The Doyi(e)n – By Sam Omatseye

Doyin

There are few personages in the history of journalism, or any profession, like Dr. Doyin Abiola. Yet in her hoary years, few media houses or journalists set her up as a reservoir. When she died though, we all drool with eulogies as to what loss she was.

This essayist reflected on that when she paid a courtesy call on The Nation’s editorial board before the Covid-19 pandemic, and it was a fest of about an hour. Slight in build but inhabiting a dynamo and grace, Abiola spoke modern media and journalism with us, and one takeaway I recall was her insistence that a media house should not operate without an ideological backbone.

“Make sure you stand for something,” she barreled out in a thin voice.

She knew about standing for something. In the hurly-burly of June 12, she was a sort of submarine in the struggle. She was not just the editor-in-chief of the Concord group of publications, she was an activist at war with atavists, against carriers of a foul tradition of fiefdoms and hegemonic thralldom, of entitled cabals who rewrote history with gunfire, and feuded with feudal rights.

She looked contented that late morning in our boardroom, the same look I saw a few years earlier at an event at NIIA when she said the saga of the Concord newspapers was over, and new papers were on board, and we all should move on. In the language of Alfred Lord Tennyson, “though much is taken, much abides.”

As a submarine, she had stopped firing. The major quarry, the man IBB and his cohorts, had fallen in the smoke. It was a battle of a generation, and she played her role as a general. Few knew that she deployed the resources of the newspapers for the man’s reelection. The Concord was a fearsome campaign machine before and after the fabled polls, and she brought together the cream of the stable, on top and below, to play roles. She once boasted that her own organisation was as formidable and legit as any one deployed by the Hope ’93 organ, that is, Abiola’s campaign. The war chest was the Concord purse, and she did not have to borrow a kobo. She was running a media house awash with cash. She was not only a success as editor but as a manager. She knew her onions and she cut it so the scent rent the air.