After Giwa was killed via a parcel bomb on October 19, 1986,
there were strong rumours that he was investigating the death of Gloria Okon in
police custody.

The young Nigerian lady was arrested in Kano and was
supposedly a drug courier for the powers-that-be.

She died mysteriously, according to the grapevine, because
she was about to reveal names that would have implicated the military
president, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB), and his wife, Maryam.

However, there was another version of the rumour that Okon
did not die but was surreptitiously flown to the UK.

It was rumoured that Giwa had discovered her whereabouts and
had travelled to interview her in London.

He was about to publish the story when he was assassinated,
according to the rumour which spread like fire in the wild.

Abubakar Tsav, the senior officer who investigated Giwa’s
murder, seemed to support the rumour when he appeared before the Human Rights
Violations Investigation Commission in 2001.

IT WAS ALL A HOAX,
SAYS MOHAMMED

Nearly 39 years after the assassination and the Okon rumour,
Mohammed, who was the executive editor of the magazine styled as “the TIME
magazine of Nigeria”, has declared in his upcoming memoir, ‘Beyond
Expectations’, that it was a hoax which, unfortunately, prevented a proper
investigation of the gruesome incident.

An advance copy of the book, published by MayFive Media, was
shared with TheCable.

He said some people who had an axe to grind with Babangida
pursued a narrow narrative and that eventually impacted the investigation.

Mohammed wrote: “And who, I must ask, killed Dele Giwa? This
question that sounded sonorously like an anthem of sorrow when it was first
asked pitifully across the country and was sustained in nearly everybody’s lips
for a long while has remained the same today, even in its tamed and almost
muted form, lacking in its original vigour and gravitas.

“It has remained so because nearly four decades after, the
search for Giwa’s killers has not yielded any definitive results. And that is
because the search had been mired in controversies, occasioned by sporadic
eruptions of conspiracy theories, some more ridiculous and ludicrous than
others, but conspiracy theories all the same.

The mysterious Okon, allegedly a drug courier, died in police custody, and that gave birth to several conspiracy theories, including the reason for the assassination of Dele Giwa.

“All the controversies which gave birth to a myriad of
conspiracy theories centred around the following personalities. Some peripheral
issues were raised and were discounted and I don’t need to go into them here.
The ones that attract my attention also happen to be the dominant ones, like
Gloria Okon, the alleged drug courier, who was arrested in Kano and who was
reported to have died in custody.

“The Gloria Okon theory is woven around Military President
Ibrahim Babangida’s alleged interest, or lack of it, in the death and
resurrection of the fictional character called Gloria Okon. Linked with the
Gloria Okon theory was the wild but baseless speculation as to why Kayode
Soyinka, the London bureau chief of Newswatch, was in Nigeria at the material
time and why, of all places, he stayed with Dele Giwa when the bomb exploded.
Another one has to do with Colonel (Haliru) Akilu (director of military
intelligence) and the series of telephone calls preceding the delivery of the
parcel bomb. Who initiated the call, and who made the last call?”

Mohammed said many people have continued to ask these
questions at various times, “and we made attempts to answer them and clarify
the issues to the best of our knowledge. But the controversy goes on and the
questions continue to agitate the minds of segments of society, especially
those who seem to know us at Newswatch more than we know ourselves”.

Dele Giwa did not interview Okon, according to Mohammed

‘NOBODY EVER HEARD OF
GLORIA OKON’

Was Giwa doing a story on Okon? Did he interview her in
London? Were the tapes, along with pictures taken at the interview, brought to
Lagos by Soyinka?

Mohammed further wrote: “In discussing these theories, I am
mindful of the fact that I am accountable to only God, my creator. My religion,
which is Islam, teaches me that I should at all times bear witness truthfully,
even if it is against myself. Whatever I say here has been said before, one way
or the other, but where I was a personal witness, I make bold to say it as I
know it. And this is not an attempt on my part to pass judgment or exonerate
anybody.

“To start with, I know, for a fact, that Newswatch was not
planning to do any story on Gloria Okon, not by any of our reporters. Not by any
of the editors and not by any of the directors – Dele (Giwa), Ray (Ekpu), Dan
(Agbese) and yours sincerely, Yakubu (Mohammed).

