Letter to Wada Maida: A Tribute By Ali M. Ali

“Every soul will taste death” Quran (3:185)

If you love and care for me, tell me while I’m alive. Don’t send me flowers and write a poem when I’m dead.

– Allen Lazar

Dear Sir,

Salam alaykum. I don’t know how to begin this letter. It has been a little over four years since we spoke. Unless my memory fails me, the last time we did was when I called to express my condolence over the sudden death of Malam Isma’ila Isa Funtua who passed on exactly four weeks before you also answered that clarion call all mortals must heed at the appointed time on August 17, 2020.

Late Isma’ila Isa Funtua passed away on Monday August 3, 2020 in the evening and was buried the following day after funeral prayers were held at the Shagari Mosque Abuja.

He was 79. He betrayed no inkling of his imminent passage. He bubbled with life. A nephew of his, now late, confirmed to me that he actually drove himself to the salon where he had a haircut within the hour of his exit.

Four short weeks later, on a Monday evening, your appointed hour arrived and you followed suit in almost identical manner.

The only inkling you gave, according to your bosom and childhood friend, Senator Ibrahim Ida, the current Wazirin Katsina, of your imminent passage, was lack of enthusiasm to renovate your residence in your home state of Katsina asking rhetorically “How much time do I have left to live?”

Sir, I am truly at a loss how to address you. I had trouble settling on the formal and impersonal “sir”. I wanted to address you “ Dear Uncle Wada” or “ Dear big brother Wada” if not outright “Dear Baba Wada”.

I know you will take exception other than what I used to refer to you, “Malam Wada” as chairman of the Board of Peoples Daily. You were all four and more rolled into one, to so many of us you mentored in the newsroom and in the boardroom.

Even in death, we continue to learn from the enduring lessons you left behind. In your final moments after the exit of Isma’ila Funtua, all of us, following in your footsteps, were unanimous that you were the rightful bearer of the torch of leadership from our part of the country in the national media space.

Your media profile was towering. Pioneer staff of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), London Bureau chief, Editor-in-Chief for almost a decade, Managing Director for nine years and chairman of the Board for three years.

Your media trajectory is truly inspirational. Under your watch, the agency broke new grounds, boosted operations at home and abroad with offices across the continent and parts of Europe.

Ranka ya dade, the Abuja Headquarters of NAN whose construction you supervised is now named after you. It was the federal government’s appreciation of your contribution to the growth of the agency in particular and the media in general.

Since September 2021,the building at Plot 394 Independence Avenue, Central Business District is known as Wada Maida House.

Let me bring you up to speed, or to use a more contemporary language favoured by the Gen Z and even millenials, let me give you an “update”.

Your ‘twin’ Senator Ibrahim Ida is now the Wazirin Katsina. You knew him as the Sardaunan Katsina while your other close friend, Professor Sani Abubakar Lugga, held the title. Aminu is now at the helm in the Nigeria Communication Commission. I am now calling the shots at the Agency as Managing Director, 20 years after you.

I am almost a year in the saddle and it still feels surreal each time I walked into the office and sat in your “chair”. Every day, as I sat to face the business of the day in that office, I recall how you advised me to remain in the Triumph as a very young editor of the weekly broadsheet and wanting to join the Agency way back in 1996.

When I made the overture, you declined, saying at the time I was more valuable to the Triumph than I would be in the Agency. I was anxious to leave the company; I made a go at the New Nigerian Newspaper where my university teacher, Dr Abubakar Rashid, was the boss. He was more graphic in why he wouldn’t give me a job not so much for lack of skills because he wouldn’t do that to his friend, Garba Shehu, who was then Managing Director of the Triumph by taking me away before full bloom.

Both of you saved my career actually by refusing to give sanctuary because years later I joined the Lagos-Ibadan Press as it was then called and there, I had my skills further honed by such media greats as Nduka Obaigbena, Ted Iwere and late Doyen Mahmoud.

Sir, you seemed to live all your life mindful of the Quranic verse – that “Every soul will taste death” Quran (3:185)

And you chose your flavour very well. You chose the flavour of tolerance and patience. In surah Al Baqarah, Allah (SWT) said “O you who have believed seek help through patience and prayer. Indeed, Allah is with the patient.” [2:153]

In words and in deeds sir, you were a man of patience and prayer.

