My Friend Clarky - A Reporter Passeth

By

Ben Lawrence

In fact, Oruwairiye and Lawson were on some Western Nigeria boards. Imagine a dance floor with Hezekiah Oladipo Davies, James Modupe Johnson, Alfred Chukwu Nwapa, Alfred O. Rewane, Tony Enahoro, Chike Obi, Josiah O. Adigun and many notable others. And also fancy some impetuous young men, the age of their children, also taking the floor and asking to be excused to dance with the partners of those great men. Clarkson de Majomi, Taiwo Egbo, Peter Enahoro, Sina Coker, Bola Marquis, this writer and many others would in 1957 and 1958 when Ibadan was at the height of its social and political glory. The older ones had no inferiority complex and so allowed the younger ones to mix freely and in consequence to develop them and sharpen their ambitions. The younger ones were well- dressed, well-mannered and well-spoken. It was the Ibadan with top intellectual and sociable civil servants like Joseph Imoukhuede, Fatayi-Williams, Theophilus Bankole-Oki, Akin Johnston, Joseph Omo-Eboh, Akinola Aguda, Candido Johnson, Andrew Obiogun, Okungbowa I, Afe and countless others.

Even the other younger ones who transferred their services to the Federal Government became the leaders of this country. Clarkson lived very near the Race Course (now Adamasigba). Monday Sinclair, Tongo, Suraju Adesanya, Joseph Kadiri, Thompson Ojo-Osagie and I used the Race Course for football and athletics practice. Although Clarkson was not an athlete, he watched us in practice. One day we got to the Race Course and saw Adetokunbo Ademola (the Chief Justice of Western Nigeria and later of Nigeria), John Idowu, Conrad Taylor and others playing cricket.

That was the Ibadan, which admitted men and women of smooth character and civilised tastes, that Clarkson de Majomi started his working life. I ran into Clarkson at Paradise Hotel, Ibadan, the day Shambrose Dance Band of Accra, Ghana, the only band in West Africa then with a piano accompaniment, played at the hotel. It was in 1957 and many people were attracted to the band because of the publicity and the presence in the band of a well-known Nigerian musician, Jibril Issa, a Hausa, one of the best in Africa and a former Bobby Benson's boy. I recollect seeing Kunle Ojora, then editor with the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, NBC, also on that occasion. The leader of the band was a Lebanese, the pianist an Italian and De Souza, later leader of Black Santedgos, was co-deputy leader with Jibril Issa.

Quota system was Greek to talents like Issa, Rasak and others then who earned their feathers. Clarkson spotted me and tapped me at the back and when I looked back and knew it was him, I exclaimed;" Are you in Ibadan?" He replied;" At Co-operative Building." He was in Co-operative with Fajobi, who became a member of Oyo State House of Assembly in the Second Republic and who on return from England worked with Clarkson. We enjoyed ourselves that night although we might just have past our teens. Children matured early beyond their years in those days because of the type of education the British ran.

I had met Clarkson the year before during a Challenge Cup match between Benin and Abeokuta at Ogbe Stadium during the long school break. Benin had beaten Ibadan in Ibadan by a lone goal and their tie with Abeokuta was to decide who would meet Warri for the regional finals of the Thermogene Cup. So a lot of fans came from Warri to watch Benin and their fabled wizard goalkeeper, Edun Akenzua. It was at the pitch I met Clarkson who came with great athletes like Orlu Mowoe, Okwudili Daniel and others. Except forMowoe, the rest of us were still at school; yet we were mature enough to move in the company of our fathers without offending them.

Early in 1958, Clarkson told me he wanted to switch to journalism, reporting especially, because it suited his style of life. I also shared his eagerness but had just completed a six-month course in labour relations. Clarkson got a reporting job with the Southern Nigeria Defender, Ibadan, whose editor then was the late Stephen Iweanya. It was in the Zik's Group of Newspapers. Thanks to Clarkson's switch-over to journalism, my first protest article was published by that newspaper that year. Clarkson started covering courts for the Defender. I ran into a tax tussle with the Ibadan District Council tax defaulters' raiders.

At nearly 7.30 one morning, I left my house at Salvation Army area for work. On my way, tax raiders (Akodas) held me and asked for my tax receipt. I told them that I had just left school; but those illiterate tax raiders did not listen and insisted that I should go with them to Mapo Hall. Well, I climbed their Black Maria, thinking that if I explained to their immediate boss, the matter would be over. I was not one to bribe anybody. The man was intransigent. Some of the clerks in the council saw me and shouted "Ghana! Ghana!!" the nickname Ibadan football fans gave me. They asked why I was there. I told them to telephone Pa T.N.S. John, then administrative assistant (the designation for Higher Executive Officers then) or Mr. D.O. Coker, assistant labour relations officer) and a football buff that I was there.

