I have a confession to make – I have a godfather, but he never asked me to swear to an oath of allegiance at Okija Shrine – or wherever.
It started way back in 1985 when I ran into a dead-end as a peasant theatre director. I had to run to the Rutam House home of The Guardian in Lagos to gun for a job as a journalist.
My only recommendation was that I had already published some articles on the esteemed Op-ed pages of The Guardian.
It was the then newly-employed Krees Imodibie, later murdered by Charles Taylor in Liberia, who led me to the Editorial Page Editor Sonala Olumhense’s office.
When I got introduced to Sonala whom everybody affably called Ess-Oh, as per his initials S.O., he pointed at me, smiling, and said: “So you are the one?” It was as though he had known me from before Adam was created!
In a mumbled rush, I told him I had come to look for a job. He just waved for me to sit on the settee to his right and threw the bunch of the newspapers of the day on my lap like I was his pal from the beginning of journalism.
Sonala’s entire office table was stacked up with articles asking to be published on the Op-ed pages, some typed and many written in longhand.
People came and left the office at will, calling him “Ess Oh” whilst he assessed the articles and I was engrossed with reading the newspapers.
Whenever he read a particularly pathetic article, he would scream “Esoterica!” and toss the piece to me for my perusal. I kept wondering if he still remembered that I had come to look for a job.
It was well into the evening that he suddenly stood up and said to me: “Let’s go.” I trotted after him to the office of the Guardian editor then, Lade Bonuola, the legendary Ladbone, who explained that the management had ended all recruitment such that no spaces were left for wannabes like me.
Then Sonala took me upstairs to the about-to-be-established African Guardian magazine. He had a brief chat with the proposed magazine’s editor, Ted Iwere, who said he needed to set a test to know if I was up to par for the job.
“When you are through with their test I’m downstairs waiting,” Sonala said and left.
Ted Iwere asked me if I knew anything about the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting then holding in Nassau, Bahamas. I told him an instant “Yes” because news of the meeting was on the front pages of all the newspapers I had been reading downstairs in Sonala’s office.
“Do a report of the meeting,” Ted said, adding that I should go to the library downstairs to do the writing. He graciously gave me off-cut paper and pen with which to do the writing.
I could not understand it all. How do you ask someone to do an examination inside a library, and without an invigilator? Especially as Sonala had already surreptitiously made me read up the material in question in his office? This simply amounted to “expo” in popular parlance.
I decided there and then to write the assignment under “newsroom temperature” by refusing the godfather advantage of going to the library given to me by Ted Iwere via, I suspected, Sonala Olumhense.
I made noises while writing in the African Guardian newsroom to show that I had not gone to any library, and I had great company in the already assembled staff available.
When I came back the next day, nobody was forthcoming with the result of my test. I settled inside the newsroom, waiting for the worst, until the editor-in-chief Andy Akporugo strolled in and stared fixedly at me, saying: “Don’t think you are too hot; I will simply chuck you out!”
Now this was beyond my understanding: I had not even been employed yet the boss was already talking of sacking me.
I was still in a daze when the magazine’s artists, Femi Jolaosho and Jide Fatogun, told me that the test I did the day before had already been pasted up for publication in the maiden edition of the magazine.
In this my case of appearing just yesterday and getting employed today, after writing one “arranged” test, who would still argue with me that the godfather named Sonala is not the deadliest Mr. Fix-it on God’s earth?
Of course, given his humble nature as a man with no ego problems whatsoever, Sonala denies being a godfather.
Even though Sonala has relocated to the United States, we are still very much in touch. Only recently, he flew into the country and our mutual friend, Ogbuefi Tony Nnachetta, informed me that Sonala was lodged in Protea Hotel on Isaac John Street, Ikeja GRA.
I was at the hotel in short seconds to behold my godfather who quickly ordered my favourite brew: Star.
Ogbuefi Tony Nnachetta joined us later, and we all worked together putting together a coffee table book about Nigeria’s most triumphal moments in football entitled Class of 94. The book has a presidential foreword and will be launched soon. You wait!