Adieu Aniete Akpan — A Gentleman Journalist and One of the Finest I Knew
By Okoi Obono-Obla
I am saddened and distraught to hear of the death of Aniete Akpan on 3rd August, 2026.
He was a distinguished journalist of many years standing in Calabar, Cross River State, in those heydays when journalism was still noble and elitist. He was the correspondent of the flagship of Nigerian journalism — The Guardian — which blazed the trail after the decline of the Daily Times of Nigeria founded in 1926.
When I arrived in Calabar in 1992 to start my law practice in the law firm of Kanu Godwin Agabi, SAN, it was a period when the country was soaked in revolutionary fervour, manifesting in the agitation for a return to democratic civil rule after years of debilitating military dictatorship that had stunted the progress of the country.
I decided to be part of the pro-democracy and human rights community at the forefront of the vanguard for change.
It was important to forge an alliance and relationship with journalists based in Calabar in order to catch national headlines and get national media coverage for what we were doing in Cross River State. Aniete Akpan, who had already established himself as a senior journalist with *The* *Guardian* Newspaper, was one of the journalists I forged a relationship with.
He was very willing to reciprocate and to accept a young rookie like me, and whenever I wrote on national issues, he would always accept my press statements, releases and essays and report them in The Guardian.
He was a gentleman to the core — cordial, amicable and accessible. He was quiet, humble and kind.
The era of Information and Communication Technology came with a great bang, and on its heels came anonymous social media, which pushed traditional journalists of the old bloc like Aniete Akpan to the back seat.
He later dabbled into the murky waters of Nigerian politics and sought to contest election to represent his constituency in the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly.
But in our country, principled, good people — those who are not ready to lick the boots of political oligarchs and who insist on being their own man — are seldom allowed by these despicable oligarchs to have their way in politics.
Adieu, Aniete Akpan, one of the finest gentlemen and Nigerian journalists I was privileged to know and be associated with, and who was magnanimous enough to embrace a young man bubbling with revolutionary activism in the heyday of military dictatorship and the post-military era.
May his soul rest in peace.
Okoi Obono-Obla is a former Presidential Aide
