By Chika Abanobi
Today is July 23. On this day, in 1952, Mike Awoyinfa, Nigeria’s ace writer, human angle journalism exponent and pioneer Managing Director/ Editor-in-Chief, The Sun Publishing Limited, was born into the world. That is to say, the pioneer editor of the defunct Weekend Concord is 70 years old today. But if white hair or beard is something that can be used to signpost who is 70, forgive him, he does not sport any. At 70, his prayer is that the Lord will keep him long enough to clock 80, 90, and even 100 until, in his words, he exhausts his brain in writing. A widely-travelled man, the prose stylist and famous biographer has traversed virtually all the continents. Referring to an incident in Paris, France in which he had a nasty fall some years ago, he said: “My life is always a story for my readers even if I have to make a mockery of myself. I don’t mind making myself a laughing stock for my readers to enjoy.” That, exactly, is what he did in this riveting interview with Saturday Sun, while going down the memory lane. Though a slice of his 70 years on earth having to do with mainly his days in Ghana, and partly in Nigeria, it reads like one of those biographies he and his late bosom friend, Dimgba Igwe, could write. This is Mike Awoyinfa’s story.
How does it feel turning 70, in terms of aspirations and achievements?
We have to start by thanking Jehovah, God Almighty, the Father of Heavens and Earth, the One who created us. When we were children, 70 years was associated with bearded men like Moses and Abraham and other biblical characters. It sounded a very distant thing, you know. But we thank God that He has brought me thus far. They say that 70 is the Biblical age. I pray to God that it will not be the limit because there’s so much to do in terms of my profession as a journalist and as a writer, as a biographer. There is so much for me to write. Writing is what keeps my alive. It keeps my mind alive; it’s like a form of exercise. My prayer every morning is, ‘God, forgive me all my sins, all my iniquities and let me live long enough to do your will and to do all my writings, to write as many books as possible before I finally die in my 90s or 100.’ I want it to be that by the time they bury me, there would have been be nothing left in my brain. I would have exhausted my brain so much so that when I meet my friend, Dimgba, one day in heaven, there will be nothing left.
But it is said that age is in the mind. Do you feel old?
Old age has its own challenges. Shortly before I became 70, sometimes last year, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. These are things you don’t think will ever come to you. You think it is somebody else’s sickness. You don’t think you will ever be a victim. But that is reality for you. I am very, very health-conscious. I go for regular checkups. It is by the grace of God that the doctor discovered this thing very early before it begins to metastasise. I have survived it. Doctors said I am a cancer-survivor. I did radiology for 45 days. Radiology or chemotherapy has its own challenges too. It takes both the good and the bad. Here am I. Me that used to be an exercise freak, me that wakes up every morning jogging. Now I cannot even jog again. That’s one of my regrets.
I was going to ask you that question, whether at 70 you still jog…
At 70, I cannot jog anymore. Apart from that, there is this lumbago at my lower back, degenerating bones. You go to see a doctor and they tell you there is no cure. You have to manage it. That’s the challenge, the annoying thing about old age. Very annoying indeed
All the same, one must be grateful to God to be alive….
I am grateful to God. When I look back and see people that were not even up to 40, 50, 60, 70 dying, I have to be grateful to Him that I am alive to see my children and my children’s children. I have about four grandchildren. And they give me a whole lot of joy.
You were born in Ghana. How long did you stay there before you came down to Nigeria?
My father migrated to Ghana because he was having children at home, and they were dying.
So, in essence, you are not his first child?
No, I am not the first child. I have two sisters ahead of me. That was after my parents relocated to Ghana
Were your parents traders or what?
Of course, they were traders or entrepreneurs because they were quite enterprising. It was when they got there that they had my two senior sisters. Then after that I came, and then my younger brother. So, we are four: two girls and two boys. It was fun growing up though my elder sisters were in Nigeria. I never met them until Ghana sent us packing. Ghanaians said Nigerians must go. They sent two of them to Nigeria, my two elder sisters, to be trained by their relations. The one I am following is the one that tells me about my childhood. He said whenever she sees my son, Jide’s daughter it reminds her of my childhood. He said that’s the way I used to bubble. We give God the glory.
