Dimgba Igwe: I Thought I Would Die Before Him – Veteran Journalist Mike Awoyinfa Pays Tribute To ‘Twin Brother And Soul Mate ’

As Dimgba Igwe’s “twin brother” who is four years older, it hurts to think that I would be the one invited to pay tribute or write his obituary. I had thought it would be the other way round. I had looked forward to the two of us reaching old age, and me dying before him and imagining an aged Dimgba Igwe paying me a final tribute. But it was not meant to be.

Now, he is lost in his prime, dead at 58, killed by a hit-and-run driver who disappeared into the blue — and [will] not likely be found by the police as usual in Nigeria.

We first met 30 years ago in the newsroom of the Sunday Concord where we both worked under the celebrated Nigerian editor Dele Giwa, killed through a mail bomb on Oct. 19, 1986.

It is a painful irony that Mr. Igwe, an apostle of Dele Giwa, was killed gruesomely like his master and mentor. Since 1984 when we met, we have grown as soul mates who jointly wrote journalism books like “Art of Features” and “Segun Osoba, The Newspaper Years”. Our latest book is titled “50 World Editors – Conversations with Journalism Masters on Trends and Best Practices”. From the world-famous Sir Harold Evans, who is seen as “the editor of editors”, to the editors of iconic global media brands like The New York Times, The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the International Herald Tribune, The Guardian (UK), the Financial Times, the New York Daily News and Newsday, to CNN, AFP, the Daily Mail (UK), the Mirror (UK), Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland), the Neue Zurcher Zeitung (Switzerland), El Mundo (Spain) and many others, this book reverberates with the powerful voices of journalism icons from different regions of the world.

We were planning to launch this book around October, but, alas, this tragedy. We have IPI to thank for this book, which was written over a period of 10 years. Each IPI Congress offered us the opportunity to interview the media icons who came for the IPI [Congress]. My joy is that Dimgba Igwe got to see a copy of the book before he died. He died doing what he loves best: jogging.

He [will] be remembered as a pastor who devoted his life fully to God and to journalism. For one hour, Dimgba Igwe was interviewed on Aug. 28, 2014 by YES INTERNATIONAL magazine at the 10th Annual All Nigerian Editors’ Conference in the northern Nigerian city of Katsina. He was asked: “What is the greatest thing journalism has done for you?”

“The greatest thing that journalism has done for me,” he replied, is that “it has offered me a platform to serve and in serving the soci­ety, sometimes, there are little, little benefits here and there and so on and so forth. But the fact is, it has given me the opportunity to serve, it has given me a platform, it has made it possible for me to be part of those members of this society that could possibly shape the agenda of this society. A lot of people don’t have that platform and they are in [the] millions.”

“The original thing that got me into journalism,” he added, is “the sense of mission and the fact that I’m passionate about it. I don’t know what else I would have been doing. I’m not good at trading; I can’t really trade successfully. I love being in this pro­fession; in the writing profession generally. So, I would say what has sustained me is the devotion and the passion for it and the fact that I love playing with words, I love trad­ing in words, dealing in words. It’s an area I will say I have an innate capability and passion for. Now, that in itself sustains me. Sustains me in the sense that when I read a good thing, a good article, a good book, it gives me excitement.”

In his last prophetic message in his church, Pastor Dimgba Igwe said on the pulpit that when he goes to heaven, “there would be a lot of questions to ask God.” Meaning, there will still be room for him to practice journalism in the life after.