My first and last conversation with late Yakubu Mohammed

Sometime in October last year, as I was driving home after participating in a television programme, my phone bleeped. Out of habit I developed following an incident that still lingers in my memory, I hardly respond to phone calls while driving. So, I let the phone ring in the hope that whoever it was must have to wait until I got home to return the call.

But as the caller persisted, I leaned over to see whether it was from one of the contacts registered in the phone. To my satisfaction and disappointment, I noticed that the caller was not. But as the caller did not relent, despite myself I decided to pick up the call. My intention was to tell whoever it was that as I was driving, I would call him back once I reached home.

On picking up the call, the caller asked ‘’Hello Am I speaking to Iliyasu Gadu’’? And before I could answer in the affirmative, the caller went on ‘’My name is Yakubu Mohammed whose book you reviewed recently’’. In my mind I was like ‘’Wow! The great Yakubu Mohammed, one of the Nigeria’s celebrated journalists whose achievements in the profession have been etched in the sands of time, calling me personally?’’

Instinctively, I immediately got off the road and parked on the shoulder to listen to what he had to say. In my entire life in the public space, I had never seen nor spoken to Yakubu Mohammed and for him to call me was an honour personally and for what it was worth I was not going to pass up the opportunity to hear from one of the icons of Nigerian Journalism.

‘’Iliyasu, I am calling to thank you very much for the review you did on my book of memoirs, Beyond Expectations, in the Daily Trust and other media platforms. I did not see it until someone brought my attention to it. I really liked it and have sent it to as many people as I can reach out to including Professor Olatunji Dare who is in America.’’

‘’Well sir,’’ I replied, ‘’I am greatly honoured to have you call and speak to me on the review I made on your book. To be honest I did it with not as a normal routine work but more importantly to repay the likes of you and Dan Agbese who inspired me to work as a journalist from your writings. I have been following the two of you since your days in the New Nigerian and Nigerian Standard respectively in my days as a youngster growing up in Jos. I have not met both of you in person but your works have penetrated my being such that when I sometimes reflect, I cannot but thank you both’’.

I then told him that I was given the book and asked to review it rather fortuitously and although I was expected to return it, I told Stella Iyaji the Weekend Trust editor to perish that expectation. I was not going to pass up the chance of holding up to the work of one of my idols in the profession.

Upon hearing that, Yakubu Mohammed let out a chuckle and said ‘’If you happen to be in Lagos and you have the time to spare call me and we will have lunch together where I also will give you an auto graphed copy of the book. Or if you prefer that I send the book to you by courier it will be done.’’

When I read the news of his passing last week, I was truly devastated. As a fellow Muslim my first instinct was to retreat to pray to Allah to forgive his short comings in life and to ask that he be admitted where Muslims pray and hope to be in the hereafter.

In my reflections on the conversation I had with him I regretted that I did not take up his offer to come and break bread with him. I would have had the opportunity of meeting him in person for the first time and addressed some observations and question on some issues in his memoirs.

In life, especially in the Nigerian public space, Yakubu Mohammed needs no introductions. Without question you can count him in the echelons of not just the top journalists of the modern era of Nigerian journalism, he is also up there among the genuinely venerable figures in Nigerian public life.

In the profession of journalism where he rose to become one of its celebrated icons, many will readily agree that he is what you could call ‘’a journalist’s journalist’’.

If events constitute a major component of journalism, Yakubu Mohammed can be described as a born journalist. From his memoirs we gleaned that his coming to the world, and his travails in early life marked by fortuitous circumstances that pushed him inevitably to become a journalist. During his secondary education, he had written an article critical of his school administration. When everybody braced up for the harsh punishment that usually followed such impetuousness, Yakubu Mohammed found himself appointed to the editorial board of the school’s publication. From then the trajectory of Yakubu Mohammed the courageous and fearless journalist got into its paces.

It was not surprising that Yakubu Mohammed went on to study journalism at the University of Lagos where again he was a star performer not just in campus journalism but also in contributing, albeit incognito, to stories carried in major newspapers in the country on happenings in the university.

In his sterling contributions to journalism, Yakubu Mohammed can be attributed to helping to improve quality and standards at the now defunct Kaduna-based New Nigerian Newspapers, Concord Newspapers and perhaps most prominent of all in helping to found Nigeria’s first weekly news magazine, Newswatch along with the late Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese. In a testimony to that, late Dan Agbese with whom Yakubu shared decades of close personal association, said that it was Yakubu Mohammed who did the spadework in conceiving and driving the effort that eventually led to the founding of Newswatch.

Along the path of his illustrious career as a journalist and in the public space, the late Yakubu Mohammed had inspired, mentored and trained many journalists who had also gone to become A listers in Nigerian journalism in their own right.

Adieu Yakubu Mohammed, illustrious son of Kogi and a venerable icon of Nigerian journalism.

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