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Some students read Peter Pan’s “Daily Times Odyssey” and demanded more on him from me if possible. They asked if I knew Peter Pan. “Yes, I did — in two ways”, I told them. One, from books. His write-ups in Daily Times between 1958 and 1966 that I didn’t read were the ones he never wrote. My primary assignment in Daily Times when I was there was research-related, so I had to read him and other columnists, especially him, for his alluring style.
Two, I knew him personally in 1996, as our Sole Administrator in Daily Times, a title which was different and more powerful, somehow, than the usual ‘Managing Director’ title. However, this final tribute takes the route of history again.
Peter Pan joined Daily Times as young, forward-looking Peter Enahoro, bursting with the philosophy of Bernard Shaw, that Irish polemicist and nobel laureate, whose works he admitted he read privately in the secondary school and absorbed. The reason his impatience was not unnoticed early in Daily Times, as a young writer desirous of a quick societal change! He was angry with society and it showed.
In a piece in Daily Service newspaper, Bisi Onabanjo who noticed Enahoro’s disquiet, complained subtly about him. Writing as “Ayekooto” in his column, Onabanjo criticized Abiodun Aloba, Sunday Times Editor, for ceding his popular “Ebenezer Williams” column so early, to “a young boy called Peter Enahoro”.
But Enahoro proved his mettle when he was appointed Sunday Times Editor in 1958. He made witty writing look so easy. In 1962, he introduced two new columns, “Editorial”, and “Pictorial”, never known in any serious Sunday newspaper in Nigeria. He titled the Editorial, “DAMN IT”, and called the column with pictures, “Pictorial”. “Pictorial” usually carried a lady’s picture with the latest dress in town. Within a short period, the column became one of the hottest spots in the Sunday paper. Lagos Weekend newspaper, a sister Daily Times publication, caught the drift at its founding in 1965 and made “Pictorial” column its major feature, to gain large following like Sunday Times.
But since the pictorial column was novel and alien to Nigerian culture, it drew the ire of the clergy in the east. In June 1962, Enahoro got a protest letter from one “Christian Council for the Protection of Christian Modesty” in Enugu, threatening to drive Sunday Times off the streets if the pictorial page was retained. The Council complained about four “offensive” photographs published in Sunday Times: one that showed a woman with feet astride; one with a lady in tight dress; one with a girl with pieces of patched clothes that resembled leopard skin; and one that looked sexy. The Council wrote, “You must now call a halt, otherwise we shall carry out an intensive campaign against Sunday Times, to chase it out of the streets.
“If you don’t desist henceforth, please take this as the first clarion call to war. There will be no turning back. This type of sensationalism, which you have undertaken to introduce, is alien to this country and we can ill-afford to sit in the fence”. Enahoro ignored the threat and replied tersely in the Sunday Times of June 17, 1962. He wrote, “An organisation that calls itself the Christian Council for the Protection of Christian Modesty, is hopping mad with the Sunday Times for publishing pictures of girls wearing what every other girl of the 20th century, all over the world, is wearing today”.
The editor considered the photographs fashionable and appreciated by the public, hence their continued publication. Sunday Times even sold more throughout the country, Eastern Nigeria from where the protest letter came, inclusive.
Also, dignitaries started requesting for subscription to the paper because of the DAMN IT editorial. One of such dignitaries was the Minister of Lagos Affairs, Mallam Musa Yar Adua, who was the target of attack in the first edition of DAMN IT on June 10, 1962. Enahoro was surprised that the Minister could show interest after his paper had dragged him publicly.
DAMN IT was a pungent editorial written in colourful but unsparing language about the goings-on in high places in the country. It never shied from naming names, the positions of the personalities involved, notwithstanding. Enahoro believed that the rot in society must be tackled from the top. And he was determined to blaze the trail, even if harsh language must be deployed to achieve results.
Peter Pan explained the motive for DAMN IT editorial shortly. He wrote:
“The Sunday Times enjoys the greatest readership of any newspaper in Nigeria, including all the dailies, all the weeklies, all the monthlies, all the periodicals, and what have you. When we speak, we are sure of an audience of at least 600,000 Nigerians. For this reason, we speak only with the greatest restraint. We refuse to be agitated at every instance of provocation. We do not make an editorial comment for the sake of filling an editorial column.
“Quite a few things are happening in Nigeria at this particular time, that we are compelled to break a tradition. We are withdrawing our restraint temporarily, but only for long enough to allow us say a few things.
“The Sunday Times is an angry paper, and in this column in the next few weeks, we are going to speak out in the only manner we know how: bluntly, truthfully, without favour, without fear. Our series of editorial comment is headed DAMN IT. “Damn it” because we are sick and tired of the complacency of certain people; we are fed up to the teeth by the good – goody lectures of those who themselves will not walk the strict and narrow path.
“We are appalled by the crass stupidity, pathetic apathy, and the sheer idiocy of a number of people in a number of places”.
That was fiery, non-conformist Peter Pan. He didn’t stay long in Sunday Times as editor thereafter. He was “promoted” to the position of Daily Times Editor a few months after, a shuffle he disliked and considered punishment. He preferred to remain in Sunday Times where he enjoyed flexibility in operation and language, rather than edit Daily Times with its boring, hard stuff. (Concluded).
