I had wished over and over again that the evening of Tuesday, August 25, 2026, be erased from the English calendar, at least in this part of the world, but it has stubbornly stuck on like a magnet and steel. This illogical wish is not without basis. May you never understand this by attempting to deny a piece of information that you have not tried to verify. Before verification, you are already praying it would turn out to be a great lie.
That was precisely what happened to me on the evening of this faithful day when my friend, the Editor of Vanguard, Eze Anaba, called me out of the blue (because he doesn’t just make flippant calls), asking when I last spoke with another friend, Dotun Oladipo, the Publisher of Eagle Online, who was our course mate. That, in itself, hadn’t aroused any suspicion.
Eze’s calls are not cheap. As the President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors and a close friend, he could be dishing out one of his difficult assignments or asking where one could be hiding around the globe at any time. After completing working on a special page for the day, I decided to relax a little before the next task when Eze called.
“Demo, have you spoken with Dotun today?” he asked. “Not today, but yesterday; we spoke yesterday!” You need to call the wife,” he said sharply, already betraying concern. “But why?” I asked. “I hope it is not true. I learnt that Dotun died this evening,” Eze said in a trembling voice before ending the call sharply. “What! It can’t be true.” My caller was gone.
