Almost as if rushing to meet datelines and satisfy a stern Editor, three of the nation’s gems within the media family exited by the front door to eternity. All of this happened within just ten days – Biyi Bandele: 7th August; John Chiahemen: 10th August; and Chief Duro Onabule: 16th August. Of them all, I knew John Chiahemen the most and would like to start these tributes with him.
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For Sadiq Daba, a native of Kano, born in Kumasi, Ghana and raised in Freetown, Sierra-Leone, stardom was more than a dream come true. In the early days, it was radio that enchanted him. And without a single TV station in Sierra-Leone then, what else but being on radio would he have thought of?
“I used to listen to William Roberts on Radio Sierra-Leone,” he recalls, smiling broadly. “He was my role model. Being on-air, for me, became an obsession.” That was in the early 1960s, a time he used to go around with the pop star, Giraldo Pino, who practices just behind their house to dance halls. But it was not till he met Khalifa Baba Ahmed on his return to Nigeria around 1967 that he was able to actualize his childhood dream. And it was by happenstance!