By Kingsley Osadolor
Eluem Emeka Izeze, former Editor of The Guardian on Sunday, former Editor of The Guardian, and, until 2016, Editor-in-Chief/Managing Director of The Guardian newspapers, never tired of regaling me with an anecdote about an incident in the newsroom sometime in the 1980s. A test candidate, or some rookie reporter, had submitted a copy to Wole Agunbiade, one of the thorough gatekeepers in the newsroom. As the story goes, Wole, upon reading the copy, was drooling at the prospect of a memorable frontpager, if not lead story. Except that he needed clarification on a couple of points, to enable him tidy up the copy and process it for use. Wole sought out the author of the copy, and as he elicited responses from the candidate, the latter admitted to a crest-fallen Wole that the story was a piece of fiction which he had concocted and delivered!
I am reminded of that anecdote on reading Femi Kusa’s latest hallucinations about The Guardian, Alex Ibru, Andy Akporugo, and Kingsley Osadolor. His three-part drivel is entitled, “June 12 Honours… Knocks On Bayo Onanuga & Co., Alex Ibru,” parts two and three of which he posted on the WhatsApp platform of The Guardian alumni on Sunday, July 20, 2025. The trilogy earlier appeared in his column, “Natural Remedies,” on July 3, 10, and 17, 2025, in The Nation newspaper, where he frequently misappropriates the column to launch broadsides and ventilate his pettiness with no connection whatsoever to Natural Remedies, which leads one to ask if he as Editor or Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian could have tolerated such blatant misuse of platform by Elizabeth Kafaru who ran a Thursday column on Natural Health at The Guardian.
Anyone who has a modicum of respect for facts, accuracy, and unvarnished account of significant events, would be embarrassed by the cocktail of misstatements, fuzzy recollection, and outright mendacity of Femi Kusa, who has returned to his all too familiar but disgusting pastime of the cowardly vilification on the one hand of the late Founder and Publisher of The Guardian, Alex Ibru, and his pitiable and woeful attempts at impugning the professional integrity of myself, Kingsley Osadolor. Under his own hand, Femi Kusa has issued a caveat emptor on any memoir or autobiography he decides to inflict on the unwary.
Femi Kusa, a former Editor of The Guardian, a paper of record, states erroneously that Alex Ibru was shot on Eko Bridge! He claims unabashedly that one of the issues Alex Ibru faced as Minister of Internal Affairs was the court-ordered release of Chief Great Ogboru! In one paragraph, he mentions Great Ogboru thrice! Goodness me! Oh, no! According to Kusa, “Then, the Great Ogboru case came up. He was accused of plotting a coup against Abacha. A court freed him. As Internal Affairs Minister, Mr Ibru was to let him out of prison custody….He referred Great Ogboru’s matter to the stubborn and radical Dr Olu Onagoruwa, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation. Dr Onagoruwa said Mr Ibru should obey the court. So, he freed Great Ogboru. Abacha was enraged.” The elementary task for Femi Kusa is for him to go educate himself about the case and properly identify the individual he was writing about.
While taking refuge under the canopy of uninformed speculation, Kusa asserts in public that Gen. Aliyu Gusau recruited Alex Ibru to join the regime of Gen. Sani Abacha! I am certain that Izeze would chuckle on reading Kusa’s fairy tales of amity with Gen. Gusau. It is also hilarious that Femi Kusa who was the butt of acid jokes by the eggheads on the Editorial Board of The Guardian would turn around in 2025 to pose as a critical voice sought for decisions about editorials. The joke always was that Femi Kusa went to the Editorial Board meeting with a pile of newspapers and tear sheets of the first edition of The Guardian, and his head was buried in correcting the tear sheets and snacking on the refreshment. He would raise his head once in a long while and make what Members often regarded as inane contributions to a topic being discussed. I witnessed it myself after I became a Member of the Editorial Board in 1997. I challenge Femi Kusa to point out any memorable editorials he wrote for The Guardian while he was Editor and later Editor-in-Chief.
