By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
The Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME) can hardly ever be matched as a benchmark for quality in the Nigerian media.
The 34th edition of the prestigious DAME is honouring no less a media exemplar than the inimitable Owei Laemfa.
Established in 1992, DAME upholds “a longstanding mission of celebrating outstanding professionalism, ethical responsibility, and excellence in Nigerian journalism.”
Owei Lakemfa is deserving of the highest of awards having distinguished himself in the topmost echelons of journalism and as a former Secretary-General of the Organization of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU).
In the words of the esteemed trustees of DAME, “Owei Lakemfa, known for his decades-long columns on national and international affairs, has also distinguished himself as a courageous trade unionist and human rights defender. His leadership within the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and later at OATUU reflects his lifelong commitment to justice, workers’ rights, and democratic governance. His voice has remained principled, consistent, and deeply impactful in Nigeria’s public conversation.”
Owei Lakemfa’s landmark achievements as the pioneer Labour Correspondent of The Guardian, and Labour Editor of Vanguard are the stuff of legend.
For me, Owei has over the years been a trusted rendering friend and brother, an unstoppable comrade who can put his head on the block in one’s defence.
We met as classmates in the Dramatic Arts Department of the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), with Prof Wole Soyinka as Head of Department.
Owei stood out from the very beginning as a born leader and organizer who towered as a fearless defender of the rights of all.
Known as “The Bouncing Prefect” in his secondary school days at Methodist Boys High School, Lagos, he carried his leadership and motivating qualities into all he did in all his endeavours.
To give a vista of Owei in our early days, I was yet to get my accommodation sorted out at Ife when Owei joined up with Deolu Ademoyo to put their beds together so that three of us can sleep on the same bed for the entire session!
It was Owei’s style to stock up our wardrobe with bread and butter, and if he saw me arguing somewhere on campus he would drag me away, saying: “Go back and eat first before arguing with those GNPP people.”
For Owei, Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim of the then Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP) who always mouthed “politics without bitterness” was the archetypal unserious bourgeois Nigerian politician. An avid reader, he bought all the books and encouraged everybody around him to be very hungry for knowledge.
He would lend me a book for one to get abreast of something, and when I deigned to return the book he would ask me to keep it as he had bought another copy for himself!
When my library got burnt some years ago in Lagos I found out that many of Owei’s books went down with the inferno, especially the book on evolution that helped me to write the novel, The Missing Link.
Owei has the courage of his convictions such that he could in class tell our lecturer, for instance, that the man’s not exactly teaching what the celebrated Marxist literary critic Raymond Williams wrote in his book!
There is no better analyst of international politics that I know than Owei.
During a visit to Germany, Owei made it a point of duty to visit the grave of the great playwright Bertolt Brecht.
We had studied Brecht as our “Special Author” in Ife, only then to find out that the radical German dramatist wrote too many plays, all of which we were expected to read.
Owei alongside all our other classmates decided to confront Head of Department Soyinka with the issue of whether we were studying for a PhD or an ordinary first degree.
Soyinka tactfully told us to take our war to Dr Yemi Ogunbiyi whom he said was the lecturer to blame for the curriculum overload!
In inter-personal relationships Owei was nonpareil.
It was such fun travelling with Owei from Ife to visit his mum in Lagos, a very amiable mother who told us that half of the people milling around in the then overcrowded Oshodi were spirits!
A good number of Ife students who wanted to be friends with Owei were somewhat too scared to meet him, believing quite erroneously that he was “too strict.”
Even now, a lot of people out there are still to get to grips with the personable Owei, a friend in need and deed who always gladly hands over his salary to me anytime I’m broke, which happens to be always!
Owei took his destiny in his own hands from very early in life, a prodigious revolutionary leader older than his age.
His clarity of vision is exemplary.
Knowing him, I can bet with all my poetry that Owei Lakemfa will serve as a luminary ambassador of DAME.
