LADBONE

VICTORIA ISLAND, LAGOS — He said he was short of words. He was not.

On Thursday, October 22nd, at the Civic Centre in Victoria Island, journalism came to celebrate a man who had spent a lifetime not wanting to be celebrated. Lade Bonuola — Ladbone to everyone who ever worked in a Nigerian newsroom — turned 80. His children had to force the party on him. He does not, by his own admission, “pull crowd.”

He only pulled the entire history of Nigerian print journalism into one hall.

The occasion was a birthday and a book launch: LADBONE: A Life In Print, compiled — behind his back — by Dapo Olorunyomi, founder of Premium Times. Olorunyomi, whom Ladbone described with reverence as a man who “can climb any height, can go under the hole to bring out information,” flew from Abuja to Lagos to hand-deliver a formal invitation to his own surprise party. Ladbone’s children had kept the book a secret for months. He found out two weeks ago.

What followed was not a speech. It was an extempore testimony, transcribed later, that sounded less like an acceptance speech and more like a man trying to solve a mystery: How did I get here?

Ladbone’s answer: Alhaji Babatunde Jose.

It is impossible to understand Nigerian journalism without Jose, and impossible to understand Ladbone without him. Jose was the newspaper wizard, the chairman who made the Daily Times the biggest newspaper empire in Africa south of the Sahara — bigger, as Ladbone proudly noted, than white-run newspapers in South Africa.

Ladbone’s origin story is pure Jose. In early 1969, a schoolboy who had just won the J.F. Kennedy Essay Contest with his classmate Dr. Biola Job gets a message: Alhaji Jose would like to see you. Who is that? Why me? He walks into the office shaking.

Jose had heard he was a good writer. Did he want to be a journalist? Ladbone didn’t know what to say. He said he would consult his teachers. Jose told him to write an application, guided him, then personally walked him to the Chief Executive, Newspapers Division, Mr. Adagogo Jaja, and then to the Editor, Prince Henry Odukomaiya. Odukomaiya gave him a test. He passed. He left.

That should have been the start. It wasn’t. Ladbone went off to teach at Arigbajo, Ifo, and then Premier Grammar School. He didn’t know Jose was looking for him. All through 1969, Jose went to the Newsroom asking for him. In 1970, Jose’s driver brought a letter to his contact address in Surulere. Another test, supervised by Mr. Aremu Alabi. He passed again.

“I came to understand later that he had been placed along my path to support me, to bring me up,” Ladbone said on Thursday.

Jose sent him for training at home and abroad, attached him to three newspapers overseas, placed him under the care of Ted Kerry in the London office. Twenty-five years after giving him his first job, Jose walked into The Guardian to visit Ladbone when Ladbone was Managing Director. He wrote him a letter saying how proud he was. Ladbone still has it.

The second man in Ladbone’s constellation is Chief Segun Osoba. The man who was so confident about Ladbone that if anyone wanted to start a newspaper, Ladbone was the first name he thought of. Herald? Osoba asked him. Vanguard? Uncle Sam Amuka said Ladbone was not ambitious because Jose had promised heaven on earth. The Voice? He was going to be Editor.

The Guardian was supposed to be Osoba’s paper. He was to be MD. He told the family Bonuola would be Editor. Ladbone started as Associate Editor instead, because the board, in the meantime, was trying to find a printing press. America was in recession. No machine came back.

A year in, Chief Michael Ibru attended a board meeting for the first time. He asked to be educated: What does Associate Editor mean? Osoba told us Bonuola will be Editor. Why is he not Editor? The next day, they led Ladbone to the Ikeja Division of the High Court to take an oath of editorship. Just like that.

And then the third and fourth men: Michael and Alex Ibru.

To Alex Ibru, “Bonuola could do no wrong.” Ladbone, being diligent, sent the Chairman/Publisher his News Schedule every day — what would go into the paper. One day he found a parcel on his table. All the schedules, unopened, put in envelopes and returned.

He went upstairs. Chairman, what is the matter?

“No, no, no. I didn’t touch it. You are the expert,” Alex told him. “If they call me, I will give them your number.”

In an era when publishers in Nigeria want to write headlines, edit stories, and approve photos from their living rooms, that anecdote landed like a parable.

Ladbone closed his story the way he started it — overwhelmed. “In your careful and kind thoughts, help me remember Alhaji Babatunde Jose, Chief Segun Osoba, Chief Michael Ibru, and Chief Alex Ibru. I thank them for lining up on my route to bring me up to what I am today.”

What is Ladbone’s story, really? It is not about winning an essay contest. It is about a profession that once knew how to spot a writer and then knew how to build an editor. A chairman who personally walked a shaking schoolboy between offices. An older editor who staked his reputation on a younger man. A publisher who understood that the best interference is no interference.

On Thursday, an array of galaxies filled the Civic Centre to celebrate an 80-year-old who never wanted a crowd. They were not just celebrating Ladbone. They were mourning — and perhaps hoping to rebuild — the assembly line that made him.

It was an empire, once. Daily Times, beating South Africa. The Guardian, free to be The Guardian.

And at the start of it all, a boy from nowhere who won a Kennedy essay and was too shy to know he had just been hired.

“If I had won, this is what I would have missed,” Ladbone said, cryptically, at the beginning of his speech. He meant an election, perhaps. Or a different life.

What he would have missed was this: a room full of people who came because Dapo Olorunyomi compiled their impressions of him into a book, because his children insisted, because Alhaji Jose once sent for him in 1969 and never stopped looking.