A few minutes later, one of the tax raiders called my name and asked me to meet Pan Daniel Akinbiyi, the head of the council himself and Chairman of Ibadan District Amateur Football Association (IDAFA). I regained my freedom. Many school leavers working at the Secretariat, Ibadan and other federal agencies were affected in the raids that day. Clarkson came visiting that evening and after my cousins, the late Dr. Tunde Obanor, Patrick George, Clarkson and I had laughed over the story, we decided that I should protest in the newspaper about the tax raids: Clarkson took the article to his newspaper, Defender, and it was published. The editor asked him to invite me and that was my first meeting with the late Stephen Iweanya.

Clarkson did not last at the Defender because he joined the Daily Service and was posted to Warri as a correspondent. Before my first outing in the Defender, I had told Peter Enahoro who had resigned from the Daily Times to work as anager, Western Nigerian Rediffusion Service, that I wanted to be a journalist. He asked me to write articles but I didn't because we were busy playing football and pub-crawling. Peter Enahoro was my teammate, playing the right half-back, while his younger brother, Chris, played at inside right of the UAC, Ibadan, and his immediate older one, Ben, for the Railways, Lagos that won the Challenge Cup in 1956 and 1957. He had also played for Warri in the Governor's Cup final against Pan Bank in 1952 with Sambo, Okwudili, Luke Ogbolu, Powerhouse Azinge, Fred Anisha, Omagbemi, Dennis Okocha, Peter Esiri and others. So Clarkson was the instrument for sharpening my long-desired wish to be a journalist, a which I developed before my teens while I helped my late cousin, Elisha Ebomoyi, the first Nigerian stockbroker and once West African Pilot London correspondent, to send his dispatches to Lagos in 1949.

When Clarkson moved to Warri, I was soon transferred to Benin and later was asked to relieve some officers on annual vacation leave in Warri and later at Akure before I was asked to report at Ikeja, then headquarters of Colony Province early in 1960. We were in daily communication, with my elder brother, Taiwo, at the telephone exchange, fixing the link-ups. Clarkson then left for Accra Technical College to read journalism. While there, he did his internship with the Daily Graphic, which gave him hotels as his reporting beat. He wrote me later that he had met some Japanese in the commercial section of their mission in Accra during his rounds and on completion of his studies he would return to Nigeria to work with them. It was before the Japanese Embassy was established in Lagos and Clarkson was their secretary in 1961. But the journalism bug bit him again and he left that pioneering job to become editor of Everybody's Journal, published by the Rev. Martins, proprietor of the Peoples' High School, Yaba.That was in 1962.

Clarkson made Everybodys' Journal busy and popular. Friends like Ben Orubu of the Western African Pilot, Jide Adeleye, later editor of the Sunday Sketch, then of the Express before his studies later that year at Regent Polytechnic; London, Sam Uba of the Express and this writer then stringing for the Ghana News Agency under the Mr. K.B. Brown, helped with the writing and the production of the magazine. It rivalled the Drum. Clarkson reasoned that with the momentum, we should start our own magazine. I wondered aloud about finance. He was more experienced in business although he was naturally a reporter. He got a printer and we assembled a team, banking on the support of Uba, David Ozurumba, former editor of the Midwest Champion, Sapele, Orubu and others. The magazine titled, Globe, got advertisement and was patronised before Clarkson got a British Council sponsorship to read journalism at Thompson School of Journalism, Wales.

 The project collapsed when he left for Britain in 1963. In all these endeavours and ventures, his first wife, Grace, the daughter of the powerful NCNC leader in Warri, Chief Ometan, was always by him. But Clarkson was an Action Group supporter; the reason he worked for the Daily Service and the Midwest Echo earlier.

One could say that for more than 20 years, one was his confidant because as soon as he was attached to the Sunday Times, London, for internship, I received his letter. When he finished his diploma from Thompson School, he got some people to start a monthly newspaper in London called African Illustrated. Although I was now with the Allied Newspapers, Tribune Group, he appointed me the Nigerian representative. I did stories for the newspaper. He was not surprised that I was in the Allied Newspapers because we shared the same passion for Awolowo and he knew how I risked everything when the Western crisis began, especially during the Lagos City Council election in 1962 which the AG wrested from the NCNC to the shock of Northern People's Congress (NPC). It affected the planned prosecution of Awolowo for treason, I recently learnt.