Tell us about your reading habit. When and how did it start?
I read a lot when I was a kid because my father made a strategic decision by sending me to stay with the son of his senior sister. He was living with him in Ghana and he trained him up to the advanced teachers’ education level. So, when he became a teacher, he took me under his tutelage. So I became his boy. I was the one preparing his food. It was a childhood of solitude. I feared him.
He must have been a disciplinarian…
He was to me. In fact, as he was preparing for his O’ and A’ levels, he was also waking me up. We would be reading together. I would be angry and feeling sleepy. But he would give me a dirty slap. I was good in the arts but not in mathematics. It did not add up. So I read all his books: Peter Abraham’s Tell Freedom, Mine Boy. I mean, all those books on the African Writers Series. I read them. That’s how I became addicted to reading. And every morning he would ask me to buy newspapers: The Ghanaian Times and Weekly Spectator. Before he read them, I would have read them. From there, I knew I was going to be a journalist. Reading helps a lot. It affects your mind. It expands your horizon and makes you creative. You want to write like the people whose books you read. I was doing well in essays. I loved English Literature at school such that if I wrote an essay, whatever essay they gave me, I must steer the topic to whatever I had read. The teacher or school inspector would ask me to come and read my essay to the whole class. That kind of thing is motivational for every kid. Being the ‘son’ of a teacher, you have to do well. I had my O’ level in Ghana. I was doing very well even in the Ghanaian language. If I write essay here in Ghanaian language, you will be surprised.
Which of them? Akan?
No. Fante. I was winning prizes.
Do you still speak it?
Of course, I do! When Ghanaians came to Nigeria, I was speaking it to them.
Which of their schools did you attend?
Initially, I went to Sekondi College. I passed the Common Entrance when I was in Form 2. It was very early for me, and I had scholarship. But there is what they call ‘The Monsoon’. It is a term used to describe a situation in which the whole class could be sacked or sent packing if they feel they are not doing well or underperforming educationally. And, they needed the very best. We had Form 3A, 3B, 3C and 3D. They may have to sack students in Form 3D and some of them in Form 3C, and ask you to go and look for another school because you are not good for the school.
How does the system operate?
They would weed away some students they feel were not doing well academically as they had expected. They were so strict in that school that, in their quest for excellence, they had to cut away about two classes. That’s how I was affected. The name, “The Monsoon”, is just a slang word. They wanted just the best. And to them, it is either you are in Form 3A or Form 3B, then part of C. So I went to secondary school too early. Every year, there was massive expulsion of pupils who didn’t do well academically.
It was like a selection of the very best?
Yes, but it affected me. It was based on age and academic performance. I went to secondary school very early in life.
So, after they sacked you, what happened next?
I had to go and look for another school. I then went to Kwame Nkrumah Secondary School, Nsei-Axim. So that was a turning point in my life. I said, it will never happen to me again. You can be painting your story, and said it was a success all the way, that you had been a whizz kid. I was never a whizz kid. I had my failures when I was in Form 3 or so. I love Sekondi College so much that when I saw the result I got sad.
What memories do you have of your parents, your father and mother?
My mother was such a very sweet woman. She was a daughter of an Imam. So I grew up as both a Muslim and a Christian. According to what I was told, when my father came to marry my mother, my mother said no. My father kept on persisting for three years. He was after this woman. My mother was still saying no. So, eventually my father’s people found a wife for him. But when my mother heard that the man that had been tormenting him was about getting married, suddenly she agreed. So, that’s how my father married two women at a go in his life. So, he went to Ghana with two wives. And those wives were very, very intimate. It was such that I could eat here or there. The second woman had only one daughter who was one year ahead of me. She is still in Ibadan. My mother had four.
When you said your father relocated to Ghana because his children were dying, did it also affect the other wife?
Yes, both wives’ children were dying. They had a dispute on who among them should be called the first wife. My father said no, my mother is the first because she is a woman he had been chasing for almost four years. So, he made my mother the senior wife. So, I grew up under two mothers. And I was educated both in the Muslim and Christian ways. I went to both the Quranic and Western schools. My experience is that studying at Quranic school comes with a lot of beatings: you memorise and memorise until you get tired. It was a great experience learning from the two religions.
