Stanley Macebuh: Exit of Nigeria’s flagship of journalism
“Stanley Macebuh is arguably one of the best columnists in Nigeria. His simplicity of style, language and logic made him one of the most readable columnists in this country.” That was how Malam Muhammed Haruna, another Nigerian ace columnist and former Managing Director of the New Nigerian Newspapers, described the late Macebuh in a telephone […]
“Stanley Macebuh is arguably one of the best columnists in Nigeria. His simplicity of style, language and logic made him one of the most readable columnists in this country.” That was how Malam Muhammed Haruna, another Nigerian ace columnist and former Managing Director of the New Nigerian Newspapers, described the late Macebuh in a telephone chat with Sunday Trust.
Malam Haruna said that despite the several gifts Macebuh was endowed with, “he remained simple, modest and level-headed. What I liked most about him was that he was liberal-minded, open minded and never highly-opinionated. That is why he was able to make-up The Guardian.”
The late Macebuh was born on December 28, 1942 and died at the National Hospital, Abuja on March 28, 2010 at around 4.15am. He attended Government Primary School, Port Harcourt, Ngwa High School, Aba and subsequently, Kings College, Lagos for his Higher School Certificate.
He proceeded to the University of Ibadan from 1963- 1966, where he studied English Language. He left Nigeria in 1967 to the University of Sussex, England, where he acquired his DPhil (Doctor of Philosophy degree) at the age of 26, after a brief teaching stint at his alma mater, the Kings College, Lagos.
He was at the University of California, Berkeley, California, USA as an in-house African Philosopher during the Civil Rights years. After two years at Berkeley, Columbia University (New York) and City College of New York, USA, both pitched to have him on their faculties, but ended up sharing his services as he began to lecture in both universities at the same time. He taught full-time at City College and part-time at the Institute of African Studies at the Columbia University.
He returned to Nigeria in 1977 as a tenured Associate Professor of English in the City College. Thereafter, he was at the Daily Times newspaper as an Editorial Adviser. From the Daily Times, he left and established The Guardian newspapers, described by media experts as the Flagship of Nigerian journalism.
Despite his outstanding successes in the The Guardian, Macebuh’s endeavours in the late General Shehu Musa Yar’adua’s defunct Sentinel Magazine and the Post Express newspaper were not that successful.
Malam Mahmud Jega, Editor of the Daily Trust newspaper describes the late Macebuh as a powerful intellectual and one of the country’s greatest journalists. Jega said, “I worked under Dr Macebuh at the Sentinel from October 1994 to January 1995. He was the Managing Director and I was one of two Senior Deputy Editors.”
The Daily Trust’s editor explained that “even before I first met him at the Sentinel, I knew him by reputation as a very powerful intellectual, an extremely lucid and one of Nigeria’s best journalists. In the short period I worked with him, he eminently confirmed all that I had heard about him.”
In 1999, he became a Senior Special Assistant (Special Duties) to former President Olusegun Obasanjo and subsequently appointed the Deputy Chief of Staff to the former president. He left Obasanjo’s cabinet during the first year of the former’s second term.
The deceased, thereafter, ventured into private business and media consultancy. He lived in the expansive Abuja’s estate of Gwarinpa, where he eventually died. His major works, published in 1973, was James Baldwin: A Critical Study, which was a critical evaluation of aesthetics within the Black Civil Rights Movement.