Almost two years ago, Ndaeyo Uko revealed a long-hidden part of him: his agelessness. His personal life has never been anything but personal, but his birth’s day and month were known largely.
When he pronounced in the corner of his hotel suite at GRA Ikeja, Lagos that he would be 70 on his 2024 birthday, I took another look at this pint-sized character of immeasurable wits and said in near disbelief: “You don’t mean it”?
I could have screamed “Mungo Park, you don’t mean it”?! In his later years as Deputy Editor of Daily Times Nigeria, he labelled the avantgarde moustache of then Information Minister Alex Akinyele after the colonial master who was falsely said to have discovered the source of River Niger.
I spoke about celebrating him, connecting many folks he had positively impacted on on his platinum jubilee, with Lagos or Abuja as the connection point. Ndaeyo, the daringly different, insisted on Uyo, the capital city of Akwa Ibom State. At that time, he was winding down on his sojourns, and fast tracking his relocation from down under (Australia) back to his root.
Ndaeyo came my way around this month in 1987. I had endured one of the most harrowing life transforming from a freelance to a staff reporter at The Guardian. Completing my diploma programme at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism in 1986, I chose to freelance in Port Harcourt and earned six kobo for every line of my published story!
In spite of the challenges of communication, I must have made sufficient impact to be considered eventually for employment, and I started with the news desk of The Guardian on Sunday late 1987. I had yet to settle down on that general beat when got transferred to the desk of a man I had considered queer. You could hardly catch him smile.
We were four reporters and a sub-editor in his Sunday Supplement (later Sunday Magazine) desk. Ndaeyo himself confessed later that he was hardest on me. I was rough edges as a reporter/writer but I thought I was doing well (apologies Mr. Macaroni). There were several instances Ndaeyo made me lose confidence in myself.
About August 1988, The Guardian was about to increase its cover price from 50 kobo to N1 and gathered all the outstanding reporters to the newsroom at The Rutam House on a Saturday. Our Sunday Magazine desk was in the heart of the newsroom and I walked in the afternoon of that day being hailed by many of my colleague-reporters from outside Lagos who met me for the first time. “That guy writes like magic”, some said to my hearing.
I handed over the cover story I had just completed to my editor in his small corner. It was on cartoons and cartoonists in the era when military officers/leaders and their civilian colleagues in government were the butts of cartoonists.
Ndaeyo read the first paragraph of my article and hissed. He struggled to go through the second, and threw some inanities. By the time he got to the third, je threw the script at me, could not longer hold back his dam of anger, and railed on me that I had wasted his time.
From his drawer emerged a script from someone else, which he passed on to our gentleman sub-editor, Kafiu Gale-Zoyiku (God bless his soul) to use as replacement for my failed story.
It must have taken me forever to lumbered through the same crowd of hailers from outside Lagos, who were in the newsroom, and witnessed the drama that was essentially Ndaeyo. I headed straight to the National Theatre at Iganmu where an arts exhibition assignment was waiting for me.
I couldn’t compose myself. Somehow, my good friend, Paul Nwabuikwu , who was a bright star in The African Guardian, was around at the Theatre. He felt my mood, and made only one guess about its cause: “Ndaeyo, again”? Paul did not wait for my response before he said: “Look, Muyiwa, Ndaeyo is so fond of you. He would always say you’re the star of his desk. But he doesn’t want you to feel complacent”.
No doubt, Ndaeyo impacted greatly on my journalism career. And he was passionate about my development. Having settled down in Australia, he started encouraging me to come over. I have always loved being in my country, no matter what. Ndaeyo located me to far flung Alagbado where I lived to report me to my wife that I didn’t want to travel!
One of the earliest times I knew about Ndaeyo’s belief in me was while I was a state correspondent for The Guardian in Kwara. Ndaeyo sent me a letter all the way from his studies in Cardiff in which he said he didn’t know how the Sunday Magazine desk of The Guardian would have operated without me!
Through Ndaeyo, I got a job in Lagos while I was in Ilorin as The Guardian reporter for Kwara State. He had spoken to his friend and colleague, Soji Omotunde about me, and packaged me to be an Assistant Editor for TimesWeek, which the former had the task of transforming from Times International.
I arrived Daily Times premises at Agidingbi from Ilorin and headed to TimesWeek section. There, editor said I would be Senior Writer. The letter of employment had a salary package that was almost twice what The Guardian paid me, and I was more than contended with that. I was elated meeting Ndaeyo in his far flunged corner at the premises. He deflated my bubble upon looking through my letter of appointment. “You’ve just wasted an opportunity. I negotiated Assistant Editor for you”.
My journey of life as a journalist can’t be complete without several chapters devoted to this gem, who’s now 70 and going strong. May your life continues to be an inspiration to many.
