Remembering Stanley Macebuh

When The Guardian of Nigeria took to the streets as a daily newspaper in 1984, its basement offices had remarkable toilet facilities.

In addition to the urinals, the male facilities had five individual toilets in such pristine condition you were never in a hurry to leave.

And yet, one afternoon, I personally defaced the doors into three of them, using a knife to yank out new tags allocating them to specific officers.

Blazing with anger, I took them to the upper floor offices of Stanley Macebuh, our Executive Editor and Managing Director, and laid them on his desk, and demanded an explanation. “What are these?” he asked me. “You tell me,” I responded. I had been part of a small group which participated in the planning stages of the project in debates that sometimes lasted into the small hours, helping to develop its character and structure its dreams. Stanley, as he preferred to be called, did not mind a debate: you just had to know what you were talking about.

I challenged him to remind me where elitism, in the form of three top officials of the newspaper-including one whose office was two floors up, requiring their individual toilets-had a front row seat in the dream Nigeria by which he had assembled his team.

He re-examined the tags I had laid before him, and then, suddenly identifying the lighter side, sat back and began to laugh. “Are you saying you ripped these out of those doors?” he asked.

It soon became clear that someone with a different agenda had allocated to him a facility he neither needed nor had asked for. After he agreed to “democratize” the facilities, I left his office.

Nothing defines social relationships in Nigeria as much as a common toilet. Outside Nigeria, the biggest Big Man is comfortable sharing with everyone facilities that have been maintained in the highest standards for 30 or 50 years. But in Nigeria, particularly in an environment where he has control, he must have his own, even if that leaves just one for the rest of the staff.

That Big Man (or woman) of whom I speak is probably you. Or your father. Or your mother. Or your uncle. We seem to measure our relevance by the levels of the privations and discomfort others around us must endure as opposed to us.

Not only did Stanley ensure that those newsroom toilets remained available for collective use, he used them himself. And he appointed Onwuchekwa Jemie, a former professor and friend of his who chaired the Editorial Board, to superintend the facilities. Under Mr. Jemie’s inspired watch, those facilities were kept in excellent condition.

It is easy for anyone who followed the career of Stanley, who sadly passed on 10 years ago yesterday, to talk about how accomplished he was as a scholar and professional.

Indeed, when he died, many commentators wrote about his qualities. For me, what defined him the most was that keen sense of the common good, justice and fairness, as in when he determined not only that the toilets of his newsroom should be good enough for all, but that they be of the highest standards.

That was the essence of the Nigeria of Macebuh’s dream, a dream which had his relaxing, but also challenging can-do effect on people and life around him.

To help advance The Guardian’s editorial plans, he subsequently appointed me Ombudsman, a quality-control position which required me, among others, to publish a weekly in-house critique of all our editions. He wanted judgement, he said in making the appointment, not edicts. He wanted an unrelenting foot on the excellence pedal.

Little wonder then, that when this remarkable man passed, Nigerians took notice. Even two-time leader Olusegun Obasanjo, to whom Stanley served as a Special Assistant for a few years during his presidency, published a glowing tribute, praising the man’s character and contributions.

Obasanjo’s government, it is to be remembered, gave annual National Honours to thousands of Nigerians, most of them within the echo-chamber of his People’s Democratic Party (PDP). But neither during his time nor thereafter could people such as Stanley make the list.

The irony today is that while PDP governments gave those honours to the overwhelmingly filthiest, the self-righteous APC denies them to the overwhelmingly deserving.

In other words, Obasanjo and current President Muhammadu Buhari-two former military men who have dominated the republic for the past 20 years-are sadly united that honour is an unworthy concept. In practice, a Nigerian praised or acknowledged abroad by the media or a government or institution is worthy of celebration in Nigeria, but no Nigerian, no matter what he may accomplish domestically or who whom he may be, deserves public recognition.

Stanley thought and worked and lived differently. That is why the quality of his vision, energies and character birthed a moment of glory for the Nigerian mass media. He not only made The Guardian an overnight success, he influenced the industry.

He could also have made himself eminently wealthy, not only at that newspaper, but through many massive public contracts to which he had access. Many people that he introduced to prominence did not hesitate before the buffet.

It is significant that he would go on to take a lowly appointment in the government, reflecting the tragedy of a nation where the most talented often have no place. Iyabo Obasanjo, in her famous letter to her father in 2013, expressed it best: “Nigeria has descended into a hellish reality where smart, capable people [in order] to “survive” and have their daily bread prostrate to imbeciles,” she wrote.

Journalism in Nigeria shares the same fate: Apart from having descended in most cases into the hell of corporate ownership of looters and criminals, the best journalists often find they have no place to go, or grow: they must prostrate to imbeciles in politics, government or business, or starve.

A few do continue to be “journalists,” but often with the help of seedy political figures who provide subterranean help with the bills, while others sign up in an army of columnists in newspapers with no news reporting.

Stanley recognized that republican democracy has no future in the absence of thorough reporting, just as a democracy dwindles without true elections, robust campaign finance rules, and committed patriots. We can all see what that lack of commitment did to the PDP in its prime, and what it is doing to the APC.

In my tribute to Stanley 10 years ago, I described him as a prophet. It is remarkable that, in his prime, he identified these things in real time, but also as they would unfold.

It is no surprise that prophets are often remembered when their prophecies come to pass. Otherwise theirs are just words.

Stanley is an icon who, in death, has enjoyed no public honour. But in his honour and humanity, he lives on as one of those the vision of whom continue to define their chosen trade and our future.

[This column welcomes rebuttals from interested government officials].