Nigeria, May 16 -- Thursday, May 15, marked the 70th birthday of the inimitable journalist's journalist Sonala Olumhense.

I doubt that I would ever have become a journalist if not for my eventful meeting with the man called SO, or to put it in a more hip and contemporary vein, Ess-Oh!

It was at Rutam House in Lagos that I appeared in the dying months of 1985 to gun for a place as a journalist in The Guardian, and then met the man.

My only recommendation was that I had published some articles on the esteemed OP-ED pages of The Guardian which Sonala edited.

The then newly-employed Krees Imodibie, who was later murdered by Charles Taylor in Liberia, led me to the office of the Editorial Page Editor, Sonala Olumhense.

When I got introduc...