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•They came to retool for 2027, but between conference halls, hotel corridors, old friendships, new alliances and a memorable gala, Nigeria’s editors also found time to unwind, reconnect and rediscover the human beings behind the mastheads.
By Beifoh Osewele
I arrived in Enugu on Wednesday, September 23, as editors emptied into the Coal City for the 22nd All Nigeria Editors Conference of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE). The formal conference would not open until next day, but the reunion had already begun.
Nike Lake Resort, where more than 100 editors were quartered, and the other hotels housing delegates became unofficial newsrooms without walls. Around lobbies, corridors and breakfast tables, handshakes, embraces and laughter came in waves. Phones flashed, cameras clicked and poses were struck everywhere. The paparazzi would have been jealous.
Then came that peculiar Nigerian greeting: “Ah, so you are here too!”
I fired back: “No, I no dey here. I dey home — for Strait of Hormuz, near Sambisa Forest, for Australia, close to Pakistan, on the way to Niger Republic. Stupid! How did you see me in Enugu if I didn’t come?”
The place erupted.
“Nasty Nat! You will never change,” one editor interjected.
My late father used to warn me that old sins cast long shadows. In Enugu, I finally believed him. Nicknames you thought buried echoed from every direction. Somebody who knew you before the grey hairs needed only one sighting to drag an ancient nickname out of retirement — without consultation, clearance or right of appeal.
For the second year running, the NGE had brought me to Enugu. In 2025, we came for the Biennial National Convention; barely a year later, we were back.
But there is a small matter of nomenclature. We know the Reporter’s Notebook. Can an editor keep one too? Why not? Who is an editor if not a reporter who survived enough deadlines to earn the additional punishment of correcting other people’s copies? The reporter reports; the editor interrogates. Both belong to the same bloodline.
So whether you call this a Reporter’s Notebook or an Editor’s Notebook, do not let the label distract you. As we say in the Edo part of the country where I hail from: “Forget wetin dem write for motor and enter motor.”
So, never mind the inscription. Just enter.
Let’s dive into my Enugu confab world.
By Thursday, September 24, the formal business had begun at the ICC and would run through Friday. Elections, democracy, AI and professional responsibility occupied the lecterns, but outside another conference was unfolding.
For once, Vanguard was not trying to beat The Sun, television was not racing newspaper and nobody was pleading for another 10 minutes because deadline has invaded.
In Enugu, the editors themselves became the story. It was a convergence of generations. Pa Sam Amuka-Pemu, Vanguard publisher and No. 001 on the Guild register, Segun Osoba and Onyema Ugochukwu mingled freely with colleagues not yet sired when they were already making waves. One generation remembers typewriters and telex; another carries a newsroom inside a smartphone.
And that human side produced its own surprises.
It was a new normal for me to see my Weekend Editor, Tope Adeboboye, in his trademark hat, laughing, hugging old friends and slapping palms on Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoon. Ordinarily, at those hours, Tope would be locked away in the newsroom labour room, midwifing stories behind closed doors.
Seeing him so relaxed in broad daylight almost felt like an editorial breach of routine.
If I know one thing, however, it is that the night — and sleep — would eventually bear the brunt.
People used to saying “tighten this copy” or “kill that headline” found time for softer questions. Old newsroom wars became material for laughter. New members were inducted while others moved into the elite College of Fellows.
Beneath the embraces, another drama was stirring. The next Guild election may still be some distance away, yet horse-trading, strategic handshakes and sudden warmth suggested somebody might already be counting votes.
A colleague who had barely managed a “Hi” since your induction could suddenly remember your full name, ask after your family and lament that both of you had not had enough time to “connect.”
Editors read between the lines. Where there are votes, even an old stranger may suddenly remember that you are his very good friend.
For me, however, the networking also had genuine names and memories.
There was Kunle Adewale, my virtual friend at AIT and co-anchor of Kakaaki, whose newspaper-review segment is easily my favourite. Long before Enugu, I knew the face and voice; then Enugu removed the television between us. The handshake merely completed what the screen had started.
