Dele Giwa

Dele Giwa (16 March 1947 – 19 October 1986) was a Nigerian journalist, editor and founder of Newswatch magazine.

Sumonu Oladele "Baines" Giwa was born on 16 March 1947, to a family working in the palace of Oba Adesoji Aderemi, the Ooni of Ife.

He attended local Authority Modern School in Lagere, Ile-lfe.

When his father moved to Oduduwa College, Ile-Ife as a laundry man, he gained admission to that school.

Dele Giwa married an American nurse in 1974.

His second marriage, to Florence Ita Giwa, lasted 10 months.

Dele Giwa travelled to the USA for his higher education, earning a BA in English from Brooklyn College in 1977 and enrolled for a Graduate program at Fordham University.

He worked for The New York Times as a news assistant for four years after which he relocated to Nigeria to work with Daily Times.

He later married Olufunmilayo Olaniyan on 10 July 1984, and they were married until his death in 1986.

He was survived by his mother, wives and children.

Dele Giwa and fellow journalists Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese and Yakubu Mohammed founded Newswatch in 1984, and the first edition was distributed on 28 January 1985.

However, in the first few months of the administration of General Ibrahim Babangida, who took power in August 1985.

It printed his face on the cover four times and even criticised "anyone who attempted to make life unpleasant for Babangida".

Later, the paper took a more hostile view of the Babangida regime.

Dele Giwa was killed by a parcel bomb in his home at Ikeja, Lagos, while in his study with Kayode Soyinka, on Sunday 19 October 1986.

The assassination occurred two days after he had been interviewed by State Security Service (SSS) officials.

In an off-the-record interview with airport journalists, Lt. Col. A.K. Togun, the Deputy Director of the SSS had claimed that on 9 October Dele Giwa and Alex Ibru had organised a media parley for media executives and the newly created SSS.

Togun claimed that it was at this meeting that the SSS and the media executives reached a secret censorship agreement.

Under this agreement, the media was to report any story with potential to embarrass the government to the SSS before they tried to publish same.

Giwa had been invited by the SSS to their headquarters for the first time on 19 September 1986, after writing an article in which he described the newly introduced Second-Tier Foreign Exchange Market (SFEM) as "God's experiment" and suggested that if SFEM failed, the people would stone their leaders in the streets.

Giwa was interviewed and his statement taken by two SSS operatives.

He was later taken to meet with Lt Col Togun, the deputy director of the agency in his office.

Togun is reported to have told Giwa that he found nothing offensive in the story as Giwa had also stated in the same story that he was hopeful that Babangida seemed determined to make SFEM work.

According to Giwa's neighbour and colleague, Ray Ekpu, on 16 October 1986, Giwa had been questioned over the telephone by Col Halilu Akilu of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) over an allegation that Dele had been heard speaking to some people about arms importation.

SSS officials reportedly summoned Giwa to their headquarters again on 16 October 1986, and on the next day Ekpu accompanied him to the SSS headquarters for the interview.

Lt. Col Togun accused Giwa and Newswatch of planning to write the "other side" of the story on Ebitu Ukiwe who was removed as Chief of the General staff, to General Babangida.

The magazine had published a cover story titled, "Power Games: Ukiwe loses out", in its edition of 20 October which was on sale on 13 October 1986.

Togun also accused Giwa plotting with the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, and students to carry out a socialist revolution.

Giwa was also accused of saying that Newswatch would employ the suspended police public relations officer Alozie Ogugbuaja.

Ogugbuaja claims that on 16 October 1986, a bomb was defused by the police bomb squad at his official residence in GRA, Ikeja, Lagos.

Ogugbuaja also said that he suspected that his phone might have been bugged because Giwa and Ray Ekpu in one of their telephone conversations with him had indeed promised to employ him in Newswatch if the police dismissed him.

Ray Ekpu also believed that their houses and phones may have been bugged because he did discuss employing Ogugbuaja in Newswatch with dele Giwa over the phone only; he said that he found two bugging devices in the cover of two books inside his study.

Lt. Col. Togun while questioning Giwa had claimed that he wasn't aware of the fact that Akilu had already questioned Giwa over the gun running allegations the day before, this was after Giwa had brought it to his attention.

Giwa reported the interrogations to his friend Prince Tony Momoh who was then the Minister of Communications, Giwa had told Momoh that he feared for his life because of the weight of the accusations levelled against him.

According to Ekpu, Momoh "dismissed it as a joke and said the security men just wanted to rattle him"; Momoh promised to look into the matter.

On Saturday 18 October, Giwa also spoke to Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, the Chief of General Staff who said he was familiar with the matter and also promised to look into it.

Later on 18 October, a day before the bombing, a staff of the DMI had phoned Giwa's house and asked for his office phone number from his wife Funmi.

This same person from the DMI later called back to say he couldn't reach Giwa at the office and then put Col Akilu on the line.

Ekpu alleges that Akilu asked Giwa's wife for driving directions to the house and when she asked him why he needed the directions he explained that he wanted to stop by the house on his way to Kano and he wasn't very familiar with Ikeja, he also offered that the President's ADC had something for Giwa, probably an invitation.

A 1989 description of the magazine said it "changed the format of print journalism in Nigeria [and] introduced bold, investigative formats to news reporting in Nigeria".