Uncle Sam at 90, By Mohammed Haruna

At the risk of sounding immodest, I believe that I am a living example of his search for talent and generosity. At the height of The PUNCH’s popularity in the late seventies or so, he led a small team all the way to Kaduna from Lagos, in search of northern talents. We met in the course of that trip and he offered me a job in the newspaper. His offer was hard to resist but I declined it because I thought, at that time, that The PUNCH was more entertainment than hard news, although I did not tell him so.

It seems like only yesterday, but it is about twenty years or so ago this month when I wrote a widely publicised and well received tribute to Prince Samson Oruru Amuka Pemu, aka Sad Sam, aka Uncle Sam, on the occasion of his 70th Birthday. In that piece, I talked about his immeasurable contribution to Nigeria’s journalism as a columnist, editor and publisher.

As a columnist using the pen name “Sad Sam,” his popular weekly column, “This Nigeria” in the Sunday Times, which he also edited, was a must read because of what I said was its “combination of humour, wit, simplicity and clarity of language.” Among his classic pieces, I mentioned this memorable one he entitled, “The rising cost of dying”. I don’t remember the date now but from its obviously imaginative title to its body text, it very well captured all the four mentioned qualities – and more – in a way that was typical of Sad Sam.

An inversion of sorts of the common expression, “the rising cost of living”, the piece was a humourous comment on the bad habit of Nigerians, especially the rich, of spending more to bury their poorer cousins than they ever did to support them in life. More than 50 years after he wrote the piece, that foolish habit has refused to die. On the contrary, it seems to have even grown.

Perhaps, it was in consideration of such bad habits of Nigerians that Uncle Sam chose to declare himself Sad in those good old days. However, as I said twenty years ago, a happier and more easy-going person than Uncle Sam is hard to imagine. His philosophy seemed to be to live life to the fullest and spread happiness all around him. Life, he often says, is too short for anyone to take it too seriously. Perhaps it is this happy-go-lucky attitude to life that has helped him live to the ripe young age of 90 years on 13 June.

Opportunity, it is often said, knocks only once. For Uncle Sam as a newspaper publisher, it knocked twice. First, in March 1973 when he co-founded The PUNCH with the late Chief Olu Aboderin, and then in July 1984, when he had to leave PUNCH some ten years since its founding, following the souring of the relationship between the two.

In between his leaving PUNCH and founding Vanguard, the man thought he could live life outside being a newspaperman. He dabbled into offshore fishing but soon discovered that he just had to return to the only profession he knew how to practice best.

Among so many of us who paid tribute to Uncle Sam on his 70th Birthday, twenty years ago, none captured his essence like his favourite journalistic godson from the heydays of PUNCH. I am, of course, talking about Muyiwa Adetiba, predictably his first editor at Vanguard, and now a veteran columnist with the newspaper. As Muyiwa said in his tribute, Uncle Sam stands out as one who knows how to identify talents, delegate authority and responsibility without abdication, and is as generous in rewarding hard work as he is quick in detesting sloth.

At the risk of sounding immodest, I believe that I am a living example of his search for talent and generosity. At the height of The PUNCH’s popularity in the late seventies or so, he led a small team all the way to Kaduna from Lagos, in search of northern talents. We met in the course of that trip and he offered me a job in the newspaper. His offer was hard to resist but I declined it because I thought, at that time, that The PUNCH was more entertainment than hard news, although I did not tell him so.

In spite of my saying no to his offer, Uncle Sam, who, like me, is small in stature, gave me two very expensive designer safari suits that became my favourite clothes for many years. Not one to easily give up on his objective, he told me that his offer was open any time I changed my mind.

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Among the many virtues I admire in the man is his insistence that though comments are free, they must be fair and balanced. This must be why, several years ago, he would not let me be until I got him a good writer who could articulate a northern point of view on issues, as a counter to Vanguard’s predominantly southern viewpoint. This was how, first, Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, a former editor of Trust, and subsequently Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, a former university teacher, retired federal permanent secretary and the last executive secretary of the Independent National Electoral Commission, came to write their weekly columns in his newspaper.

In recent years, Uncle Sam has gone well beyond his success as a newspaperman to become, among other things, a pioneer, and, given his wide and deep contacts in the country, a highly valued member of the National Peace Committee chaired by former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Alhaji Abubakar. This non-governmental organisation has played a critical role since 2014 in monitoring and ensuring that our elections, at both national and state levels, are conducted in the most peaceful and credible manner.

As Uncle Sam was turning 90, it was not surprising that he was rewarded a day before with the national honour of the Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON), one of Nigeria’s higher honours, by President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, in his speech commemorating this year’s Democracy Day.

Uncle Sam, here’s wishing you Happy 90th Birthday and many, many more returns in good health!

Mohammed Haruna is a national commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Abuja.