There was Igho Akeregha, whom I first met about three decades ago when I was a staff writer on the Features Desk of Concord, with Lanre Arogundade as my editor. Igho, then SUG President at NIJ, Ogba, would physically come to the newsroom for press interviews as part of his campaign to secure recognition for the journalism training school.
Those were the ancient dinosaur days before GSM phones, WhatsApp calls and Zoom links, when, if you wanted an interview, you often had to show up, sit across from the reporter and make your case face to face.
That was how our paths first crossed — reporter and student activist across the interview table, long before Enugu reunited us as colleagues.
There was Obinna Nwachukwu of Newscraft, whose verbal torment of John Osadolor of BusinessDay has become almost a conference side attraction. John is my brother from our defunct Concord days, so neutrality became difficult, though laughter was usually sensible.
Sakibu Olokojobi, my friend from time immemorial, was there too, as was Yewande Iwuoha — Yewande Tinubu in our THISDAY days — among others whose faces reopened newsroom files stored in the mind.
And, of course, there was Linus Okaba Obogo, my friend and UNILAG classmate, now Chief Press Secretary and Special Adviser on Media to Cross River Governor Bassey Otu. He delivered his principal’s goodwill message so neatly that the hall rewarded him with grand applause.
But I suspected another assignment had escaped the memo. Linus appeared determined to “spoil” me and complete what his madam, Mrs Chinelo Peace Obogo, Corporate communications lead at United Nigeria Airlines, had already started. Their hospitality and support looked suspiciously coordinated.
I did not resist. But when next I go home to Ekpoma, I may have to consult a juju priest to discover whose mandate and directives my friend Okaba and our wife, Chinelo, were executing. Until the oracle speaks, I can only say: thank you both.
Saturday, September 26, changed the tempo. Editors converged at the ICC for a project tour led by Secretary to the Enugu State Government, Prof. Chidiebere Onyia.
Onyia was more than tour guide-in-chief. From stop to stop, he kept the convoy, explanations and questions moving without fuss. His energy hardly dipped, his grasp of details was evident and his humility made interaction easy. He carried the assignment lightly without losing command.
The tour details belong in their own stories. At Ngwo Pine Forest, a young man was strapped into a zipline and editors invited to volunteer. People accustomed to deploying reporters to dangerous assignments suddenly discovered the wisdom of letting him keep his exclusive.
Nobody demanded equal time.
Behind the programme was also NGE General Secretary, Onuoha Ukeh. Accommodation, movement, sessions, tour and gala were carefully stitched together. Providence added a footnote: September 27, departure day, was Ukeh’s birthday. After coordinating hundreds of editors, success itself became the cake.
By Saturday night, editors were ready for safer risks on the dance floor. A live band served highlife while cultural dancers delivered a scintillating performance. For a few hours, deadlines waited outside.
The gala also looked ahead.
In 2025, Mbah promised to host the editors again in 2026. He kept that promise. Now he was saying: come back in 2027 — a third consecutive hosting and a chance to go one better than Cross River’s back-to-back record.
And 2027 should also mark the end of Eze Anaba’s second tenure. Turning to his predecessor, Mustapha Isah — a.k.a. Infomustflow — Anaba reminded him that his tenure in the exalted “office” of Immediate Past President (IPP) was nearing expiry.
By the next convention, he teased, Mustapha would have to vacate the IPP chair because he himself would be coming to occupy it.
Leadership, like a newspaper edition, eventually has to close.
But time flies when you are having a ball. Before midnight, the music began to yield to the clock and bags unpacked only days earlier had to be packed again.
Then came the farewells — that night, over breakfast, in hotel lobbies, beside waiting vehicles and, finally, at the airport. Handshakes lingered, embraces tightened and promises were made not to disappear again.
Shakespeare called parting “such sweet sorrow.” Enugu proved him right. The sorrow was in leaving; the sweetness was in friendships renewed, new ones forged and the reminder that beneath the mastheads, titles and newsroom armour, editors are human after all.
As we left, many of us looked back — like Lot’s wife, except that none turned into a pillar of salt.
Perhaps, because we were looking back not in regret, but in gratitude.
Mbah had kept his 2025 promise. Now he had made another.
So we bade the Coal City farewell.
Not goodbye.
2027 beckons.
Coal City, we’re coming back!!!
