Dele Giwa’s killing made my five-year-old son abandon journalism dream, says Ray Ekpu

Veteran journalist Ray Ekpu has recounted how the assassination of Dele Giwa, founding editor-in-chief of Newswatch magazine, frightened his five-year-old son into abandoning his ambition to become a journalist.

Ekpu said his son changed his mind days after Giwa was killed by a parcel bomb at his residence in Ikeja, Lagos, on October 19, 1986.

The Newswatch co-founder spoke on Monday at the launch of Dele Giwa’s Granite Journalism, a book documenting the late journalist’s writings and contributions to the profession, at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism in Lagos.

Recounting the incident, Ekpu said his family shared a duplex with Giwa’s family in Ikeja, fostering a close relationship between them.

He said his young son had often expressed his desire to follow in Giwa’s footsteps until the assassination changed his perception of the profession.

“My five-year-old son used to tell me that he would like to be a journalist like Daddy Uncle Dele. But a few days after Dele’s assassination, my son came to me and said, ‘Daddy, I have changed my mind,’” Ekpu recalled.

According to him, when he asked his son what he had changed his mind about, the boy replied that he no longer wanted to become a journalist because he did not want to suffer the same fate as Giwa.

“I asked him, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘I don’t want to be killed like Uncle Dele,’” Ekpu said.