A MEMORIAL service to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the tragic death of frontline journalist, Mr. Dele Giwa, has been organised in Lagos by the family and friends.
The service holds at noon on Wednesday, October 19, at the Archbishop Vining Memorial Church Cathedral, G.R.A. Ikeja, in Lagos.
Dele Giwa, one of the founding fathers of the Newswatch Magazine, of which he was Editor-in-Chief, was killed by a letter bomb on October 19, 1986, at his Talabi Street residence in a quiet surburb of Ikeja, the Lagos State capital.
A fearless journalist and erudite speaker, he worked with the prestigious New York Times after graduating from University of Brooklyn in the United States, before returning home to join the Daily Times of Nigeria in 1976.
He moved on in the 1980s, to the Concord Newspapers where he was Editor of the Sunday Concord and ran an influential weekly column called Parallax Snaps, before branching out alongside his friends and professional colleagues, Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese and Yakubu Mohammed, to establish the Newswatch Magazine in 1984.
Although of Ugbekpe-Ukperi heritage in Edo State, Dele Giwa was born on March 16, 1947 in Ile Ife, Osun State, where his father worked, He had his early education at the Oduduwa College, in Ife, before proceeding to the United States to study for both his Bachelors and Masters degrees in English and Communication Arts at Brooklyn.
Courtesy: The Guardian (Nigeria).