By Dele Omotunde
Doyin, a doyen of journalism, my first editor and no-nonsense Amazon cannot be co-signed into history just like that. She made a very remarkable impact on informed reporting and analysis especially in her coverage of the National Assembly proceedings during the famous Page 7 era of the Daily Times. It was an UNPUTDOWNABLE PIECE of elegant free flowing prose you look forward to every week.
A powerful writer loved by many including MKO Abiola, her boss and later confidant. She wrote beautiful speeches for Abiola and, for whatever reason, drafted some of her lieutenants like poor me into the ‘fray’. She was given to powerful arguments and very difficult to beat when possessed like a feminist. She disliked any act from her male surbidinates that tend to suggest a chauvinistic gesture , she was not the type not to cut you down and reduce the rock in you to pebbles.
One day, in her office, one on one, I screwed up enough courage to ask why she was always “up in arms “ to confront her male colleagues and the staff at large. “Dele”, she looked straight into my eyes, “you, men, need some tough handling. True, I intimidate you (men) but I need to do so for a purpose “. I did not press further. It’s obvious her “Iron Lady” stance was a defence mechanism in a male dominated world.
She stood her ground and refused to be dominated or intimidated by anybody , not even by the OMO OLOROGUNS who preferred to see CONCORD die prematurely to having a woman considered “an outsider” , a gatecrasher (?) into the, or is it THEIR family legacy?
Goodnight, Doyinsola Abiola, woman of Substance and Journalist-extraordinaire. To live in the hearts of those who love you genuinely is not to die.
