Evil came in a parcel marked “From the C-in-C” forty years ago today and took away our derring-do Dele Giwa.
I do not only stand before you today as the President of the NIJ Alumni Association. I stand here as a witness.
Late 1985, in this very compound – though the buildings were younger – Dele Giwa came to NIJ. Not with fanfare. No entourage. Debonair, eyes burning with that restless curiosity that had already made Newswatch impossible to ignore in less than two years on the newsstand.
He was guest speaker to us, students. I was in the audience, in the concluding session of the two-year Diploma in Journalism programme. We were armed with notebooks to jot down his teaching on Investigative Journalism.
He did not lecture us on inverted pyramid. He told us what journalism is.
I recall him admonishing that journalism is not a career for those who want to be liked. It is a calling for those who cannot stand to be silent when the truth is being strangled.
We laughed. We clapped. We did not know he was preaching his own funeral sermon.
He told us that a journalist must have a quick leg, a thick skin, and a conscience that never sleeps. He warned us that power will always invite you to dinner so that it can know what cutlery you use to stab it.
A few months later, he was gone. Killed at 39. At his prime. In the presence of his young son, Billy, his wife, Funmi, and the magazine’s London correspondent who would later become my Publisher at Africa Today magazine, Kayode Soyinka.
Forty years after, what do we remember? Dele Giwa, with Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese, Yakubu Mohammed, all co-founders of Newswatch, and the newsroom General, Soji Akinrinade, taught us that you could tell the story of power in a weekly magazine that read like a novel and hit like a thunderbolt. Newswatch was not just a magazine; it was our national diary.
We remember his courage. At a time when many chose safe journalism – press releases, seminars, award ceremonies – Dele chose to ask the questions military Generals did not want to hear. Letter bombs did not fall from the sky; they were sent by men who feared his pen more than a battalion.
We remember the wound that has never healed: No one has been convicted for killing Dele Giwa. The parcel bomb came from the very system he was hired to watch. Forty years after, the file is still marked “unsolved”. That is the heaviest cross we carry today.
But we also remember what they could not kill. They could not kill the ideals of Newswatch. Look around – every serious investigative platform today is a descendant of Newswatch.
They could not kill the NIJ spirit. This school still teaches that facts are sacred, that sources must be protected, that the people – not the powerful – are our real employers.
They could not kill Dele Giwa. Because today, in every NIJ graduate who refuses brown envelope, in every reporter who says “Sir, I need to hear your own side, but I will publish the truth”, Dele lives.
To the Newswatch family here: Thank you for keeping the flame. Thank you for not letting Dele become a footnote.
To our students listening today: I was you in 1985. If you are looking for a role model who had big grammar but small integrity, you will not find him here. If you are looking for comfort, journalism is not for you. But if you feel that ache in your stomach when you see injustice – that is Dele tapping you on the shoulder.
Dele Giwa was 39 when they killed him. Many of you are younger. Live so that when your time comes, you will not need 40 years to be remembered.
We, the Alumni of this great Institute, will never forget. The new team of the alumni association, which was elected less than two months ago, will encourage our members in journalism practice to hold high the lofty ideals of investigative journalism and courage which Dele Giwa never compromised.
Rest well, Dele.
Your killers sent you a parcel bomb. But you sent us something more powerful – a conscience.
Thank you.
Akintunde is the President of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism Alumni Association. He presented the tribute on behalf of the association at the unveiling of the book, Dele Giwa’s Granite Journalism, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the dastardly act
