Journalists have a tendency not to celebrate their own. We advocate justice for others, project others but hardly do so for ourselves. I intended to use this space to discuss the newfound love for former President Olusegun Obasanjo for Igbo people. He now knows that the people have long held the short end of the Nigerian stick. They have never been found fit enough to have one of their own sit in the saddle as President of Nigeria. When the leadership of the Ogun State chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) visited Obasanjo the other day, he reportedly said:
“Ndigbo have not produced (an) elected Nigerian President since Independence, and allowing the injustice to persist is to compromise the security and, perhaps, territorial integrity of Nigeria.”

The foregoing is rather strange, coming from OBJ midway into the tenure of Buhari, a man he vicariously campaigned for and helped bring to power. This, coming against the backdrop of a recent meeting with former President Goodluck Jonathan clearly show that water is passing or is about to pass under Nigeria’s political bridge. There are several issues that call for critical interrogation here. I was compelled to do so until the news broke concerning the demise of a media icon, Chief Innocent Oparadike. I wonder what would have been his usual erudite interjection on Obasanjo’s newfound desire for political justice for the Igbo nation.

I had known ‘Oga Inno’, as I used to call him, by reputation, years before we met in the early ’90s, when he was Executive Adviser on information, an equivalent to a commissioner, to late Chief Evan Enwerem, former Senate President and Governor of Imo State. Former military President Ibrahim Babangida had a rather convoluted handover programme at that time that saw him ruling as a soldier President in a country that had elected civilian governors. I met Oparadike when Enwerem marked his first year in office as governor. I was detailed to meet and interview the governor at the instance of Oparadike.

I arrived a government house that was filled with scores of people who wanted to to see the governor. Oparadike told me that the possibility of having time with the governor was slim and he took me to the governor’s country home. There, again, another crowd waited but Opardike gave his word that the interview must hold. It did hold but not before I followed the governor to church on Sunday morning and still had to go to his bedroom to hold the interview, the living room was already filled when we returned from church. Oparadike, a first class graduate of Mass Communication, had been editor of National Concord and New Nigeria. He was one of the reasons I always went for National Concord when I was in school. He had unassailable logic and was very cerebral. Babangida was instrumental to his becoming editor of the New Nigeria newspaper, where the plague of ethnicity hounded him out of office. But as he did at Concord newspapers, owned by late Moshood Abiola, his imprint on New Nigeria was not in doubt.

At a point, he was also managing director of Daily Times, but he was given a dead baby to nurse in that venture. Nothing much came out of it, but the man is a media icon by every standard. The nation has lost a great journalist. Imo State and, indeed Ogwa, his hometown, has lost an illustrious son.

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We once met when I was editor of Saturday Champion. His son, who was a student a Lagos State University or University of Lagos, I cannot remember now, wanted to do freelance writing for the paper. The boy had submitted some good scripts, a testimonial that his father bequeathed him his writing skills. When I was set to publish the materials, Oga Inno appeared in my office, he had come for something else, and told me to hold the scripts and not publish them. I do not know if it was not to distract the boy from his studies, as he said, or if it was a subtle disapproval of his son venturing into the profession. Many journalists do not want their children to take the baton, perhaps to protect them from the dangers and the apparent penury that tended to visit such professionals in the past. People may choose professions but the tendency is that professions choose people.

The next time I met him, he was angling to get the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ticket in 2005 to run for the Senate to replace the late Senator Amah Iwuagwu. He did not get that ticket, and I worked for another candidate, who did not also get the ticket that Chief Bode George, who conducted the primaries, appeared to have been under instruction to give to a particular candidate. Oparadike must have been stung by the treachery in the political arena and I do not think he ventured into it anymore. He was active as coordinator of media professionals in Ndidgo Lagos, a group of professionals from that zone. He always lent his wealth of experience when needed.

Oparadike passed away last Sunday after a brief illness. One thing to be said is that he acquitted himself creditably in every assignment he undertook.

He has left indelible footprint on the sands of time. Journalism would ever remember that a man named Innocent Oparadike passed though this clime. We all come to learn, through such sad incidents, that a day like that is bound to come for everyone and the question remains what would be said about us. The answer lies in the life we now live. The day of reckoning surely awaits everyone.
Good night, Oga Inno.