To say that Yakubu Mohammed was a good man is an understatement. He was respectful to all despite one’s station in life. And this is in spite of his huge personal accomplishments, which, again, are grossly understated. He was honest to a fault. In a country where truth is an anathema, he paid a dire price for that. Beyond all these, he was a human being in every sense. If you were lucky to make his acquaintance, he would care about your day, spend quality time with you, listen to you and generally make you feel safe. These are the qualities that endeared him to me. His watchword was: how can I help? He was one man whose actions always spoke louder than words
To say that Yakubu Mohammed was a good man is an understatement. He was respectful to all despite one’s station in life. And this is in spite of his huge personal accomplishments, which, again, are grossly understated. He was honest to a fault. In a country where truth is an anathema, he paid a dire price for that.
Beyond all these, he was a human being in every sense. If you were lucky to make his acquaintance, he would care about your day, spend quality time with you, listen to you and generally make you feel safe. These are the qualities that endeared him to me. His watchword was: how can I help? He was one man whose actions always spoke louder than words.
In Yakubu Mohammed’s death, I have not only lost a personal friend, Nigeria has also lost a good man. He was one man who always spoke truth to power, no matter whose ox is gored. He was not afraid of controversy as long as he was treading the path of truth, which was what he did with his memoir, Beyond Expectations.
On November 21, 2025, barely two weeks after the public presentation of the book, I received a call from him with an unusual request to help deliver a copy to Governor Hope Uzodimma. He gave some knocks to the Imo State helmsman over the role he played as chairman of the APC Kogi State governorship screening committee in 2019. Mohammed was an aspirant and he wanted Uzodimma to read what he wrote on his inelegant role in the screening perfidy.
“I arrived Lokoja in good time for the screening. When it came to my turn, I took my seat and greeted the chairman and members. Hope Uzodimma, who knew me from the days of Ahmadu Ali’s chairmanship of PDP, feigned ignorance and expressed surprise that I was from Kogi State. Hear him: “Yakubu, people like you are from this state and instead of rallying around the governor to do well, you people are aspiring to replace him.” “I enquired from him if he was in the state to do an honest job or to campaign for Bello. No answer… Instead, he and his members decided to eat their lunch while I was still being “screened,” he wrote.
‘So, I want him to get a copy of the book and see whether what I wrote is true or not. If you could help me get it across to him, I will be grateful.’ That was quintessential Yakubu Mohammed: forthright and not given to double speak, yet remarkably humble. With him, you knew where you were at any time. He was an open book with no surprises or hidden agendas. But what I loved most was his simplicity. With him, there were no airs. Yet, here was a man who helped in fundamentally changing the face of journalism in Nigeria; a man who shared a meal with world leaders including the late Queen Elizabeth II
I had always known him by reputation as an iconoclast who wielded the pen so dexterously, a man whose pen always sufficed to set off a thousand tongues, as the influential French sociologist, Gabriel Tarde, put it. He was one of the few journalists who also wore the epaulet of inimitableness as a columnist.
But I never met him until the maiden meeting of what Akogun Tola Adeniyi called the “Oracle Confraternity” on Thursday, June 21, 2018 in Ikeja. Akogun was the initiator of the project and together with Prof Anthony Kila, the idea of an umbrella association of “men and women who wield mighty pens that shape and mould the thoughts and world-view of communities,” was floated.
And right there, I was seated with great men whose pens were axiomatically mightier than the sword – Mohammed, Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese, Henry Boyo, Ben Lawrence, etc. Attending meetings and sharing ideas with these great men whose encyclopedic knowledge of Nigeria ran deep, you cannot but marvel at what they know, not from hearsay but first-hand information. But Yakubu Mohammed who emerged the vice chairman of the League, a position he held until he died, was exceptional. We instantly became friends.
I never worked under him as a journalist but as has been testified to by everyone who crossed his path whether at the New Nigerian, National Concord or Newswatch magazine, he was a man with a heart of gold. He extended his trademark goodwill to us at TheNiche. Then, one day, he invited me to his Adeniyi Jones home and we spent hours discussing Nigeria. And our friendship blossomed. At the 2023 TheNiche Lecture, which was delivered by the former governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, I tapped him as a discussant, knowing that he will always speak truth to power, and he didn’t disappoint.
Sometime in August 2025, he called to say: “Ikechukwu, you remember I told you I was writing my memoir. It is out. I don’t know when you will come to the house and pick a copy.” Since my office was on Allen Avenue, I went straight to his house that evening on my way home.
I read the 422-page book in a jiffy. It was unputdownable. And on August 21, 2025, I did a review – Beyond Yakubu Mohammed’s expectations. He was grateful. But I was not done yet. I needed to interrogate him further on the issues he raised in the book and requested for an exclusive interview.
In his preface to the book, Agbese wrote: “Beyond Expectations is a riveting read. It is riveting in its breadth and depth. It is riveting by the author’s command of language. It is riveting by what the author does not serve his readers.” In the quest of what he left out, I was back in his house the next day for a two-hour, no-holds-barred interview.
One thing became apparent. On the killing of his colleague, friend and founding editor-in-chief of the trail-blazing Newswatch, Dele Giwa, there was no closure 39 years after. The swashbuckling journalist was gruesomely murdered while having breakfast at his 25 Talabi Street residence, off Adeniyi Jones, Ikeja. Death was delivered clinically via a parcel bomb. The novelty of the operation and its sophistication led to a number of conspiracy theories.
Questions on the Giwa murder provoked raw emotion. At some point, the former pro-chancellor and chairman of the governing councils of Ahmadu Bello University and Federal University of Birnin Kebbi became teary as his voice cracked. “I think you better ask other questions,” he pleaded.
He was riled that some Nigerians accused them of indifference. “It is in this country where after about a month or so, we now told Ray to take over, and somebody wrote in Sunday Times that we didn’t feel for our brother who died. What were we supposed to have done that we didn’t do which showed that we were not concerned… We were interrogated. Police needed evidence from us, they came, went to inspect the house where it happened, they called us to come and make statements and we did, there was nothing they wanted from us that we said no. So, what were we supposed to do that we didn’t do? Have you heard that they called Ray, Dan or myself to come and give evidence and we refused to go?” he mourned.
Yet, painful as that experience was, Yakubu Mohammed insisted he had no regrets in life. “To say that I have regrets means that I don’t know God,” he said.
Two things jumped out clearly from the interview. First, his absolute faith in God: “My life is totally in God’s hand,” he said emphatically. Second, his love for journalism: “I have no regrets picking journalism. If I have to come back to this world again, I will be a journalist.”
Sadly, barely four months after that robust interview, Dan Agbese had passed on. And now Yakubu Mohammed. There was no indication on the day that he was at the departure lounge of life waiting to catch his flight to eternity. Rather, he hinted at the possibility of writing another book when he said, “Since Beyond Expectations is a memoir, if God still gives me more life, and other things happen to me in the future, it can still be part of another memoir or another story entirely.”
Yet, if the dead could talk, Yakubu Mohammed will tell anyone who cares to listen that his passing is the “Will of God.” But truth be told, it hurts. It was a rude shock. Sadder still, Nigeria has lost yet another good man, a man of true heart, further depleting the stock at a time when the country needs more, not less, of such men.
But if “the purpose of life,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the most iconic names in literature and leading figure in the movement of Transcendentalism, once noted, “is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well,” then we cannot but celebrate him. In life, Yakubu Mohammed was useful, he was honourable and he was compassionate. His was a life of purpose — served God and humanity. By so doing, he achieved fulfillment by making tremendous impact. Rest in peace Oga Yak!
