches have almost all resumed in full. Perhaps with the exception of Lagos, commercial busses load to full capacity – even overloaded – while only one, out of a hundred people, are putting face masks.
By this time last month, you would not go into any premises without seeing a plastic bucket fitted with tap and personnel dutifully asking you to wash your hands before entering.
All the buckets have disappeared and the markets are as crowded as they used to be during Christmas and Sallah seasons.
But guess what, dear fan. Part of the assignment I am taking up on in my state will entail telling the people to still guide themselves against COIVD-19. Who knows.
Perhaps the burden of responsibility we felt that kept us writing on COVID-19 might have been by providence; to put us in a better stead for this assignment. What it is exactly? I will keep in touch!
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