Oga Dan, Good Night

He was born Daniel Ochima Agbese on 20 May 1944 into the Agila royalty in the then Northern Nigeria Protectorate, which later became Northern Region and subsequently Benue State. Agila falls within the Okpowu Local Government Area of Benue State. But rather than having himself addressed as Prince Daniel Ochima Agbese, he chose to be known and addressed simply as Dan Agbese.

I had known Oga Dan (as we preferred to call him) through his crisp writing in the _New Nigerian_ newspapers and _Newswatch_ magazine years before I met him early in 1992.

I had been invited to a job interview at _Newswatch_, coming from _TimesWeek_ (a weekly magazine of _Daily Times_ ) and it was Oga Dan leading the panel to screen me. His questions were incisive, one of which was why I had not continued my education after completing the diploma programme at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism five years earlier. At that time, _Newswatch_ had a policy of recruiting only first or second degree holders. My response was perhaps satisfactory because about a week later, I got a letter of employment from Newswatch.

We, in the _Newswatch_ newsroom dreaded the night Oga Dan was in charge of production. He was clinical in editing the copies. No floppy sentence would pass him by. In my first full week at the magazine, the task of writing the cover story fell on me. And Oga Dan was the duty editor. He called me into his office that night and first made me relax: “You write well”. Before I could go to town with that commendation, he asked why I was fond of employing conjunctions or conjunctive adverbs as paragraph transitions. From one paragraph to another and from one idea to another, my script was replete with “however”, “but”, “meanwhile”, and their grammatical family. He taught me internal transition, asking that I should remove the “however”, “but’, “therefore”, etc, and see if my copy still conveyed the message.

Oga Dan had an office assistant (I’m struggling to remember his name) who would not be caught smiling. On production night, he would slide into the newsroom to deliver his boss’s message. He was quite dramatic about it. Realising that we all lived with the fear of Oga Dan, he would stand at the entrance to the newsroom, his eyes roaming the room. After some seconds, he would call the “culprit” of the moment to face Oga Dan’s editorial scrutiny.

A must-read columnist, editor, writer, and author, he was a teacher of note, as well. It was a great privilege to have one’s copy go through his probing.

Oga Dan was a journalist through and through. There was an instance when his relationship provided him an opportunity to dabble in political communication. He handled that with the naivety of a practised writer.

It was all about delivering the job, not about the pecuniary benefits.

Sleep well, Oga Dan, the great!