Dele Cole: Eclipse Of A Quintessential Public Servant

The death of Dr Patrick Dele Cole in London last weekend at the age of 86, closes the book on the life of one of the most accomplished Nigerians of his generation. He was a historian, diplomat, journalist and politician, and he served the country in each of those roles.

Tributes have come from President Bola Tinubu and from former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and we join them in mourning him. But we believe the best way to honour him is to hold on to what he did at the Daily Times, because it speaks to a problem this country is yet to solve: how to keep the press free of the people in power.

Born in 1940 in Abonnema, in the Kalabari Kingdom of present-day Rivers State, he went from Nigerian schools to the University of Otago in New Zealand and then to Cambridge, where he earned a doctorate in history and became a fellow of King’s College.

Tinubu Mourns Dele Cole, Hails Contributions To Journalism, Diplomacy

His life spanned the military era, the nationalisation of major newspaper interests and the return of civilian rule. He worked in the Cabinet Office in Lagos in the 1970s, where, Chief Obasanjo recalls, their paths first crossed, and he advised Chief Obasanjo again as special adviser on international relations from 1999 to 2001.

He represented Nigeria at the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity, served as ambassador to Brazil and Argentina, and was deputy national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) for the South-South zone. Chief Obasanjo credits him with helping to repair Nigeria’s diplomatic ties and to shape the strategy behind the Paris Club debt.

It was at the Daily Times, however, that he left his deepest mark. He was managing director from 1976 to 1979, at a time when the government owned the paper. That is a dangerous arrangement. A government that pays the bills is tempted to dictate the headlines, and Dele Cole refused to run the paper that way. He restored its influence when it was one of the largest newspapers in Africa and brought in journalists such as Dele Giwa and Stanley Macebuh. As Chief Obasanjo recalls, he also introduced an independent editorial board system to insulate the paper’s policy from political interference. A man appointed by the government built a newsroom that could challenge the government. It is a rare thing.

The editorial board system deserves a closer look. Its purpose was plain. Decisions on what the paper would say were taken by editors and not by the ministry that owned it. That arrangement protects a newspaper from its owner on the days when the owner is embarrassed, which are exactly the days when readers most need a newspaper. We have seen too many media houses in this country, public and private, discover that principle only after a scandal has been buried.

President Tinubu said in his condolence message that the late ambassador upheld the duty of the press to hold public officials accountable and to speak truth to power. He is right, and we welcome the statement.

Needless to say , a free press is a public necessity and not a favour from government. Yet journalists in Nigeria are still arrested, harassed and detained for doing their work, and some of the laws used against them remain on the statute books. Praise for a dead editor cannot sit comfortably beside a police cell for a living one. If the authorities mean what they say about the press, they have the power to prove it.

The lesson applies to private owners as well. Newspaper and broadcast proprietors face pressure from advertisers and from political patrons. An independent editorial board protects the owner too, because a newsroom that loses its credibility has nothing left to sell.

There is a lesson for young journalists too. A press that is free in law still has to be brave in practice. Dele Cole gave his reporters the cover to be brave, and they used it. The profession today, working under harder economic conditions and daily pressure, needs both: the protection of the law and the backing of the owner.

Those who knew Dele Cole say he believed public service should never come at the expense of personal integrity. That is an uncommon belief in a country where public office has too often become a route to private wealth. Many officeholders will read the tributes this week and nod. We would like to see them apply the same standard to themselves, in offices where nobody is writing a eulogy and the only audience is the public that pays their salaries.

Chief Obasanjo called him an intellectual pillar and a trusted ally whose counsel shaped pivotal moments in the nation’s history. A man of that standing could have chosen comfort. At the Daily Times he chose to make a government paper uncomfortable for the government.

In our opinion, the country can honour him in practical ways. The Federal Government and the National Assembly should review the laws that have been used against journalists and remove any provision that allows a critical report to end in detention. Owners of media houses, public and private, should adopt written guarantees of editorial independence and publish them. These steps would cost far less than a state funeral and would do far more for the profession he served.

Dele Cole proved that an appointee can serve the public against his appointer. Nigeria should make that a practice and stop treating it as a rarity.

We join his family, other relations and friends to bid this intellectual colossus farewell and a peaceful repose in the bosom of the Lord.