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Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, former managing director of Daily Times, and co-author of Born to Run, a biography of the late Dele Giwa, speaks to Tobs Agbaegbu, senior associate editor, in Abuja, on   the inspiration he drew from the late iconoclastic journalist. Excerpts:

Newswatch: What inspired you to do a book on Dele Giwa?

Onukaba: He was one great journalist that I greatly admired. I was in The Guardian newspaper then while he was in Newswatch, but I admired him for many things. He wrote a column he called Parallax Snaps which was very inspiring. He was also a flamboyant and courageous writer and editor. He was larger than life. Any aspiring journalist then would want to be like Dele Giwa. Apart from that, I also knew him in person and he knew me too. I recall what happened on a day he came to The Guardian. Immediately I was introduced to him he shouted and said so you are the one who did that beautiful piece on General Olusegun  Obasanjo. I said yes, and he asked me to keep it up, and also told me that Obasanjo was happy about what I did on him. He advised that I should get  in touch with Obasanjo and I did, and that was how my relationship with Obasanjo became some sort of a lifelong thing.

At some point also, Dele Giwa wanted to recruit me to work for Newswatch. That was some months before his death, and we met at Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja. He asked me what it would take to hire my services. I thanked him and told him that I regarded the offer as an honour to work with him. At that point in time, I was already entrenched in The Guardian and did not want to leave at that point in time, so I simply told him that I would think about it. So when he died, many of us were shocked and saddened. When my friend, Dele Olojede, who was also very close to him suggested to me that we co-author a book on him , in his honour, I quickly jumped at it and that was how we started moving all over the place, researching and talking to people about him. We wanted to use the biography to re-tell the story of him. The biography was to immortalise him because we felt he made enormous contributions to journalism in Nigeria. He was a role model to many of us.

Newswatch: From what you found while researching for the book, what kind of person was Giwa?

Onukaba: He was full of life. He was also friendly and self confident. He could walk into any place and talk himself out. He also had contacts in very high places. He had charisma and, of course, was also a ladies’ man. That accounted for the many women in his life. He was also a very honest person but some people felt he was also very arrogant. That was because of the way he carried himself. You know that when you have self confidence, some people tend to see it as arrogance. These are some of the things I was able to pick here and there about him. In fact, even people who didn’t quite like him had one or two things they admired about him.

Newswatch: How did you people come about the title of the book, Born to Run?

Onukaba: It was my friend, Olojede, who brought it up. The idea is this: if you look at the way he lived his life, it was as if he knew he was not going to live a long life. He was in a hurry to do so many things and he died at the age of 39. You could see the kind of things he was able to achieve within those 39 years, what so many people would not be able to put in within a longer life time. As if he knew he was not going to live a long time, as he was born, he ran quickly through his lifetime and ran back to his maker. That was the idea behind the title of the book.

Newswatch: Dele Giwa was associated with investigative journalism. What do you think has become of that endowment, 25 years after his death?

Onukaba:  Let me first say that the times are different. At that time, there were not many channels of getting news and information. Now, it’s different. Then people could afford to wait for Newswatch or any of the other magazines every week because they knew they were going to bring something new or something fresh. But nowadays, with so many outlets and so many news channels, getting everything happening almost at the same time, it’s very difficult for magazines to be able to cope in an environment where information is saturated. That’s the challenge of the moment. During his time, things were a bit different. It was not an information saturated environment as we have now.

Newswatch: There was this question that the media succeeded in putting on every body’s lip when he died - Who killed Dele Giwa?. Is it not surprising to you that there is no answer to that question, 25 years after he died.

Onukaba: It is very very sad. Let me tell  you how the Dele Giwa issue has continued to remain in the minds of Nigerians ever since. I was approached by Spectrum Books about five years ago for a reprint of the book Born to Run, because it has virtually gone out of circulation. I said to myself, if after 20 years, ( because  it was then  20 years after), and they can’t answer the question, who killed Dele Giwa,  I didn’t find enough motivation to touch the book again. If the various agencies have found answers to the question, then there would be new things to add to the book. It’s very sad that there is no answer yet to the question. It’s a failure of government institutions that are supposed to investigate, find answers and hold people accountable for crimes they committed. It’s really sad. What we are left with are conjectures and speculations. In the rest of the world, murder cases like this are never closed. They are called code cases and are never closed, and officers who continue to put things together are attached to the cases, until they get to the root of the matter.

Newswatch: Did Dele Giwa ever influence you, either in your style of writing or through the way you see things?

Onukaba: His influence on me was more through the way I see things. That, as a journalist, you have to have self respect, carry yourself in such a way that others will respect you. There was also the issue of boldness in going after stories which requires need to investigate it properly and publish your findings, no matter who will feel offended by it. There was also the issue of integrity. Dele Giwa was not the kind of person you could buy. These are qualities and virtues a lot of us picked from him.