In the nearly 30 years I have known you before you left this side of life, you came across as a man with an inelastic tolerance and patience. You were supremely mild-mannered, and lived, for the years I have known you, mindful that one day you will exit and so chose to be a man of peace and mild disposition.

My Chairman, you were an unusual media leader. Your exit is a personal loss especially now that I am at NAN calling the shots.

You were not just the chairman of the Board of Peoples Media Limited, publishers of Peoples Daily where I headed management, for half a dozen years you were a father figure to so many of us journalism “orphans”.

This would have been the best time for me to have you as “my go to genie’’ if I hit a brick wall. In NAN, we say no one knows Nigeria better, I say ,no one knows NAN better than you sir!

I find it exhilarating each time, old hands in the Agency recalled how they were recruited by your leadership without having a godfather except their respective competencies.

Sir, we intend to plod that path too. In Peoples Daily, you never failed to nudge me in the right direction. It is dejavu all over again.

Your legacies in the Agency are giving us direction and goals. You were a profoundly decent human being. A dye-in-the-wool journalist and media manager, you made a rebuke or a reprimand looked so tender, it would be a shame to go before you again. I am trying to be as mild-mannered and as soft-spoken, and try to emulate your kindness in not mouthing an unkind word that would disparage anybody’s self-worth.

Like you know, I have worked with several high-flying media leaders across five newsrooms nationwide, none came close to you in putting a leash on their emotion as you.

In temperament and in disposition, it was impossible to picture you hurting a fly. If ever there was an “ice king”, you were it!

I will regret, forever, not penning a tribute when the late Maida turned 70 in March 2020. I merely sent you a text and wished more years in good health to which you characteristically replied almost immediately. I did however; tell you that I was going to write one when I became more collected, to which you were neither excited nor indifferent.

Sir, permit me to say you were the very definition of “tolerance” and “mentorship”. Your 70-year life trajectory represents to me and a host of others in NAN, Peoples Daily and elsewhere in the media world a profound lesson in humility and kindness.

When I was hired to lead the management, there wasn’t really a “formal” interview. Garba Shehu, my other mentor, who persuaded me to join People Media merely, asked me to see you. I first met you in 1991 at a workshop organised by the Centre of Democratic Studies (CDS) in Bwari, in conjunction with the Nigeria Guild of Editors (NGE). You had just been elected president after Onyeama Ugochukwu of Daily Times. You were 41 and also the editor-in-chief of NAN.

I was among a dozen handpicked reporters drawn from several media outlets nationwide. I was a wide-eyed 20-something-year-old. Your lanky frame decked in a suit will forever linger in my mind. You flawlessly delivered an opening address that arrested my attention.

I pledged to myself that one day I would become the president of the Guild and the editor-in-chief of NAN. None of the two in my wish list ever materialised.

I came one step short of being president of the Guild of Editors. I am one step ahead of the Editor-in-Chief!

Let me refresh your memory sir about the Board of Peoples Daily. It was peopled by the likes of late Abba Kyari, late Halita Aliyu, late veteran journalist Rufai Ibrahim, Garba Shehu, Bilya Bala, Abdulmumuni Bello, Ibrahim Ismail and the late Isma’ila Isa Funtua. You chaired this group of eminent persons. Abba Kyari and Garba Shehu had to resign when they got into government in 2015.

It was this board that hired me not just an employee but also one with a stake; a condition I set before I took the job and one, which you graciously agreed to gladly.

I reported only to you. Board meetings can be stormy. Peoples Daily wasn’t different. Most times, management would be whipped silly; you were ever sympathetic and understanding to the chagrin of some of the directors. Your approach in dealing with management was fatherly.

One year, the ever-censorious board was so impressed that a formal commendation letter signed by you was given to management. The other directors finally appreciated what you long saw in us.

You were effortlessly scholarly without being gaudy; you were the sort that would nudge one in the right direction imperceptibly without claiming credit.

Ranka ya dade, there are so many “updates’’ but for time. I hope Insha’Allah to keep you abreast next year if I have not answered the call. May your soul continue to nestle in jannah. Adieu, my chairman, till we meet again.

Ali M. Ali is the Managing Director/CEO of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)

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