Do you feel old at 70?
No unless people treat me like an old man. When some of my younger colleagues in the newsroom for example, call me Daddy or Baba Dare, at such moments, I say well, I may not see myself as an old person but certainly, I’m perceived as an older person and I can live with that.
Remarkably you look healthy for your age, do you exercise?
Yes, when I had the facilities back in the United States. But I don’t have them here. I do some walking; I take long rigorous walks every morning in the park. I eat twice a day and I don’t smoke. I do take some red wine, otherwise, I stay away from hard liquor.
In one of your recent write-ups, you described life journey after the age of 70 as a notorious trajectory since it often comes with failing memories, dimming eyes and so on. Does this trajectory scare you?
No, it doesn’t scare me. I also noted in the same piece that there are remarkable individuals even in this country who have aged gracefully. I mentioned Prof. Wole Soyinka, Edwin Clark and Chief Ayo Adebanjo as examples. So it is possible if you keep your mind well exercised through reading, through writing and by staying intellectually engaged. I think it is possible to put off these symptoms for as long as possible. But if you live long enough, these symptoms will come eventually. But I’m not in the least fazed by the possibility.
So are you now looking at 100 or 120 years?
(Laughs) No. Certainly not. My dad lived to be 77. My mother died at 84 and my grandmother was close to 100 and in the extended Dare family, I can count about 12 siblings who are 70 and above. So we seem to have longevity in our genes.
Even now you still teach and write, are there plans to stop any of these?
To stop what? I may stop teaching in the near future but I can’t stop writing. To ask me to stop writing is to ask me to commit journalistic suicide and I’m not ready to allow people to write my journalistic obituary. So I will continue writing for as long as I feel I have something to say and for as long as the public feels that what I’m saying is worth paying attention to. When I no longer feel that I have something new to say or a fresh way to say something or when the public says Baba Dare has come again, why doesn’t he just surrender the column to a younger person? When that time comes, I hope I will have the good sense to call it quits. I will carry on for now, at least, with writing.
What fond memories do you have of your childhood and youthful days?
I grew up in a large family, a wealthy family at the time. By the time I finished primary school, the wealth was gone and we had only memories of the wealth and a few remaining symbols of the wealth, especially the family house in Kaba in Kogi State, which today is still an architectural wonder. I have memories of schooling in Zaria, going from Kaba to boarding house in Zaria (Kaduna State). I started school during harmattan which I had never experienced before. I had that pampered and sheltered existence only to be plunged into a boys’ hostel, looking after myself and doing communal work and things that I never had to do when I was home. Graduating from Zaria and coming to school in Lagos for the first time at the Federal Advanced Teachers College was exciting for three years and going back to the North again after my course at the FATC and to Government Secondary School in Birnin Kebbi, where I had the privilege of teaching. The former Emir of Gwanzu and the present Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, were my students and many others. I went back to the university after five years of teaching Physics and Chemistry in high school to study mass communication. And my life has been shuttling between the classroom and the newsroom. I find it remarkably rewarding, not in material terms but in psychic terms.
You once taught Physics and Chemistry, so at what point did your focus change to journalism?
When I was growing up, I wanted to be either a lawyer or a journalist. But somehow, the first opportunity that presented itself to me after leaving secondary school was to go to the FATC on a Northern scholarship. They paid us to study and they paid us good money, three years there and we were earning what they called senior civil servants’ salary. I could do it but it wasn’t something that fired my interest. I didn’t have the passion for it. I had always had a passion for something in journalism or law. So when I got the opportunity to study mass communication, I took it.
If you were not a professor of journalism today, what else would you have loved to become?
I probably would have been a lawyer. In fact, the year I entered the university, I applied to five of the universities at the time. Economics in Ibadan (University of Ibadan, Oyo State), Law in Ife (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State), Law at ABU (Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State) and then journalism at Nsukkka (University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State) and the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos State. I was accepted at four of the five universities. Ife, Law; Ibadan, Economics; Nsukkka and Lagos, Mass communication. In fact, the first admission letter I got was from Ibadan to study Economics. I had actually paid £60 at the time as deposit when the admission from UNILAG came. Ife also came and Nsukka. It’s only ABU that didn’t come. I was already at UNILAG when I got a letter from ABU saying “we regret to inform you that your application for admission wasn’t successful and that no further correspondence would be entered into on the issue.” I just laughed. I had already spent a year at the UNILAG. I said if I was good enough for Ibadan, Ife, Lagos and Nsukka, I definitely was good enough for ABU. It was their problem, not mine.
