The battle against colonialism had been fought and won. However, the task had changed by the time Peter Enahoro actively practised journalism in Nigeria between 19. It was thus not an accident that most nationalists like Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ernest Ikoli, Ladoke Akintola and Anthony Enahoro were journalists or media owners. For Chief Enahoro, journalism was a veritable tool for campaigning against colonialism and demanding for independence. The Enahoro brothers practised journalism as different periods, and this defined how they approached their craft. Beyond editing the newspapers, he also kept the Peter Pan column for seven years. So, at just 30 years, Peter Enahoro had been everything he could be as a journalist in Nigeria. Daily Times at that time was the largest newspaper in Africa. And at 30, in 1966, he became the paper’s Editor-in-Chief. In 1962, at 27, he became the editor of Daily Times. He actually went on to make his own history.Īt 23, Peter Pan became the editor of Sunday Times. Peter Pan did not live in the shadows of Chief Enahoro. But the really remarkable thing is that younger Enahoro was not afraid of stepping into an arena where his older brother had established himself as a legend. In any case, that was also a time when journalism was seen as a craft largely learned on the job. That the duo could go on to establish themselves as writers and icons even with only secondary education spoke both to their industriousness and talent and to the quality of education of that era. In their journalism and their books, the Enahoro brothers wrote in sparkling and lucid prose. The highest education on record for Chief Enahoro was as a graduate of King’s College, Lagos.

Two are worth stating briefly: for always getting in and out of jail in brushes with the colonial authorities as a journalist that he was nicknamed ‘Jailbird Enahoro’ and much later as a politician and parliamentarian, for moving, at age 30, the first motion for Nigeria’s independence. Chief Enahoro became noted for other things. Chief Enahoro was only 21 when he became the editor of the Southern Nigerian Defender, and is on record to be the youngest Nigerian to edit a major newspaper. The man who later became famous as Peter Pan (the name of the column he ran in Daily Times from 1959 to 1966), was following in the glorious footsteps of his older brother, Chief Anthony Enahoro, one of Nigeria’s nationalists and accomplished pressmen.Ĭhief Enahoro made history when in 1944 he became the editor of the Southern Nigerian Defender, one of the newspapers in the West African Pilot group, owned by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, a journalist and one of Nigeria’s founding fathers. The highest formal education on record for him was as a graduate of Government College Ughelli. Most of those who know about him have heard or read his justifiably popular 1966 book, ‘How to Be a Nigerian.’ But the departed legend was more than a slim book of satire.īorn on 21 st January 1935, Peter Enahoro started out as a journalist in 1955 when he joined Daily Times as a sub-editor. In his 1979 book, ‘The Press of Africa: Persecution and Perseverance,’ Frank Barton described Peter Enahoro as “arguably Africa’s best journalist writing in English Language.” Yet, many Nigerians today within a particular age bracket do not know who Peter Enahoro was. Both were members of a vanishing breed, legends of a vanishing era in a country with a vanishing memory. Both were early achievers who lit the path for others, and in the process secured their place in history in a country afraid of according history its pride of place and of bestowing real achievers their dues. Both were chroniclers of history-one, in a hurry, as a journalist the other, with a retrospective lens, as an academic.

Yet, their passing is a great loss to the world of letters, to history and to the country.īoth were national institutions, even when not officially recognised as such. Both lived full, accomplished lives, and as octogenarians lived well into what can be called a ripe age. The following day, Professor Obaro Ikime, devoted teacher, first-rate scholar and renowned historian, followed suit. Peter Enahoro, eminent satirist, celebrated author, and journalist-extraordinaire. Last week, two grandees of Nigerian letters moved to the great beyond.

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