Imo Eze, a Fearless Veteran Journalist And Publisher.

Eze began his journalism career at a relatively young age as a reporter with the Daily Star in Enugu and later moved to the Daily Times. 

When Jim Nwobodo’s now-defunct Satellite newspaper relocated from Enugu to Lagos in 1991, Eze emerged its News Editor.

He went on to found The Ebonyi Voice, a newspaper that became a thorn in the flesh of politicians during the early years of this democratic dispensation. 

Eze also served as Chief Press Secretary to the Ebonyi State Governor, Sam Egwu, during the governor’s first term in office.

On 16 April 2006, The Ebonyi Voice published a scathing  report entitled “Is Ebonyi a Failed State?”, which sharply criticised the Ebonyi State Government.

 Intolerant, the state government arrested Eze, and  was subsequently arraigned on charges of sedition alongside his colleague, Oluwole Elenyinmi, on 14 June 2006.

Long after, Imo Eze passed away in 2020 after a protracted illness.

May the pepertual light continue to shine on   his soul.

As a Senior Publicity Officer at the National Publicity Directorate of the PDP in 2000, I met Imo Eze in Abakaliki. He was a great man.

At the time, the then National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Emmanuel Awan Ibeshi had assigned me to cover the South East and South South for the party’s Umbrella magazine.

I spent a full day in Abakaliki but could not secure an interview with Governor Sam Egwu because of his tight schedule. However, he graciously fixed another appointment for Abuja a week later.

An aside.

Something interesting happened in Abuja. I arrived at the Ebonyi State Governor’s Lodge with a team from Wadata Plaza for the interview. After the session, Governor Egwu gave us a bumper handshake. It was then I noticed that he had a particularly warm relationship with a junior member of my team, Simon Onyife, who is from Benue State.

I had always told Simon that his surname is Igbo and that he behaves every inch an Igbo man, but he usually waved it off.

 As we were about to leave the lodge, Simon stepped back and spoke to the governor in a dialect I did not understand.

 Within minutes, one of the governor’s security aides, an Igbo from another South-East state who was present during the exchange, approached Simon and handed him an additional envelope.

 However, the aide had edited the amount, unaware that the governor had already mentioned the sum to Simon in their shared dialect.

Simon opened the envelope discreetly and found ₦25,000. Calmly but firmly, he told the aide that the governor had said ₦50,000, and he resisted being intimidated.

 Coincidentally, the governor was on his way out. Simon moved closer again and complained to him in the same dialect. That was how the already edited ₦25,000 'surfaced'.

The power of language.

But it raises a deeper question: why do some Igbos in states outside the South East conveniently hide their identity? Simon is obviously an Ezza or Izzi, in one of the four Igbo-speaking local government areas in Benue State.