THISDAYonline

He hides nothing, least of all his disgust for lateness. It didn't matter that this time he was dealing with a female pen pusher he'd invited to his home for lunch and a chat. Lunch was over and the hostess didn't find it the lateness funny. Then came the tirade: "A good journalist should pick up her bag and equipment, head straight for her appointment, get her story before looking for where to lay her head. Instead, you did it the other way round and that was why you missed lunch." Convincing Susan, his wife to join the chat made it the more exciting and you could actually see Iroh come alive in her presence. At first glance, you'd think she was his daughter.

Susan is attractive and could very well pass for a model. She has striking features that magnet both sexes. Usually, both of them would ignore most visitors as they tease each other, lost in their companionship and she keeps doting on him like 'Hi daddy, need anything'. She would fawn all over him and peck him on the forehead.

We all shifted from the dining table to the living room. She wore a sleeveless cream top over a cream skirt while hubby was all spruced up in a light blue shirt over navy blue trousers. He probably breezed in from the office, to keep our lunch date, though he confessed: "I always eat lunch at home with my wife."

Eddie and Susan lived together in England until his new appointment as the Director General of the Federal Radio Corporation. You'd notice a picture as you scan through their family album. It is a picture of Eddie, with a cigar in his mouth. Sensing that it might make the Style cover page, he quickly snatched it away complaining: "Hey, you can't you use this picture. You know the Nigerian mentality; people will start insinuating that I am enjoying myself and making so much money now as DG, meanwhile this picture was taken a long time ago."

Iroh authored a secondary school novel, the 'without a Silver Spoon', which he says, "is all about my childhood. It is a true life story". In it, the persona, a young boy, was quick to accept the reality of his dad's low finances and decided to work as a houseboy to raise money and pay his school fees. Towards the end of his primary school, he was accused of stealing money before the truth emerged. "And that is why honesty is the best policy. That is the message the book is trying to put across." He has authored several novels besides.

Iroh was brought up in rural circumstances in a village called Ikenanzizi in Imo State. He was born without a silver spoon, but he is ever thankful to God for bringing him this far in life. "It is a mark of God's mercy that someone like me from such a humble background can rise to the pinnacle of this profession. I wake up every morning and thank God and I tell Him to give me the strength not to let Him down. With God, you can come from nothing and become something".

He is making an early promise as DG, given the infamous Nigerian dislike for infrastructural maintenance: "I'll make sure that if we buy an equipment today, it will keep well beyond my tenure. A work ethics will be introduced that will ensure it is maintained in the best possible form so that my successors do not come here to start from scratch as if nobody was here before them (PS: A smart but unintended indictment?). This attitude will also be applied in our programming and in the way we do things from now on."

He was trained in the British Broadcasting Corporation "and there, no one cuts corners. If it is not good enough for BBC, then it is simply cut out." Shock was his immediate reaction, when the news of his appointment hit him in London. Though he had been to Abuja at the invitation of the federal government and had spoken to top officials at the presidency and the ministry of information, he had returned to England the same day and had pushed the whole thing out of his mind.

"Ten days later, I got the news in a very indirect manner. I was having a meeting with a representative of the government of Ghana, negotiating the purchase of the West Africa magazine. I'd just come out of that meeting when a long distance call came through on my mobile phone.

"Hello, this is Soni Irabor. Congratulations on your appointment as the new DG of the FRCN, came Soni's familiar voice. My heart jumped as the enormity of the new responsibility suddenly dawned on me. I went straight to a nearby church in the business area of London and praised God while I asked Him to give me the strength to do it right. My phone lines kept ringing, with congratulatory e-mails streaming in from all over the world for about a week".

The news was on BBC, VOA and the Internet. In two weeks, he reported for duty in Abuja, Nigeria and everything else began to happen. His first job was to go to the national assembly to defend the FRCN supplementary budget. So he knew from the beginning that it would be a highly tasking assignment.

Comparing journalism in Britain to Nigeria, he surmised that in Nigeria, journalists are treated like plain local boys. "Every Tuesday, the first thing the press secretary to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom does is to address the foreign press community. For about two hours, he will tell them everything the government is thinking and planning to do within the limits of confidentiality. Official information is readily available. I am aware that that culture does not quite obtain here.

"One of the most elegant places in the United Kingdom really is the Foreign Press Association Club. It is one big Victorian mansion, well appointed, well decorated and highly regarded. The Queen of England donated it to the foreign press. The British press is highly regarded and there is no culture of cheapening yourself by accepting gratification based on the desire to influence your work. It worked two ways. You respect yourself and everyone respects you". Quid pro quo.

Before leaving Nigeria, Eddie Iroh had worked with the Guardian Newspapers as Managing Editor. He was also an economist with vigorous views that were expressed in very strong terms, which the military never liked - one reason he left Nigeria. Once he wrote a satire swipe at the Buhari-Idiagbon administration, "which of course was particularly perniciously anti-press." It whitewashed their Decree No 4.