So your dad allowed that?
My father was a very tolerant man. He wasn’t difficult. He allowed you to practise your faith. He didn’t disturb anybody. When the Muslims were celebrating, we joined my mother to celebrate. When Christians were celebrating, my mother would go to church. She was such a beautiful and quiet woman. She is the one whose character I have. I resemble my father. It was my sisters that took after my father character-wise, because he was a no-nonsense man. A tall man like that.
Talking about your mother’s children, how many of them are alive today?
My senior sister died last year at 77. The next to her is alive. But right now, she is in the UK. She is the one I am following. And I have a junior brother who is in Lagos.
What does he do?
He is a commercial driver
What do you think was responsible for the death of your parents’ children at the time? Was it an African phenomenon?
I don’t know. People believe that it is witches that are responsible for that. But miraculously when one moves from there to another place, he doesn’t have that kind of experience. Ghana was such a lovely place. We grew up under Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party. He was an Africanist. He created Ghana’s Young Pioneers. It was like the Boys’ Scouts. I was a member of the Pioneers. It was more like all these Soviet and Chinese kinds of ideological movements.
You know, Nkrumah was widely regarded as a socialist…
Yes, he was. That’s why they eventually removed him through a coup de tat.
What memories do you have of Ghana in those days?
There were always conflicts between Ghana and Nigeria. That rivalry has always been there from the beginning. Even at school, they would be tormenting you. They would say: ‘look at you, tribal marks,’ though I was not sporting any. There’s a song they used to sing that ‘the tiger is coming o, you better go and hide.’ They used to mock or taunt us with it. And, when it comes to football, Ghana’s Black Stars must defeat Nigeria. And anytime they did, we were in trouble in our school. It came to a point that I began to wish that I was a Ghanaian because of their taunting after those soccer tournaments.
Was it where you developed your love for soccer?
Yes, I can say so. To Ghanaians, soccer was like a religion. They were like Africa’s Brazil. That was the way they saw themselves. They had many soccer legends. And every time they were playing soccer, we stuck to our radio sets because there was no television by then. Ghana was always beating Nigeria. But on the side of Nigeria, there was Thunder Balogun. That was the kind of environment in which I grew up.
Eventually, Ghana asked you people to go….
Yes, it was one of the saddest moments of my life. But I didn’t know it was going to be a blessing to me. After my O’ levels, I came to Nigeria to do my A levels at Ijebu Ijesha Grammar School. There I was appointed the Library Prefect. I think I had the best results in the A’ levels. When I came to Nigeria, there were books. But there weren’t many books in Ghana. It was like a world of books, like a kid in a toy shop. I read and read and read. My friends in Ghana would ask me to send books to them. And I would buy books and send to them. I did it on one or two occasions. I was into sports at Ijebu Ijesha Grammar School. Those were the things I learnt from Ghana. I was into Hurdles. I was doing 100 metres. That was where I met my wife. I never knew she was going to be my wife because I was not even talking to her. It was after our schooldays that we got married. We had graduated, and I was looking for a wife. My people were pressurizing me. We were closing from church, and I just saw her. I said: ‘How are you? Are you married?’ She said: ‘not yet.’ I said, ‘Oya, come, I will marry you.’ Like a play, I took her to meet my parents. They were very happy to see her. My father carried wine to her parents, and that’s how we began our marital journey.
Who gave you your name, Mike?
It was my father that gave me the Christian name.
Since you were at one time a Muslim, so to say, do you have a Muslim name?
Yes. Tiamiyu. In fact, every of my mother’s children had a Muslim name. As a child, it was a Muslim name they used to call me. Nobody was calling me Mike. And they used to call my mum, ‘Mama Tiamiyu.’ My brother was Ganiyu. My immediate senior sister, the one I am following was Nimota. I have forgotten the Muslim name they were calling my eldest sister. She wasn’t with us in Ghana. But her husband was the one God used to hone my writing skill because in those days we used to exchange letters. He would write with a literary flourish. For me to reply, I would have to do my own research. Every expression I had I would be keeping it for him so that when I wanted to reply to his letter, I would use those expressions. He was one of the reasons I went into journalism because he was working in Radio Nigeria and then as an engineer. But occasionally, he did the editorial side too. He was a contemporary of Biodun Shobanjo, the advert guru.
