Yakubu Mohammed, one of the founding editors and directors of Newswatch, has finally shed light on the lingering rumours surrounding the 1986 assassination of Dele Giwa, the magazine’s editor-in-chief.
Giwa was killed on October 19, 1986, after receiving a parcel bomb at his Lagos residence, an incident that shook Nigeria and remains one of the country’s most notorious unsolved murders.
In the wake of his assassination, speculations swirled that Giwa had been investigating the controversial death of Gloria Okon, a young Nigerian woman arrested in Kano and allegedly linked to high-profile drug trafficking networks.
Okon’s mysterious death in police custody fueled whispers that she had threatened to expose influential figures, including then-military president, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB), and his wife, Maryam.
Another version of the rumour suggested Okon had not died but was secretly flown to the United Kingdom. Giwa was allegedly on the verge of publishing an explosive report on her whereabouts when he was killed.
The rumours gained traction when Abubakar Tsav, the senior police officer who investigated Giwa’s death, appeared before the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission in 2001.
Tsav’s testimony seemed to lend credibility to claims that the journalist’s murder was tied to the Okon affair.
Nearly 39 years after the tragic incident, Mohammed has dismissed the long-standing narrative in his forthcoming memoir, Beyond Expectations.
An advance copy of the book, published by MayFive Media and obtained by TheCable, revealed Mohammed’s position that the Gloria Okon angle was nothing but a deliberate distraction.
According to him, “some people who had an axe to grind with Babangida pursued a narrow narrative and that eventually impacted the investigation.”
Mohammed, who served as Newswatch’s executive editor at the time, described the magazine as “the TIME magazine of Nigeria,” but lamented that the spread of conspiracy theories compromised serious efforts to uncover the real killers.
He maintained that the rumours surrounding Okon’s death and Giwa’s supposed London trip “prevented a proper investigation of the gruesome incident.”
Mohammed wrote, “And who, I must ask, killed Dele Giwa? This question that sounded sonorously like an anthem of sorrow when it was first asked pitifully across the country and was sustained in nearly everybody’s lips for a long while has remained the same today, even in its tamed and almost muted form, lacking in its original vigour and gravitas.
“It has remained so because nearly four decades after, the search for Giwa’s killers has not yielded any definitive results. And that is because the search had been mired in controversies, occasioned by sporadic eruptions of conspiracy theories, some more ridiculous and ludicrous than others, but conspiracy theories all the same.
“The mysterious Okon, allegedly a drug courier, died in police custody, and that gave birth to several conspiracy theories, including the reason for the assassination of Dele Giwa.
“All the controversies which gave birth to a myriad of conspiracy theories centred around the following personalities. Some peripheral issues were raised and were discounted and I don’t need to go into them here. The ones that attract my attention also happen to be the dominant ones like Gloria Okon, the alleged drug courier, who was arrested in Kano and who was reported to have died in custody.
“The Gloria Okon theory is woven around Military President Ibrahim Babangida’s alleged interest, or lack of it, in the death and resurrection of the fictional character called Gloria Okon. Linked with the Gloria Okon theory was the wild but baseless speculation as to why Kayode Soyinka, the London bureau chief of Newswatch, was in Nigeria at the material time and why, of all places, he stayed with Dele Giwa when the bomb exploded. Another one has to do with Colonel (Haliru) Akilu (director of military intelligence) and the series of telephone calls preceding the delivery of the parcel bomb. Who initiated the call and who made the last call?”
Mohammed said many people have continued to ask these questions at various times, “and we made attempts to answer them and clarify the issues to the best of our knowledge. But the controversy goes on and the questions continue to agitate the minds of segments of society, especially those who seem to know us at Newswatch more than we know ourselves”.
‘Nobody Ever Heard Of Gloria Okon’
Was Giwa doing a story on Okon? Did he interview her in London? Were the tapes, along with pictures taken at the interview, brought to Lagos by Soyinka?
Mohammed further wrote, “In discussing these theories, I am mindful of the fact that I am accountable to only God, my creator. My religion which is Islam teaches me that I should at all times bear witness truthfully even if it is against myself. Whatever I say here has been said before, one way or the other, but where I was a personal witness, I make bold to say it as I know it. And this is not an attempt on my part to pass judgment or exonerate anybody.