Buhari and Idiagbon were irritated by Iroh's article. It was a joke he'd made of the President of Malawi, Kamuzu Banda, who was nearly 90, but insisted that he was only 80 and it was a state offence to mention his true age.

Iroh had pointed out that in Nigeria, such an offence would be punishable under Decree No 4. So the next day, the late Idiagbon, called the Guardian publisher, Chief Alex Ibru and the Managing Director, Mr. Stanley Macebuh and warned that if Eddie Iroh went on writing like that the Guardian would be shut down.

Iroh felt nothing but contempt for Buhari and the late Idiagbon. "I concluded that I didn't need this military gangsterism. So I decided to go and work abroad because there was a plan by the Guardian to expand its' operations beyond Nigeria, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to report the world to Africa, while the Guardian was reporting Africa to the world."

Susan emerged when Eddie's life was in shambles. He was formerly married to a white woman and they had three children. He also had a terrible experience with the proposed Heritage Newspapers for which he condemns investors who lead people ahead with lies instead of coming confessing that the project is no longer possible because there isn't enough capital to begin. Really, observers say it wasn't the money, but the politics behind the papers that didn't quite jell.

This proposed Heritage Newspapers led to the break up of his marriage. He had his family abroad for two years and had come to Nigeria in the belief that he was going to start up a newspaper expecting that would make

landmark contributions to journalism by setting up a newspaper right there in Abuja. Those who were supposed to sponsor the project abandoned it.

In the mean time, his life was going to pieces. His wife had relocated to her home in Austria with their three children. "My children are still there with her now, but at least thank God I get to see my children".

Susan and Eddie had been neighbours in the Maitama District, Abuja for over six years, but they didn't know each other. Susan was looking for another accommodation when she heard that Eddie's house had a boy's quarters. She went to check it out, but Eddie was not in, so she left a note with his guards.

When the guards gave him the note, he'd initially said, "There are too many fine ladies in Abuja, so which one is it this time? The note he got read: "Dear sir, I have something that I want to request from you..." What struck him after he had read the note were the closing words, "I'll see you at 7.30 tomorrow by the special will of God."

The next day Eddie cancelled an appointment to keep a date with the august visitor. At exactly 7.30pm, Susan turned up and that impressed him. Her respect for the sanctity of time (unlike yours truly) and that indication of a spiritual nature attracted her to him. He says her beauty was a secondary consideration.

What she wanted was assistance for an accommodation that was not possible because he was thinking of returning to a lonely life in England. After he met and got to know her, he extended his stay by three months. "I was glad I did. When your life is falling apart and somebody appears by the grace of God and she is ready to pick up the pieces for you, it makes a lot of difference. That is what has bound me to her in spite of the age difference and our backgrounds. I've lived outside Nigeria for 15 years but she was raised here and went to university here. But I found out that there is absolutely no difference between us. I remember one time I said to her, 'I am approaching middle age, but you are still very young' and she said to me, 'I am middle age too though I am 25'".

He paused to take a phone call before he continued. "I am happily stuck with Susan. She changed my life in a dramatic way, at a time I could have been manic-depressive. She became the resurrection of my life. I call her eternal flame. She's always and forever."

Susan's version is equally romantic. "God almighty directed me to my husband. I had spent two weeks in Abuja, eagerly looking for accommodation. I was depressed and was thinking of going back to Kaduna. I was already sick and tired of this accommodation problem until God led me to my husband without me knowing."

She was stunned and at a loss for words when you asked what was the attraction to her husband? Both of them hid the initial blankness in very warm laughter. "When I went to look for him, my feelings were blank. As time went on, the attraction grew. I call him my heart. What attracted me to him is more than anything physical. It is spiritual. Now, every single thing about Eddie attracts me."

Marriage has been very good to Susan. "People say Susan you are glowing, and I tell them that peace of mind is the most important thing. Eddie goes to great lengths to make me happy. No woman wouldn't glow in such circumstances."

She is a graduate of English, but presently, a full time housewife. They've been married witfor six years. Eddie had a meeting back at the office, so Susan and I rode together to the salon in her car and she just couldn't stop talking about love.

"My husband is so unbelievably young. He is my baby. You can't believe I undress Eddie and dress him up. I feel I am older than he is and I don't remember the age difference until people raise it up like you did now, which makes it so beautiful. He tells me that I am a young-old woman."

With Susan, Eddie apparently hasn't lost out on youth and the virile gusto attached to it, as he applies himself to the yeoman's job of making a difference where some say there is no distinction. Like NTA heads are still swooning from the Ben Murray-Bruce typhoon, perhaps too, the FRCN is set for a spiraling eddy.