You studied Mass Communication at the University of Lagos but majored in broadcasting instead of print journalism. What was the reason for that?
Did I know what I wanted in those days? What was reigning was the deejay of a thing, and I wanted very much to be one. I was a disc jockey on campus. And when I saw that we had a radio station, I said, ‘ah, let me major in broadcasting so that I can be a deejay.’ So, I learned radio writing, production and all that. The advantage I had was that whenever you are writing for the radio, you write for the ear. You write the way you talk. That has influenced the way I write. I was taught that if there is a bigger word and a smaller word, use the smaller word. So, it has really affected me. I hardly sound bombastic. I try to simplify my expressions, which is very good.
What happened after you finished with your studies?
From my NYSC which I did in Jos, Plateau State, I applied to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
Why didn’t you look for job in a radio or TV station since you majored in broadcasting?
During my NYSC I freelanced for a radio station, presenting a programme, but I didn’t find that challenging enough. So I had to teach myself all over again how to write a feature story. I worked for NAN as a correspondent for a year or so. But I had to resign when National Concord came into existence. Before then, I was even getting frustrated with the work at NAN because there was no by-line. No feature story. Nothing! You are just like a civil servant. Initially, I got a job with the Daily Sketch, under Segun Osoba. I didn’t know him then but they gave me the job. Upon getting the job, I went to NAN to tell them that I had been placed on Level 9. They quickly promoted me from Level 8 to 9. But shortly afterwards, Concord came brandishing Dele Giwa, Innocent Oparadike and other big names. I went for the interview in Kaduna. And, they retained me as their Chief Correspondent. While there, I was doing some human angle features and sending them to Dele Giwa on Sunday Concord. He then created a column for me called ‘Reporter’s Notebook.’ There was a human-angle story on a Hausa journalist, an old woman. I interviewed the woman. It was at Aminu Kano press conference where she was asking questions. I didn’t know that an uneducated woman can be a journalist. She asked the question in Hausa. I did the story, and Dele Giwa entitled the story: ‘Hajiya …somebody, a reporter without biro and notebook.’ Later on, they brought me down to Lagos. Eventually, Dimgba came to join us. In journalism, you just have to be good. In the writing world, you don’t need a godfather. Your talent is your godfather.
You lost a friend, Dimgba Igwe. But over the years, nobody has been able to find out the hit-and-run driver that killed him. How does that make you feel?
My joy is that Dimgba is in heaven. And over there he knows everything. If his killer is found, of what use is that? Will that bring him back again to life?
But don’t you think it could help to bring a kind of closure to the sordid episode?
We may have something like that in other developed parts of the world. But we don’t have anything like that here. That’s why crime continues to grow in Nigeria because people can do some things and get away with it. In other places, before someone goes out to commit a crime, he evaluates it. What are the chances of being caught? But here in Nigeria, the chances of being caught are next to nothing. You can get away with murder in this country. You don’t have the facilities to detect crime. No CCTV cameras. Nothing! We are still in the Stone Age in terms of things like that. It is so sad that criminals can brazenly enter prisons to release inmates. These are things that we are not even supposed to find in fiction. They would spend hours waiting for security men to come, and yet nothing would happen. This is a country where criminals would go and waylay a train, kidnap people and demand ransom. I mean, Nigeria has become a land of fiction. You can’t travel by road again. And, the price of airfare is so exorbitant now. That’s not the Nigeria we prayed for. It’s so sad.
How do you think that Dimgba would have celebrated your 70th birthday if he had been alive today?
Ah! He was more of an influencer and organiser! While alive, he organised my 40th, 50th, and 60th birthdays. He would never have agreed that I should be quiet about my birthday. He would have pulled out all the plugs. He would have called out the media and everything. That was one area of his strengths. What he wants is what he wants. And, he wants the best for me.