It was early 2002 and I was an undergraduate of Theatre Arts at the University of Calabar.

My friend then, Laura worked with the National Mirror newspaper.

She was always carrying me around. One day, she took me to the offce of her boss and just announced, “Emeka, meet my friend, Anne, a theatre practitioner and a bad ass script writer.

So I was writing movie reviews as a student of theatre arts, watching Nigerian movies and practically tearing
the plots and sequences apart in my writeups.

Mr Obasi could not wait for me to fnish school and join the paper full time. The moment I fnished youth service, I got an appointment letter. Then I started another column, “Lipstick” where I wrote about boy and girl relationships.

The column brought unknown men to the newsroom, people called my phone until two phones died in my
hands. When I moved to another paper, I changed my by-line from Anne Oboho to Anna Okon for fear of being chased down by readers of Lipstick.

Obasi gave us contacts of almost all the big names in the country so we could interview them. I had contacts of all the governors, the billionaires and prominent people.

One day, I called Dangote in his private number and he was like, “who gave you this number? I was like, look at what you are saying Alhaji, am I not a journalist?”

..”And you have this number?” He sounded very surprised. Of course he did not accept to be interviewed because the interview was to appear on the life and style column.

Obasi made us know that we could do it. He made us feel like stars, like we were the best thing that happened to journalism.

Later, when I left the medium and went to another medium, that feeling was shattered by the people in the
new medium who went out of their way to make me feel and look like somebody who can’t write.

I always found myself going back to Obasi’s medium and he was always asking me to.come back and resume work. I am sure a lot of people like me who knew him have stories to tell about the encounter.

Yes. He gave everyone a story and a memory.

Rest on publisher..I was later to discover that he read English and literary studies from the University of calabar. And the discovery came after I left his paper

Anne Oboho