Africa-Press – Ghana. I still remember that night like yesterday. Our lives had been turned upside down by the resurgence of the second wave of COVID-19. Like most people, my sleeping pattern was no longer regular; which is to say, out of fear and boredom, I was now learning to sleep before midnight, and waking up without any idea of what to expect.
On that Friday, I had drifted off to sleep when my son rushed into my room with a phone. “Dad,” he said, “I think there’s a problem.” I grumbled that except if the world was about to end, there was no problem that could not wait till daybreak.
“I think you should see this, Dad. Sam Nda-Isaiah is dead”.
It must have been at about one in the morning. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my phone, that little pestilence of the modern age from which we try, without much success, to save ourselves. As I grabbed the phone a thousand thoughts flashed through my mind.
Maybe it’s fake news. Maybe it’s mistaken identity. Maybe it was another Sam Nda-Isaiah. Maybe…
Then I saw that the phone had registered 24 missed calls in about two hours. All of them were familiar numbers, mostly from LEADERSHIP. One was from my friend and outstanding journalist, Louis Odion, who called to say that he had just picked up the news and that Aremo Segun Osoba had called to confirm. I told him I wasn’t sure but promised to call back.
Then the flood of “maybes” suddenly froze into a solid block of fear and panic. I didn’t know what to think or whose call to return first. I didn’t want to believe that I was awake. Maybe it was a bad dream after all?
Not dreaming
Instead of dialing, I collected my son’s phone and read the breaking story from an obscure, unfamiliar website. The details were still sketchy but there was a ring of credibility to it. Sam’s name was correctly spelt, and his association with the media and references to his involvement in politics were also correctly cited.
I lingered on in denial, but somehow summoned the courage to dial back one of the earlier callers who confirmed my worst fears. Then I called the second, the third and the fourth previous callers. All confirmed the news. Then, the questions started colliding in my head at dizzying speed. How did it happen? When? Where? What? How can it be true?
Of all the questions, I couldn’t easily get past the how question for many, many reasons. Forty-eight hours before the news broke, Sam Nda-Isaiah had sent me a text – which he did almost daily – to ask my opinion about a set of captions for Ghana Must Go, the popular newspaper back page cartoon strip in LEADERSHIP, which was, quite often, the surrogate vendor of some of Sam’s irreverent ideas! And boy, they were witty, presumptuous, quick-tempered, vivacious, mischievous and funny, just like Sam.
I had, of course, replied with my own suggestions and was waiting for either feedback or any other ideas he might come back with before that Friday night. I had not the slightest idea that anything was wrong with him.
About one week earlier, before I left Abuja for Lagos, he called to ask if I would be available for a meeting to inaugurate the Advisory Board of NATIONAL ECONOMY, a daily business economic newspaper that he was determined to launch in defiance of the adverse economic conditions in the country, worsened by the global health crisis. The only thing too big, or impossible, for Sam to do was what he did not think about. For him, to think it, is to do it. And to do it, is now. This was obviously another dangerous idea that he was determined to see through.
I told him I would not be in Abuja, that I was done for the year and Lagos was missing me. He replied that my problem was that I overestimated Lagos. He railed about the traffic jam that had messed up his visit. He was in Lagos for the Annual General Meeting of the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria, NPAN, among other business pursuits, but commuting from one part of the city to the other had become almost impossible.
Lagos blues
The traffic jam was horrendous, the sort of chaos for which true Lagosians love and hate the city with equal passion. Sam said he had spent more time in traffic than at all of his scheduled appointments combined, leaving him drained, feverish and irritable. He couldn’t understand my rush into this madness. But he knew he couldn’t save me either. As it turned out, that would be his last visit to Lagos.
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