EXTRA: 60 diamond pens for Sakibu Olokojobi @ 60: The compass and the ink

By TUNDE OPE-DAVIES

My dearest brother and former classmate.

Sixty years. That’s not just a number stitched onto a velvet chair; that’s a lifetime of sentences.

Standing here today, looking at the diamond light in your eyes, I am not just seeing the distinguished journalist, the seeker of truth. I am seeing the boy from the creaky floorboards of Lagos Baptist Secondary School, Orile-Agege, Lagos, the one who used to share Agege Bread and Èwà with me in your family house at Oko Ọba, Agege.

In those days, you were already asking questions. While the rest of us copied homework off the blackboard, you were reading the chalk dust as if it were tea leaves. You wanted to know why the bell rang at that exact minute. You wanted to know who decided that Latin was more important than lunch.

You were the first person we knew who listened to silences because you needed some meditative moments to produce the pungent piece.

When we graduated, we scattered like seeds in the wind. I went one way, looking for opportunities and pursuing scholarship. You went running toward the fire. You became a journalist, not the cynical, jaded kind that populates fiction, but the real kind. The kind that remembers that behind every headline is a heartbeat.

I have watched you from afar with such awe. I saw you give a voice to the voiceless in the margins of your notebook. I saw you stand in the rain so a story could dry. I saw you choose the heavy truth over the comfortable lie, again and again, even when it cost you a night’s sleep or a friend’s favor. You turned ink into a bridge.

But today, I don’t just celebrate the bylines. I celebrate the friendship.

A journalist is supposed to be objective and weigh the cost of service, but you were never frugal with me. When I needed my stories out for the world to read and support our Digital Humanities at the University of Lagos, you didn’t file a report on it. You offered your skills and platform generously. You didn’t take notes; you just held the space for me and my initiatives. We remain grateful to you.

You have been our living archive at LABASCO ‘82 platform. The keeper of the memories we were too careless to remember or keep.

Diamond is just carbon that survived pressure. And my God has enabled you to survive pressure. You’ve been edited by life, proofread by loss, and published by resilience. And yet, here you are. Still sharp. Still brilliant. Still catching the light. Still making an impact; demonstrating the mantra “ the pen is mightier than the sword”.

So here is to you, my friend. To the boy with the sharp pencil and the sharper mind. To the man who taught us that the first draft is never perfect, but it is always worth writing.

Here is to the next chapter. May your FRONTPAGE never move to the backpage; may your byline never fade, and may your heart always have a story left to tell, and may you continue to be a great Nigerian with impact!

Happy Diamond Anniversary dear brother!! Keep shining, our own Great Journalist and Writer, Sakibu Olokojobi!!

HBD!!

With all my love and deepest respect.

*Professor Ope-Davies is the Director, Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Lagos, CEDHUL.

EXTRA: 60 diamond pens for Sakibu Olokojobi @ 60: The compass and the ink

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