In January 2019, the military raided the Abuja offices of Daily Trust, after the newspaper published details of impending military operations against Boko Haram terrorists in the North-East. Femi Kusa weighed in on that occasion, and dragged me into his ponderous pieces, just like he did with his pigsty obituary commentary when Alex Ibru died in November 2011. He plied false narratives about the closure of The Guardian in 1994, and posed as the supremo of editorial judgment. Then, as now, he denounced the planning of the front page of The Guardian on Sunday edition of August 14, 1994, and the use of the feature photograph which he bizarrely described as two cockerels squaring up for a fight, whereas he was elaborating on his fiction. I was restrained by friends and colleagues from engaging with him in 2019. The greater persuasion I had was my stern resolve in 1991, as Deputy Editor of The Guardian while Kusa was the Editor, not to respond to his time-wasting, blame-thrashing and often scurrilous memos. News Editor Ogbuagu Anikwe received truckloads of such irritating memos from Kusa. The memos were often copied to his personal file with the HR Department. Understandably, Ogbuagu was relieved on discovering that the HR Department had ignored the copies Kusa forwarded to them.
Five years ago, in 2020, while putting together the manuscript of “The Making of The Nigerian FLAGSHIP (A Story of The Guardian),” Aaron Ukodie and O’seun Ogunseitan sought to interview me. We met in Lagos, and one subject matter of interest to them was the story, “INSIDE ASO ROCK: The raging battle to rule Nigeria,” which I authored and was the lead in The Guardian on Sunday of August 14, 1994. From the line of questioning, it was clear that they earlier interviewed Femi Kusa who made the same outlandish but self-serving claims, just as he has regurgitated in his latest diatribe published this month in The Nation.
Among other points, I referred Aaron Ukodie and O’seun Ogunseitan to The Guardian library to check out the paper of August 14, 1994. Contrary to the misinformation they had been fed with, I told them that The Guardian on Sunday on that day had first and second editions. The first edition, with all materials submitted by Friday, was rolled off the press in the small hours of Saturday, as was customary, after the printing of the daily newspaper, while the second edition was printed later on Saturday night. The first edition was usually denoted by a single bullet on the imprint at the last page of the paper, while two bullets indicated a second edition. I requested them to check if the second edition was not a verbatim reproduction of the first edition. After their research, Aaron later called me to confirm that there had indeed been two editions of the paper and that the story was the same in both editions. I explained why that was important, because on weekends and public holidays, the dispatch man rode his scooter to deliver papers (including the first edition of The Guardian on Sunday) to top editorial and Management staff at their residences. If any material was to be taken down, that opportunity was available.
But read Femi Kusa’s fairy tale : “I signed the papers for Kingsley Osadolor to go to Abuja and waited for his report as his Editor-in-Chief. I waited all evening on the Saturday Kingsley Osadolor was to take the paper to bed. He said the report was not ready. I was to read it, approve it or disapprove of it. If I disapproved of it and Mr Alex Ibru did not like my decision, he could through the back door ask the Board to fire me. I was prepared for that. I was, because I understood Mr. Alex Ibru well in such delicate matters….Kingsley Osadolor saved my job because he did not show me the report by the time I left the office at about 2 a.m. on the Sunday that the edition was to be published, whereas the printers were to have taken the paper to bed four hours earlier at 11 p.m. on Saturday. In the morning, I went for an Hour of Worship. I hoped to return to the office to write a query on why the Editor failed to submit the report for vetting.” Thirty-one years later, Femi Kusa hasn’t written his query.
I also told Aaron and O’seun to make another very important inquiry from the witnesses who were still alive. I gave them names. I told them that I was part of The Guardian delegation that went to Aso Villa to meet with Gen. Sani Abacha, almost one year to the date of the closure and proscription of The Guardian. I asked them to find out whether Gen. Abacha, or anyone else at that meeting, ever mentioned the story which I authored as the reason, or one of the reasons, for the closure and proscription of The Guardian. I gave them additional context to explore: why, for instance, after The Guardian was reopened and resumed publication, there was an arson attack on the premises in December 1995, and in February 1996, there was an assassination attempt on Alex Ibru during which he lost his left eye and two fingers on his left hand.
Alex Ibru was shot on Falomo Bridge, as he headed to his Ikoyi residence from Victoria Island, in the evening of Friday, February 2, 1996. Andy Akporugo, GG Darah, Izeze, and I passed the night at the corridor of the ward where Ibru was admitted at St. Nicholas Hospital, Lagos Island. On Saturday, as we prepared the Sunday paper, which had now become a single edition after the deproscription, Kusa sauntered into the newsroom in the evening and began suggesting that I downplay the assassination attempt, by tucking the story inside the paper. I ignored him pointedly, and blasted the story as lead on the front page. If I had hearkened to Kusa, it was not inconceivable that he would turn around later to denigrate the editorial decision in respect of such a big story involving the Publisher, former Minister, and just months after Chief Alfred Rewane was assassinated in Lagos. A short while later, I wrote an opinion piece, “Season Of The Assassin,” and Kusa was shaking like a leaf.
