By Solomon OKPO
Nigeria is a country where everybody talks, loudly, confidently, and often without the inconvenience of knowing anything. Which is why the departure of Dan Agbese, a man who treated words as though they were breakable items in a glass cabinet, feels like the day NEPA took light and forgot the address of the transformer.
Let’s be honest: Dan Agbese was an endangered species long before he passed on. In a nation where commentary is now measured by decibels, not depth, he insisted on writing with the calm of a man who believed ideas should be understood, not screamed into submission. Naturally, this made many people uncomfortable. Nigeria distrusts anyone who doesn’t shout.
While the rest of us were auditioning for “Who Wants to Be a Professional Ranter?”, Dan was at Newswatch quietly helping to build a journalism that believed in something radical truth. Not the type we now forward on WhatsApp. Not the kind that comes with three exclamation marks and a blurry photo. Actual truth, the sort that requires a spine.
He wrote like a surgeon, not a boxer. No swinging fists, just clean incisions. And because he didn’t insult anyone’s ancestors, political sympathizers were often confused. How can a man criticize you without calling you “a clueless buccaneering kleptocrat of moral anemia”? Very suspicious.
His columns worked like a lantern in the dusk, steady, patient, refusing to compete with the surrounding noise. And because he didn’t compete, he won.
In an era when public commentary resembles a noisy family meeting at Christmas, everybody talking, nobody listening, the loudest person nominated to pray, Dan Agbese insisted on reasoning. Imagine that. Reasoning. In Nigeria. No wonder he became a legend.
Even his time in military detention couldn’t break his humor. The man could laugh at soup leaves escaping his garri. Today’s commentators would have live-blogged the experience and declared a three-day Twitter boycott.
But here’s the real tragedy: we’re not just mourning a journalist; we’re mourning a genre. The quiet, thoughtful, principled commentator is nearly extinct. We now have influencers, content creators, and professional wearers of oversized headsets explaining national policy from their bedroom studios.
Meanwhile, the few remaining writers who still know what a sentence is supposed to do are being treated like museum artifacts: admired, dusted occasionally, and ignored when the real decisions are being made.
Dan Agbese’s passing is a reminder that Nigeria’s real natural resource was never in the Niger Delta; it was in men and women of character. And that well is running dangerously low.
So yes, we grieve. But we should also feel a little shame. Because Dan Agbese spent his life demonstrating that a pen can be sharp without being crude, that clarity is stronger than noise, and that truth spoken softly, can outlive its enemies.
He walked gently across this land, yet left footprints so deep even our national amnesia cannot cover them.
Rest well, Uncle Dan. You fought without theatrics, served without swagger, and proved that a quiet flame can light a whole generation. If only the rest of us weren’t so busy shouting to notice.