“To start with, I know, for a fact, that Newswatch was not planning to do any story on Gloria Okon, not by any of our reporters. Not by any of the editors and not by any of the directors – Dele (Giwa), Ray (Ekpu), Dan (Agbese) and yours sincerely, Yakubu (Mohammed).
“At Newswatch, we had two levels of editorial conferences: the General Conference open to all reporters and the Editorial Board where we discussed cover stories and this was open to only editors. The general conference was held on Thursdays. It was compulsory for each reporter to come to the conference with not less than three story ideas and be prepared to defend them. Any of the four of us present would preside over it. At the initial stage, it was presided over by Dele Giwa as editor-in-chief. Later on, he excused himself, leaving any one of the three of us to handle it.
“Bose Lasaki was a relatively new staff who was determined to learn the ropes. One day at the general editorial conference, she said she had a story idea. She muttered some words to the effect that there was a rumour that the drug courier that was arrested in Kano and was reported dead, did not die but was alive. Her colleagues laughed at her suggestion and she appeared visibly embarrassed.
“Dan, who conducted the meeting, saved the day by advising her to do more work on her idea and report back the following week. When she reported back the following week, she admitted that there was nothing to that story. And that was the end of the matter.”
Mohammed said Ekpu and Giwa were not at any of the meetings and possibly did not even know about the “apparent fable”.
He recounted, “Until the tragic death of Dele, nobody heard anything again about Gloria Okon. But she came alive as the possible reason why Dele Giwa was killed. Dele was said to have travelled to London some weeks before his death and interviewed Gloria Okon. According to this story, it was Kayode Soyinka who brought the stories and the pictures to Lagos and Dele and Kayode were looking at the pictures when the lethal parcel landed.
“The fact is that Dele Giwa did not meet any Gloria Okon on the trip in question. I know this for sure because I travelled with him to London. It is difficult to fathom how Gloria Okon came to the centre stage in Dele’s travails. She did not feature in the four-point allegations the SSS made against him when he was invited for interrogation. Surprisingly, a former police commissioner, Abubakar Tsav, told the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commssion, popularly called the Oputa panel, set up in 1999, 13 years after the event, that the SSS asked Dele Giwa if he published or was about to publish any story on Gloria Okon. If he published? If he published it, they would know; wouldn’t they have read it? This fiction was supposed to be the fifth item on the security men’s menu when they interrogated Giwa at their Awolowo Road Office.”
‘Why Giwa And I Travelled To London’
Contrary to the rumour that Giwa went to London to interview Okon, Mohammed said the visit was to see Ime Umanah, the chairman of the board of directors, Newswatch Communications Limited, who had an accident.
Mohammed recalled, “He was flown to London for treatment. At this point, we at Newswatch were planning to buy our own printing press and we had located one in the suburbs of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It was decided that Dele and I should travel there to inspect the press and explore the possibility of acquiring it. We booked our flight through London to spend some time with our chairman in London in September 1986.
“In London, we both stayed in Umanah’s house off Bayswater Road. Every day, we commuted between his house and the Cromwell Hospital, where he was on admission, to keep him company.
“For about five days that we spent there, Dele did not leave my sight for a moment. We spent each day in the hospital until we travelled to Amsterdam. Kayode Soyinka, who normally played host to us on such occasions, was in the USA on a Newswatch assignment.”
The ‘Role’ Of Akilu
One of the major conspiracy theories at the time was that shortly before the parcel bomb was delivered to Giwa, Colonel Akilu had called to make sure the famed journalist was home before the mysterious dispatch rider dropped the deadly message.
Mohammed has now narrated the circumstances around Akilu’s call.