You had a first class in UNILAG, were you a bookworm or efiko as some people would say?
No, not at all. I think it was just the passion I had for the subject. I did a lot of reading, curricular and extra-curricular. I was more mature than most of my classmates because I got into the university at 27 and most of my classmates were younger. By the time I entered the university, I was already earning more than a graduate salary. Most of my lecturers never called me by name, it was always Mr. Dare, I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I looked more mature than most of the other students and they gave me that regard. I think the maturity helped me and the fact that I had a passion for the subject and took it very seriously. But I wasn’t a bookworm if that’s what you mean. I had fun and I read widely outside the syllabus, just out of interest, but you would never find me stuck in the library.
Would you describe yourself as an extrovert then?
It’s very hard to say; some people consider me as extroverted. Deep down, I like to think that there is a bit of introvert in me. I enjoy being alone and I never feel lonely so long that I have something good to read. If I have that, I don’t bother about other kinds of company. So to that extent, you could say that there is a bit of introvert in me.
You finished your first degree at UNILAG and went abroad for further studies. Was there any particular reason you sought to school abroad?
Again, opportunities. Actually at the time I entered the university, my desire was to get a degree and work in the media right away and practise journalism. But because I did well in my first degree, and this was a time when the university was embarking on an aggressive staff development programme, they encouraged me to go for further studies at their expense. So I was recruited as a Graduate Assistant and within the year, you could apply to do graduate study abroad and the university paid for it. In my own case, I had an admission to university sponsorship, a fellowship from UNESCO to study at Columbia University. I went to Columbia because it was and is still regarded as one of the finest schools of journalism in the world. If you’re teaching in the university and don’t have doctorate, you’re a kind of suspect, when your colleagues are being called Dr. Something and you’re being called Mister. After I got back with the masters degree, then again the university’s staff development was still active. You could go get your PhD and still take your family along. The university would pay maintenance allowance regardless of whatever assistance you could get from other sources. It was a very attractive proposition so after that, I went to the university but this time to Indiana (University), US, to get a PhD in communication research and public policy analysis.
What was your experience when you covered the White House?
It was a White House conference on Africa, a whole weekend devoted to African concerns and big policy makers in Africa were invited. Only five journalists were invited from Africa and I was one of them. It was quite exciting sitting in the same room with President Bill Clinton. One session I covered in particular was chaired by Vice President Al Gore. And we had dinner hosted by the Secretary of State, Warren Christopher. I sat side by side with a senior official of the Central Intelligence Agency, but I didn’t know at the time that he was from the CIA. Somehow, our talk gravitated on the fate of Moshood Abiola, who had been arrested at that time. I said that the information I had was that he had been taken to an unknown destination and then the guy said well, “that’s not the information that we have; we believe he’s still in Abuja”. So at that point, I brought out my card and gave him The Guardian (newspaper) card and then he brought out his own card and gave me. It didn’t say he was from the CIA but the Langley address on the card gave him away. Then I engaged him in discussions on a wide range of issues. And I really confirmed that the guy was an insider, and one develops some networking at that kind of thing.
Did he give you an exclusive?
(Laughs) No, there was no exclusive.
So what about being a professor at the Bradley University in the US, what’s the experience like for you?
The classes are smaller, the materials are abundant. For example, the process is so predictable. By the middle of April this year, our students had already registered for the next academic year. They knew what subjects they were going to take, which instructor was going to take them, at what time and what classrooms they would use. And by the end of May, all the prescribed textbooks were already available at the bookstore, labelled according to courses and instructions. The system is very stable but also very demanding. You cannot absent yourself from class without good cause. In fact, if you’re five minutes late for your class, the students have the right to assume that you’re not coming and to leave. And of course, at the end of each semester, they evaluate you and some of the evaluation can get to you personally. Some of the evaluations could be really brutal. I’ve had a student who wrote, “for goodness sake, give us a professor who speaks English.” Until then, I used to think that I spoke English. As far as she was concerned, I was speaking gibberish. I said for goodness sake, I’ve been interviewed on BBC, VOA, Radio Deutsche Welle, African radios like Radio Zimbabwe and nobody ever said that I didn’t speak English until then. I know a professor who had been there for a long time, he just looked at his students’ evaluation at the end of one semester and said this is it, I can’t take it any more, and he handed in his letter of resignation. So you have to really work hard because at the end of the semester, the tables are turned and your students evaluate you. Some of them exercise that power with a vengeance, but on the other hand, there are also some who praise you to the high heavens. One piece of advice I got was to ignore the extremes. Some students think that you must be a direct descendant of Lucifer and then there are those who think that you can walk on water, look at the middle, that’s where the most objective comments can be found, the comments that can really help you improve your teaching. The evaluation is done in such a way that you can’t identify the students even if you feel distressed. The handwritten evaluations are given to a secretary who types them out and they are given out to instructors. It’s to protect the students and ensure confidentiality.
