2015: Less Errors Hopefully!
“Ohaneze crisis: Elders (Elders’) council (Council) sets up caretaker committee” “Grass to gra\ce (Grass-to-grace) story of….” “Condition of the barracks depressing, embarrasing (embarrassing)” “The terror attack in (on) Kano mosque” (The Guardian Editorial Headline, December 12)
“Maybe more light needs to be thrown into (on) this explanation.” (THISDAY Back Page Right of Reply on Seven Years of Fashola, December 12)
“FIFA demands for Electoral Appeals’ Committee report” (THE GUARDIAN, December 9) Delete ‘for’.
“Truely (why?) a leader” (Full-page advertorial, The PUNCH, December 11)
“We deserve a bouyant economy and jobs for our youths” (Full-page advertorial by Atiku 2015, THE GUARDIAN, December 8) For a change & Nigeria for all: buoyant
“I’m in best position to succede (sic) Akpabio’s shoes” (THE GUARDIAN, December 12) This way: wear Akpabio’s shoes
“Lets (Let’s) do it together” (Full-page advertorial by Presidential Declaration Committee, Media & Publicity, THISDAY, November 11)
“One of such trouble shooting efforts by the leadership of the party and the president” National News: trouble-shooting efforts
THISDAY of November 13 comes next: “So I said it is (was) not just about complaining or pointing fingers (pointing the finger) at anybody….”
It is difficult to believe that this year marks a decade that my mentor left these shores. If he had been alive I am cocksure that our relationship would have blossomed to unimaginable heights. Of all friends of mine that have gone ahead of us, this man meant most to me because he contributed inestimably to my professional ascent hence this especial remembrance tribute.
I still find it an inconsolable reality that my master, chummy and ardent fan of my column, Wordsworth, has taken a glorious flight out of this gloomy space. I am pained the more on grounds of our inexplicable circumstances that made it impossible for us to meet in almost two years, long before his death! This consummate journalist and media manager meant so much to me that words cannot capture. The only way for me to commemorate his painful exit is to cite five memorable encounters out of the legion we had together on several platforms of brotherly mutuality.
On an occasion when some cliquish elements in the old Daily Times, where he was the managing director, ganged up against me, it took the swift intervention of this detribalized man of profuse humility all the way from our 3, 5, 7 Kakawa Street, Lagos, corporate head office to extricate me from their clannish and bellicose stranglehold in Times Publications Division, Agidingbi, Ikeja. Shortly after that unwarranted belligerence, he unprecedentedly presented me to the company’s shareholders at the 70th AGM for my exemplary contributions to institutional objectives and contemporaneously gave me a cash-backed award for professional excellence through my quintessential language column. He really appreciated my unparalleled productivity and profundity of skills.
When he became former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Senior Special Assistant (Media & Publicity) in 2001, he never failed to invite me to executive events in Abuja—in my capacity as the editor of The Post Express—alongside select reputable editors. At one of the presidential media chats in which I participated, he stood at the last gate at Ota Farms where the special session held waiting anxiously for me because I arrived extremely behind schedule due to bad roads and concomitant traffic bottlenecks.
After the media chat, he visited me in my office in Apapa months later to solicit my support for government’s initiatives and also establish the imperative need for me to be less critical of the Obasanjo administration. The last meeting I had with Egbon Oseni was when I rode with him in his official car from Aso Rock, after an exclusive presidential session over dinner with about 10 title editors of frontline national newspapers in September 2002 or thereabouts, to NICON NOGA Hotel