He said, “Before we left London for Amsterdam, Ime Umanah advised Giwa to get close to Akilu, his friend, to widen the base of contacts. Hitherto, Giwa had a close relationship mainly with Aliyu Gusau and he was always saying nice things about this officer. So, Ime Umanah gave Akilu’s phone numbers to Giwa. On our return to Lagos, Dele made the acquaintance of Akilu and reported to us how friendly Akilu was. But he did not miss the opportunity to tell the director of Military Intelligence that, though he was humble and decent, each time his boys (security men) came for us, they did not show respect. Dele Giwa told us that he had extracted a promise from Akilu: From then onwards, said Akilu, they would not rough-handle him or any of his colleagues. If they did, he said, Giwa should not hesitate to inform him.
“Apparently acting on (minister of information) Tony Momoh’s advice on that fateful day after the visit to SSS and the interrogation, Giwa had called Akilu to intimate him about what happened at the SSS office. He did not get Akilu on the phone but he left a message for him. Akilu did not call back until Saturday, by which time, he got only Funmi, Giwa’s wife, who told him that her husband was not at home. She advised him to call the Newswatch office number. He did but nobody picked it and Akilu reported back to the wife. That was the Saturday when media executives, including Dele, spent nearly the whole day in Victoria Island at a luncheon with the bank chief Adeosun and later at a get-to-know-you meeting in the Vice-President’s house.
“On Sunday, the morning of doomsday, Funmi had laid breakfast for her husband and Soyinka in the study with a note that Akilu called twice on Saturday. Funmi said she wrote the note instead of delivering Akilu’s message verbally because she and the husband had a small issue and were not talking to each other for about one week.
“Dele told Kayode that Akilu must have seen his call on Friday.
“He, Dele, then called Akilu back that Sunday morning and told him why he called on Friday. Akilu assured him he would look into the matter but that he should regard the matter as closed and advised that it was not a matter for Dele’s lawyer. About ten minutes later, the deadly letter was delivered. And then conspiracy theorists went to town saying that it was Akilu who called on that Sunday morning to know if Dele was at home so they could deliver the bomb.
“What about Mr. Soyinka? What, they asked, was he doing in Dele Giwa’s house at this most unfortunate time? The answer is simple. Giwa’s house had always been his base anytime he was in the country. And why was he in the country this time? Newswatch was selling well abroad, especially in the USA, though it was in London we had our overseas office. Soyinka was dispatched to the US to explore the possibility of our printing the overseas edition of Newswatch there to facilitate distribution and enlarge the market. We had booked and paid for his flight thus: London-New York-London-Lagos-London. It was more economical to route the flight that way. We had scheduled a meeting with him on Monday, October 20, so he could brief us on his trip to the USA. He had to arrive at the weekend before the scheduled meeting. I even told my family that we should have him for lunch with us this time to show appreciation for the way he had been taking care of us in London each time we went there. He had been playing this role from our days in Concord. And anytime he was in Lagos, he stayed with the Giwa family. How utterly ridiculous, therefore, it was to say that he brought to Lagos the interview allegedly conducted by Giwa in London.
“General Ibrahim Babangida, in and out of office, remains an enigma, a personality that people love or hate with equal passion. As military president, he must have succeeded in amassing as many friends as he amassed many enemies. During the Giwa tragedy, some people who might have been rubbed the wrong side by the Babangida administration were ready to swear that nobody else but Babangida could have killed Dele Ciwa. Such people, including assorted social critics and human rights activists, could not have numbered among his fans, and they did not fail to show it.
“Though many fellow patriots who felt genuinely touched by the tragedy made commendable and altruistic efforts to put pressure on the investigating agencies to do their duty, the few who had an axe to grind went too far in my view. In many instances, they invented their own stories and helped to reshape the narratives, resorting in the process to blatant fallacies and unhelpful conjectures.
“The methods they adopted narrowed the investigation to a few options instead of widening the options, as if the whole idea of this motion without movement was designed to produce a pre-determined outcome. It was as a result of this that the board of Newswatch Communications felt the urgent need to put a disclaimer on the angle being pursued by Gani Fawehinmi, which was decidedly narrow. The outcome of such a preconceived notion, instead of nailing the killers and do justice to the soul of our departed colleague, has kept the question of who killed Dele Giwa still in the realm of conjectures nearly four decades after his murder. The consolation, though, is that whatever is hidden from man is not hidden from God Almighty.”
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