“At Newswatch, we had two levels of editorial conferences:
the General Conference, open to all reporters and the Editorial Board, where we
discussed cover stories, and this was open to only editors. The general
conference was held on Thursdays. It was compulsory for each reporter to come
to the conference with not less than three story ideas and be prepared to defend
them. Any of the four of us present would preside over it. At the initial
stage, it was presided over by Dele Giwa as editor-in-chief. Later on, he
excused himself, leaving any one of the three of us to handle it.

“Bose Lasaki was a relatively new staff who was determined
to learn the ropes. One day at the general editorial conference, she said she
had a story idea. She muttered some words to the effect that there was a rumour
that the drug courier that was arrested in Kano and was reported dead, did not
die but was alive. Her colleagues laughed at her suggestion, and she appeared
visibly embarrassed.

“Dan, who conducted the meeting, saved the day by advising
her to do more work on her idea and report back the following week. When she
reported back the following week, she admitted that there was nothing to that
story. And that was the end of the matter.”

Mohammed said Ekpu and Giwa were not at any of the meetings
and possibly did not even know about the “apparent fable”.

“Until the tragic death of Dele, nobody heard anything again
about Gloria Okon. But she came alive as the possible reason why Dele Giwa was
killed. Dele was said to have travelled to London some weeks before his death
and interviewed Gloria Okon. According to this story, it was Kayode Soyinka who
brought the stories and the pictures to Lagos and Dele and Kayode were looking
at the pictures when the lethal parcel landed,” he recounted.

“The fact is that Dele Giwa did not meet any Gloria Okon on
the trip in question. I know this for sure because I travelled with him to
London. It is difficult to fathom how Gloria Okon came to the centre stage in
Dele’s travails. She did not feature in the four-point allegations the SSS made
against him when he was invited for interrogation. Surprisingly, a former
police commissioner, Abubakar Tsav, told the Human Rights Violations
Investigation Commssion, popularly called the Oputa panel, set up in 1999, 13
years after the event, that the SSS asked Dele Giwa if he published or was
about to publish any story on Gloria Okon. If he published? If he published it,
they would know; wouldn’t they have read it? This fiction was supposed to be
the fifth item on the security men’s menu when they interrogated Giwa at their
Awolowo Road Office.”

‘WHY GIWA AND I
TRAVELLED TO LONDON’

Contrary to the rumour that Giwa went to London to interview
Okon, Mohammed said the visit was to see Ime Umanah, the chairman of the board
of directors, Newswatch Communications Limited, who had an accident.

Mohammed recalled: “He was flown to London for treatment. At
this point, we at Newswatch were planning to buy our own printing press and we
had located one in the suburbs of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It was decided
that Dele and I should travel there to inspect the press and explore the
possibility of acquiring it. We booked our flight through London to spend some
time with our chairman in London in September 1986.

“In London, we both stayed in Umanah’s house off Bayswater
Road. Every day, we commuted between his house and the Cromwell Hospital, where
he was on admission, to keep him company.

“For about five days that we spent there, Dele did not leave
my sight for a moment. We spent each day in the hospital until we travelled to
Amsterdam. Kayode Soyinka, who normally played host to us on such occasions,
was in the USA on a Newswatch assignment.”

THE ‘ROLE’ OF AKILU

One of the major conspiracy theories at the time was that
shortly before the parcel bomb was delivered to Giwa, Colonel Akilu had called
to make sure the famed journalist was home before the mysterious dispatch rider
dropped the deadly message.

Mohammed has now narrated the circumstances around Akilu’s
call.

“Before we left London for Amsterdam, Ime Umanah advised
Giwa to get close to Akilu, his friend, to widen the base of contacts,” he
wrote. “Hitherto, Giwa had a close relationship mainly with Aliyu Gusau and he
was always saying nice things about this officer. So, Ime Umanah gave Akilu’s
phone numbers to Giwa. On our return to Lagos, Dele made the acquaintance of
Akilu and reported to us how friendly Akilu was. But he did not miss the
opportunity to tell the director of Military Intelligence that, though he was
humble and decent, each time his boys (security men) came for us, they did not
show respect. Dele Giwa told us that he had extracted a promise from Akilu:
From then onwards, said Akilu, they would not rough-handle him or any of his
colleagues. If they did, he said, Giwa should not hesitate to inform him.