You lectured in UNILAG briefly, between 1984 and 1988, how would you compare your experience as a lecturer in your home country to teaching in the US?
Again, facilities, facilities, facilities. The facilities here are overcrowded. When you have a writing class of 50 to 60 students, you can’t do justice to it. Our writing classes have maximum of 15 students. In fact, when I was at Columbia University, we were eight students in our writing classes. So the professor had the time to go through your work thoroughly, evaluate it, weigh every word, every sentence and return it to you at the very next class meeting so you learn from your mistakes and move on. When you have 80 students or more in a writing class, it’s almost impossible to grade their papers thoroughly, return to them in good time so that they can learn from their mistakes, know what they did well and what they could have done better. This is one of the differences between teaching in the United States and teaching in Nigeria. The classes are too large and we don’t have the facilities here. There, we have computer laboratories where every student has a terminal in front of him. We have broadcast labs with state-of-the-art digital equipment. Another difference over there is that they are taught by people who combine academic knowledge with experience, so if you’re coming with a fresh PhD without experience, you will find it hard to get a job over there. But if you have some media background experience, that helps a great deal.
Is any of your children into journalism?
No, unfortunately. I think they have watched me struggle to put food on the table, watched me scrape and scrounge and they have watched their mother too who was a high school teacher. They have watched both of us struggle financially and I think they vowed that no, they are not going to be into that kind of thing. Our oldest son is an accountant and financial analyst with one of the big banks, another one is a school administrator in a university in Atlanta and our only daughter is a medical doctor. But our daughter, the medical doctor, is the one who is literarily-inclined. She reads voraciously and writes very well and even tries her hand writing some detective fiction, mystery novels and that stuff. So I do have one soul mate in the family.
How did you meet your wife?
I met her when I was teaching at Oro Grammar School, Kwara State. She had come there after her Higher School Certificate, she came there on a teaching job for one year and that was how we met. I took an instant liking to her and for me, it was love at first sight. For her, it wasn’t, so I had to woo and court her.
Some people say journalists have a weakness for women, drinks, cigarettes and other similar social vices. Do you agree?
Some of the great writers have a Bohemian lifestyle, they drink, they meet a lot of women and women are attracted to them. They tend not to keep one home or engage in permanent relationships and that kind of thing. Maybe that is what inspires their creativity, I don’t know, but I don’t belong in that class. I do not drink and I’ve been married to the same woman since 1975, that ‘s almost 40 years.
How did you manage to stay focused considering that you left for abroad probably ahead of your family?
My family came to join me just three years after I went abroad. I was absorbed in my work and I didn’t have time. Also, the US is a highly litigious society, you have to be very careful with women. You may engage in a consensual act with a woman only for her to claim the next day that you raped her. The best thing is to mind your own business and stay focused. Plus, I was already at an age when that kind of adventurism was no longer quite appealing. I was married with four children plus being an exile abroad, waiting for my family to join me, worried about what might be happening to them back home, given the circumstances in which I left, given the vengeful nature of the Abacha regime, which had caused me to flee from Nigeria at the time. So there was no time for fooling around.
Can you share some of the circumstances that made you flee the country at that time?