When Clarkson returned to Nigeria in 1965, he came to Benin to look for me and traced me through Taiwo Egbo (alias Sea Boy). I had just returned from the court where I was being tried for sedition and causing false alarm with Ikhan Yakubu. I was Yakubu's deputy at the Midwest Echo. Although there was no money, we gave the Festus Okotie-Eboh's faction of the NCNC a good run for theirs, professionally reporting events and commenting reasonably in favour of the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA). Clarkson asked if I would return to Lagos because he was arranging to start a magazine to be called "Tide." It was not the time for a general to abandon his command and so I told him I would send features, but would stick to the struggle to liberate the West and the South.

The civil war came and my sympathies fell for the Igbos having been angered by the pogrom of 1966. After the re-occupation of the Midwest by the Federal troops, it was rumoured that I was killed for supporting Biafra. Clarkson wept. But I am still living not without all the travails accompanying struggle which being a leftist in political persuasion had taught me.

But when Clarkson saw my reports in the Nigerian Observer and Sunday Observer, he wrote and advised that those were dangerous times and that I should tread cautiously. Well, I still had brushes with Gowon's administration even though I later worked for the Nigerian Morning Post and the New Nigerian while he ruled. Armed with the Tide, Clarkson interviewed many African and Middle Eastern Presidents. Big brother Peter Osugo, then editor of the Sunday Times, helped in publishing those interviews. He had earlier toyed with the idea of making films, then in partnership with the late Olabisi Ajala.

The Tide project suffered from finance and so he joined the Ibru Organisation as their public relations consultant. He was of great asset to the organisation from which he belatedly launched himself into business. Were Clarkson to be a natural businessman, he would have stayed with the Japanese with whom he wielded enough influence and would have made millions of pounds sterling before many of the new commission agents who parade as rich men.

He left Ibru and started Mac Press and Clarkson Corporation for public relations consultancy. He made good. One day after Gbolabo Ogunsanwo had left the Sunday Times, he came with his Rolls Royce early in 1976 to take me to lunch at the Federal Place Hotel, Lagos. He knew I was not happy with the development in the Times. He told me that there would be openings for public relations manager and officer in the Volkswagen of Nigeria and that I should apply. I hesitated. Eventually, I was invited with many other notable P.R. men from the UAC, Guinness and Nigerian Breweries for the job. As I hurried to go back to Kakawa, Clarkson wrote a small note to me that I should wait that the Germans said they wanted me and would want to give me lunch. They offered me the job there and then and Clarkson appealed to me to accept.

He and his widow, Julie, had begged me a few days to the interview that I should avoid "booze" so as to look continent. They knew I was always smooth but could walk out on anybody, perhaps, under "booze" if unreasonably pricked. I surprised Clarkson when I served Volkswagen because I raised its profile and he was all praise for me. But I was still on the move to return to my base, the Daily Times after just a year. Clarkson flared up. He said, "What type of person are you? You are leaving this posh job to be editor, Evening Times?" I told him that it was national service and that if Adamu Ciroma could leave the Central Bank to go into politics, there was nothing odd in my decision. A week later, he came back to me and confessed that a journalist who was out of a printing house was like a fish out of water and that he felt the same way-the power, aura and sheer activity of the newsroom.

I have written this piece to clear the misrepresentation by those who do not know us and who allege that we parted ways after a quarrel. The fact is that I left The Mail after a few months because I wanted to keep our friendship. I reported to no one that there were hard feelings between us. If I were to do, it would be to Johnson Sakutu, Saro Akpeneye, Orlu Mowe and Fajobi that I should report. Mathew, his nephew, knew that we had no quarrel and that I still defended him in Lagos. Julie, his widow, was happy the way I felt because she had earlier begged me not to quarrel with Clarkson knowing our tempers. But Clarkson felt I let him down. "Friends don't treat friends like this." When I left him, he was arranging a deposit to buy a house for me at Festac. But we were both too independent persons.

Clarkson had no time for plots. He was lively, broad-minded and always thinking of when to make the next dollar. As a young man, his signature tune was, "M-I-SS-I-SS-P-P-I, Mississppi, good morning in the States is a dime." That was a popular tune then by the Andrew Sisters of the 1940s. But then he was not a hustler. He was an achiever. He opened his own page, not imitating anybody. Even in our young days in Ibadan, Clarkson wore good suits. We bought our suits from London or from the UTC. He smoked Sobranie cigarettes, and I, Lucky Strikes. Clarkson kicked those habits when he returned from Ghana in 1961 and rarely touched alcohol except when in a good mood with friends like me. Our elders in the press from the Midwest like Abiodun Aloba (alias Ebenezer Williams) and Lawrence Scot-Emuakpor were very proud of us and also encouraged us.

Adieu Glark! The Pace-setter.

April 2002