“Apparently acting on (minister of information) Tony Momoh’s
advice on that fateful day after the visit to SSS and the interrogation, Giwa
had called Akilu to intimate him about what happened at the SSS office. He did
not get Akilu on the phone but he left a message for him. Akilu did not call
back until Saturday, by which time, he got only Funmi, Giwa’s wife, who told
him that her husband was not at home. She advised him to call the Newswatch office
number. He did but nobody picked it and Akilu reported back to the wife. That
was the Saturday when media executives, including Dele, spent nearly the whole
day in Victoria Island at a luncheon with the bank chief, Adeosun and later at
a get-to-know-you meeting in the Vice-President’s house.

“On Sunday, the morning of doomsday, Funmi had laid
breakfast for her husband and Soyinka in the study with a note that Akilu
called twice on Saturday. Funmi said she wrote the note instead of delivering
Akilu’s message verbally because she and the husband had a small issue and were
not talking to each other for about one week.

“Dele told Kayode that Akilu must have seen his call on
Friday.

“He, Dele, then called Akilu back that Sunday morning and
told him why he called on Friday. Akilu assured him he would look into the
matter but that he should regard the matter as closed and advised that it was
not a matter for Dele’s lawyer. About ten minutes later, the deadly letter was
delivered. And then conspiracy theorists went to town saying that it was Akilu
who called on that Sunday morning to know if Dele was at home so they could
deliver the bomb.

Kayode Soyinka was having breakfast with Giwa when the parcel bomb killed the Newswatch co-founder

“What about Mr. Soyinka? What, they asked, was he doing in
Dele Giwa’s house at this most unfortunate time? The answer is simple. Giwa’s
house had always been his base anytime he was in the country. And why was he in
the country this time? Newswatch was selling well abroad, especially in the
USA, though it was in London we had our overseas office. Soyinka was dispatched
to the US to explore the possibility of our printing the overseas edition of
Newswatch there to facilitate distribution and enlarge the market. We had booked
and paid for his flight thus: London-New York-London-Lagos-London. It was more
economical to route the flight that way. We had scheduled a meeting with him on
Monday, October 20, so he could brief us on his trip to the USA. He had to
arrive at the weekend before the scheduled meeting. I even told my family that
we should have him for lunch with us this time to show appreciation for the way
he had been taking care of us in London each time we went there. He had been
playing this role from our days in Concord. And anytime he was in Lagos, he
stayed with the Giwa family. How utterly ridiculous, therefore, it was to say
that he brought to Lagos the interview allegedly conducted by Giwa in London.

“General Ibrahim Babangida, in and out of office, remains an
enigma, a personality that people love or hate with equal passion. As military
president, he must have succeeded in amassing as many friends as he amassed
many enemies. During the Giwa tragedy, some people who might have been rubbed
the wrong side by the Babangida administration were ready to swear that nobody
else but Babangida could have killed Dele Ciwa. Such people, including assorted
social critics and human rights activists, could not have numbered among his
fans, and they did not fail to show it.

“Though many fellow patriots who felt genuinely touched by
the tragedy made commendable and altruistic efforts to put pressure on the
investigating agencies to do their duty, the few who had an axe to grind went
too far in my view. In many instances, they invented their own stories and
helped to reshape the narratives, resorting in the process to blatant fallacies
and unhelpful conjectures.

“The methods they adopted narrowed the investigation to a
few options instead of widening the options, as if the whole idea of this
motion without movement was designed to produce a pre-determined outcome. It
was as a result of this that the board of Newswatch Communications felt the
urgent need to put a disclaimer on the angle being pursued by Gani Fawehinmi,
which was decidedly narrow. The outcome of such a preconceived notion, instead
of nailing the killers and do justice to the soul of our departed colleague,
has kept the question of who killed Dele Giwa still in the realm of conjectures
nearly four decades after his murder. The consolation, though, is that whatever
is hidden from man is not hidden from God Almighty.”