I was at the meeting at the Presidential Villa, where we met with Gen. Sani Abacha, at his invitation, in July 1995. A number of other persons were at the meeting. Unfortunately, some of them have passed on. The deceased include Sani Abacha, Alex Ibru, Oba Festus Adesanoye (Osemawe of Ondo), Andy Akporugo, and David Attah, who was Abacha’s Chief Press Secretary. But other witnesses and participants are alive. They include my humble self, Lade Bonuola, Femi Kusa, Emeka Izeze, Uncle Sam Amuka, Ray Ekpu, and Prof. Auwalu Yadudu.
I wrote the story, INSIDE ASO ROCK. It was not disputed on grounds of factual misrepresentation. I was never declared wanted because of the story, nor were there spooks on my trail. The story was, in many ways, helpful. Indeed, in May 2017, that is, 23 years later, Chief Bode George was a guest on NTA’s Good Morning Nigeria, which I co-anchored. After the programme, I quietly reintroduced myself to Bode George and whispered to him the INSIDE ASO ROCK story. “Oh, my!” he exclaimed and hugged me. “Where have been all these years?” He was profusely thankful for what INSIDE ASO ROCK did. He was a senior naval personnel and Principal Staff Officer in the Villa when the story was published. Bode George is alive, let Femi Kusa go and verify what I have just stated.
I was not scared to go with the team to Aso Rock, to meet with Abacha, 11 months after he closed down The Guardian. When we landed in Abuja, we lodged at Sheraton Hotel (now Abuja Continental). At the front desk, a petrified Femi Kusa was casting furtive glances around. We were handed the guest information form. Trying to be clever by half, Kusa entered his lesser-known first name “John”. I signalled to Emeka Izeze to see the game Kusa was trying to play with himself. We couldn’t laugh at that time; it was later when we met in his room that Izeze and I burst into laughter. At no time during the meeting with Abacha did he refer to INSIDE ASO ROCK. My faculties are intact, and I recollect what he said. Not a mention of INSIDE ASO ROCK. Confirm from others whose names I have mentioned. Instead, Abacha recounted the circumstances under which he took over in November 1993, and how he had tried to stabilize the polity with real threats of dismemberment over the June 12 crisis, and that, over the period, The Guardian had been unhelpful. Indeed, some editorialists and writers for The Guardian had adopted a doctrinaire position of opposing the Abacha regime because Alex Ibru, the Publisher, had agreed to serve on the Provisional Ruling Council and as Minister of Internal Affairs. I will for now skip details of the activities of some of the antagonists, as Alex Ibru related them to me. At the meeting with Abacha, he signed off by directing the deproscription of The Guardian titles and the reopening of Rutam House.
Since Femi Kusa has opted to make a meal of the design of the front page of The Guardian on Sunday on August 14, 1994, I will share below a screenshot of the page in question, so the world can see his wild imagination of two cockerels “beak to beak” squaring up for a fight. According to Kusa, “The major headline was…INSIDE ASO ROCK. There was a photograph beside it which was illustrating another story and should, therefore, have been cordoned off with an AGATE LINE rule. The Editor was probably inexperienced about management of such a delegate (sic) presentation, if he was not deliberate in leaving the flanks open. Even if he was professional, would Abacha not have read his intent upside down? However, the photograph was left unprofessionally to illustrate a dangerous lead story. The photograph showed two cockerels squared up beak to beak, their combs standing on end, suggesting readiness for a dastardly fight of their lives. Was this what was going on INSIDE ASO ROCK between the Yoruba moderates and Abacha?”
Please, I invite you to take a look at the photograph and the lead story about which Kusa is writing. Are the two cockerels squaring up for a fight? Certainly not. The cockerels are facing the same direction, which means it is not a combat pose. The caption for the photo says, “A roosting place”. What is the meaning of “roosting”? Kusa says the photo wasn’t boxed; but look closely and see the borderline around the photo.
The Guardian on Sunday had a tradition of using feature photos on its front page. I continued with that tradition, when I became Editor in 1992. Sunmi Smart-Cole’s photos were always a delight on Sundays, and some other photographers, including the late Paul Oloko, were greatly influenced by Sunmi. Femi Kusa states that the photo should have been “boxed up” to show it is unrelated to the lead story. The box he is referring to is technically called a side-bar. It is used within a main and related story, usually for amplification/emphasis, to break monotony of type, to visually simplify technical data or copy, and it is now more known as info-graphics. Cover stories in magazines often use side-bars. Femi Kusa has his well-worn self-glorification and disparagement of others.
