Several times I tried to write this piece but each time my emotional strength failed me. The reality, however, is that I cannot continue to delay it even if I have to do this misty-eyed as is the case now.
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But there is a background to the void this sad event has caused in my life.
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One evening around 2001 or thereabout, when I was features editor in Thisday, Paul Odili, currently media aide to Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of DeltaState, walked into the Thisday newsroom in Apapa, Lagos and came straight to me. "Max, Pini Jason wants you to see him", he said. Paul Odili was then assistant political editor at Vanguard, where Pini Jason was a columnist.
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Pini Jason wants to see me? What for? Our paths had never crossed though I had known him by reputation right from my days in secondary school.
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He was writing for the London-based New African magazine and being an avid reader right from my formative years, I had come to appreciate the beautiful prose of the man called Pini Jason.