A friendly source went to an uncle of mine and told him to tell me that if I didn’t leave Nigeria, something nasty would happen to me. Yes, I was writing at that time until the Guardian was closed down. And when it was closed down, I couldn’t work. If any paper hired me, it would be sending a wrong signal to the government that hey, we are hiring an opposition writer. I couldn’t even give public speeches. Anytime I was invited to give an address somewhere, the SSS were waiting there and they would say that the event would not take place because of orders from above. So I was jobless and I was finding it harder and harder to take care of my family. And then, this warning came. One of the stories being peddled about me was that I was inciting people to sing the old national anthem, which was false. The first time it happened was at Ota. General Olusegun Obasanjo had already been arrested at that time but his African Leadership Forum was holding an international conference to which I was invited and was giving a paper. It was during the last plenary session that the SSS came and said that the meeting should be disbanded. We said okay, before we disband, shall we all rise and sing the national anthem. You could see the confusion on the faces of the policemen and soldiers. We were told that these people were subversive elements, and here they are singing the national anthem so they too were forced to stand at attention while we sang the national anthem and then we disbanded. The second occasion was when we were marking the anniversary of the detention and jailing of Kunle Ajibade and five other editors for an alleged complicity in an abortive coup. Again, when they said the thing was to be disbanded based on orders from above, we said okay, give us time to sing the national anthem. We sang it and dispersed. The third occasion was the launching of Chief Bola Ige’s book at the Nigerian Institute of International Afffairs and there were ambassadors, former governors. It was a gathering of who was who in Nigerian society and then the guy came and said this meeting was not to take place. I said it wasn’t a meeting, he said okay, this conference should not take place, I said it wasn’t a conference, he said whatever it is, it must not hold. So I took him to Chief Ige, and said this is the man of the occasion, you tell him with your mouth that the event should not hold. We could see the poor fellow trembling as he told Chief Ige. And Chief Ige looked at him and said listen, that man there is the Chief Justice of Nigeria, sitting next to him is the Chief Judge of the Appeal Court, this fellow here is Vice Chancellor of a federal university and that fellow there is the ambassador of the United States to Nigeria, all these people are gathered here and you say you have orders from above that this should not take place, he said yes. Then we said okay, shall we all rise for the national anthem. I was the MC. And the poor SSS people were forced to stand at attention and we dispersed but the story that was going round was that I was inciting people to sing the old national anthem, but all the while, it was the current national anthem. I guess they had to manufacture enemies for the government even if it meant falsifying things. So I dusted my certificates, called some of my old professors. One of them who had visited Nigeria and seen some of the difficult circumstances under which we were working had asked me to take a year off and come to the United States on sabbatical, I said no that there was so much work to be done at home. I now had to call her to say I wanted to take up her offer. She said we didn’t have a vacancy here but send me your resume and I’d put it in the journal. About two weeks later I got a call from the Bradley University asking me if I was available. We had a short interview and they gave me an offer. My problem then was how to get out of the country because the last time I travelled out, when I returned, I gave my passport to the passport control unit and the guy looked and shook his head as if he was saying how did this guy manage to get out. When I was going to leave, I asked a friend in the security services if my name was on any security watch list he was aware of. He said he couldn’t answer the question because there were so many security lists. That gave me my answer so I had to go through the NADECO route then; go to Benin Republic by land, board a plane from Lome to Europe and then to the US.
Today we see how Nigerian youths attack people of other tribes on the social media. What was it like in your time since you schooled in the north?
Zaria was an educational centre. We had St. Pauls which I attended, we had Barewa College, we had the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology which was awarding London university degrees in engineering. The Nigerian Military School was there, so Zaria was really a cosmopolitan city. In my class, we had students from all over the country. We were forbidden to speak any other languages apart from English. If you did, you were punished. It was a harmonious existence. I still keep my relationships with some of my classmates from that time. So one did not foresee what is happening today. I like the way you mentioned the social media because it’s a misnomer. There is nothing social about digital media. In fact, it is anti-social. When you read the abuses right down to one’s parents, the cursing, the swearing just because you said something that somebody didn’t like, instead of discussing the issues. My heart bled for this country and for the future of social relationships when I read somebody describe Prof. Wole Soyinka as a Yoruba thug. He was dismissed as a Yoruba thug. Soyinka who went to Biafra at the risk of his life, who was jailed, the one who the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta nominated to represent them in their negotiations with the Federal Government. Soyinka who is a global citizen, a fine gentleman if you come to know him, was casually dismissed by somebody as a Yoruba thug. What kind of country is that?
As a veteran, what are your observations about the practice of journalism in Nigeria today?
In terms of commentary, analysis and that kind of thing, I think we are doing quite well. I will like to see a great deal more of reporting. For one, most of what we have learnt about Chibok, even the film footage, has come from the foreign media. I will like to see more in-depth reporting, I will like to see a situation where publishers don’t expose their staffers to temptation, a situation in which they pay their salaries regularly so that they are not driven to seek and accept favours that might be subversive to journalism. And I will like to see more commitment to ethics in the media.
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