Edwin Madunagu @ 75: Your comrade, my uncle

On the day May Ellen Ezekiel (MEE), publisher of Classique magazine, a celebrity and entertainment journal, dumped me, Dr. Edwin Madunagu picked me up.

I still remember the day Classique magazine parted ways with me for my inability to deliver a cover story in six months of trial employment. It was the death of a dream that started while studying Agricultural Engineering at the Federal University of Technology, Akure. It was a dream to be not just a journalist but to be a journalist like MEE.

I tried. I got several stories published but not anything big enough to be a cover story. I tried to find cover stories but being new in journalism and new in Lagos, I did not know where cover stories came from.

I traveled to Enugu to interview Major Humphrey Chukwuka, one of the five majors who planned the January 15, 1966 coup. I used all the Nnobi connections to reach the elusive former Nigerian and Biafran soldier. After much persuasion, he agreed to talk with me, but he still refused to say anything about the coup after more than a two-hour interview session. As a result, editors at Classique did not find the interview useful. I traveled to the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) to attend Prof. Donatus Nwoga’s funeral. I don’t remember now the story I was pursuing, but it was never published. I traveled to Awka Etiti, a town…