A few years later,Mr. Daboh would offer me a juicy job at his offices in Oregun, on the mainland. In 1979, his offices were on Broad Street in Lagos Island. I arrived to find that he had set up several pieces of audio-visual equipment to document the interview.
As a young journalist at The Punch in 1980, I appeared one morning at Eko Hotel, as it was then known, to interview newly-elected Senator Joseph Tarka.
Mr. Tarka, whose son, Simeon, had also been elected to the House of Representatives, occupied an expansive suite in the hotel. It was my first experience of how the other half lived.
He was a well-groomed, well-spoken man, was Mr. Tarka. He was also bearing some kind of stigma, having been forced to resign his position as a Minister five years earlier, following allegations of official corruption made against him by businessman Godwin Daboh.
As it turned out, in 1979, both men, who were of Benue State origin, were also members of the National Party of Nigeria, which won the presidency. I soon found myself to be a small part of their story after I was introduced to Mr. Daboh by Punch company chairman Olu Aboderin, and “requested” to interview him.