A Ghost on the Prowl

Going through the bound volume of back copies of the Newswatch magazine borrowed from a friend and ex-staff of the magazine that served on the stable during Giwa's death, the eerie atmosphere that enveloped the earth at the burial of the 39 year-old Nigerian came rushing back - with a bone-chilling aura. The lucid prose that was Giwa's quintessential Newswatch, stirred back the same emotions that had attended the young Nigerian's funeral of 16 years ago, to reality. As though everything happened again afresh. The particular section of the paper that struck the reader most, not just for its fluid prose, as of the same sombre mood that pervaded the event, is that which captures the rites of passage performed just before Giwa's re-arranged mangled remains were lowered into mother earth for the final rest.

The rites, meant first, to guarantee the dead a smooth passage to the other side of life, but more, to enable its ghost haunt and expose its killers without fail. Is it little wonder then that 16 years after, Giwa's ghost has refused to settle, but haunts the breadth and length of the vast country for his killers.

According to the story, five different people performed the traditional rites of passage that lasted for the greater part of the burial ceremony. First, was the Ogbumi masquerade, then an old woman, then a man then another masquerade-Ogunmogun, and finally the 111-year-old man that turned out the oldest in the community.

Part of the story runs thus:

"The Ogbumi was led into the room immediately the casket was settled for the lying-in-state by youths wielding cutlasses and sticks with palm fronds tied around their heads and waists. There was an outburst of incantations and curses. Then seven youths aged between seven and 13 came in each clutching a big stick.

"The Ogbumi now moved to the position of the head of the corpse, clutching a cock. He recited some incantations at the end of which he let out a fearsome cry while his followers took positions around the closed casket. Then he started moving round the casket at the end of each round, which normally terminated at the position of the head, he (Ogbumi) touched the ground with the live cock while the seven youths simultaneously hit the ground with their stick as if trying to stifle life from the object on the floor....

"Next, an elderly woman, who was clad only in a printed cotton wrapper around her waist, came with alligator pepper and a bottle containing some concoctions. The casket which was closed throughout the time of the Ogbumi rituals was now opened. The old woman got closer to the corpse which was now exposed, whispered into Giwa's ears and tucked some seven grains of alligator pepper into his mouth.

"After the woman, came the turn of an elderly man. He brought out a knife and fixed it in Giwa's right hand. He told him to use it to fight those who killed him. The old man also brought out a polythene bag containing several objects and placed it under Giwa's head. Later, he brought out a small bottle inserted some in Giwa's ears and nostrils, while chanting incantations. The Ogunmogun masquerade with horns and cowries adorning his forehead came last with a bottle containing some blood which he sprinkled on the four corners of the casket...Then the body was brought out, loaded into the ambulance and moved to the home of Sule Nakozi, the 111-year-old head of Utsukolo family and the oldest man in Ugbeke-Ekperi..."

That concluded the extensive rites of passage performed for the young Nigerian slaughtered in the most bizarre and mysterious circumstances that have continued to jolt the nation even 16 years after.

Is it little wonder why the ghost of the slain journalist par excellent has refused to settle down after all these years? Something, by now, is certain: if Giwa's killers had dismissed the protracted rites of passage as fetish ceremonies meant to create false fears in their minds or imagination, no doubt, by now, it would have dawned on them that it was no child's play and none was intended either. The efficacy of the incantations, in other words, may have proved real after all. In fact, from all indications, Giwa's ghost had since identified his killers, what is left is just for it to exposed same before the anxious eyes of every Nigerian. Indeed, no ghost of any other Nigerian has haunted its killers the way Giwa's has done and for such a length of time.

And if by his death, his killers had meant to silence the man who heralded a new dawn for Nigerian journalism, it is clear by now that only his physical body was blown to pieces that Sunday morning of October 19, 1986. His spirit -and ideas-as evident in the vibrancy of the present-day journalism in Nigeria, point to the fact that Dele Giwa is still very much around for these are the very things he represented and had sought to bequeath the pen. profession in his fatherland.

His killers may have robbed the Nigerian skyline of a Newswatch plaza that would have towered above it, but they cannot take away the truth that was on Giwa's mind while on his breakfast table, that October 19. His killers were nothing more than little-minded persons that saw not beyond that hazy morning of October 19, 1986. If only they knew that there was a tomorrow or that you can kill a man and not the truth, then no doubt, they would have called back the bearer of that parcel bomb that blew Giwa away that morning. That way, they could have spared themselves the agony of being haunted by the ghost of a young soul they erroneously thought they could silence, forever.