On October 9, 2008, The Guardian newspaper, once the Flagship of the Nigerian print media, celebrated a landmark Silver Jubilee. I congratulate the Board, Management and Staff of a great institution. It would be curmudgeonly of me not to start with this sentiment, for a number of reasons.

First is that, after more than 30 cumulate years in every field of the media industry, I still consider the founding of The Guardian as one of the most epochal events in which a humble peasant's son like me could have the privilege to play a role in Nigeria.

The second is that for The Guardian to have reached this milestone is a great achievement for those who can recall the travails of this newspaper during its formative years under the military dictatorship of General Muhammadu Buhari and General Tunde Idiagbon.

Thirdly, to be able to fully share in the joy of The Guardian's survival and longevity, one has to re-live the memory of the atmosphere of fear and trepidation in the media industry that characterized the military era in which the paper was nurtured. Few newspapers as bold as The Guardian could have survived in such furnace of birth.

Literally overnight the fascist regime rammed through a punitive retroactive decree specifically targeting The Guardian's own duo of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor. Decree Number 4, even 23 years after it was abrogated by the Government of General Ibrahim Babangida, remains till today one of the most brutal rape of the time-honoured principle of the peoples' right to know.

This leads me to the concomitant view that the Silver Jubilee of The Guardian, or any other 25 year-old organization for that matter, is as much a celebration of the survival and longevity of that institution as an occasion to honour the pioneering spirit and legacy of its founders. And this, in my opinion, is where The Guardian failed woefully on its anniversary.

Let me make quite clear that in expressing this opinion, I hold no brief whatsoever for any other member of the senior pioneer staff of the paper, even if per chance such person shares my views. Let me also acknowledge that about a week before the event, I received an invitation card to attend the anniversary lecture by Prime Minister Raila Odinga of Kenya. The same week, I equally received another invitation, this time from the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria [FRCN] to attend their October Lecture. The two invitations are a study in contrast, even from a procedural standpoint.

While the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) invitation was a formal letter, signed by the Acting Director General of the corporation, giving me a place as a Special Guest at their event, The Guardian's own was a pro-forma, indeed perfunctory card. It was the kind that they sent to every Tomesi, Dike and Haruna who was invited to the occasion. I do not know whether the other pioneers got a different kind of invitation, although I have no reason to think so. You may, therefore, consider me immodest to expect special treatment. But if I cannot claim some special consideration in the celebration of an organization that I helped to bring about, then I do not know where else I can do that.

At the time Stanley Macebuh invited me 25 years ago to join in The Guardian enterprise, I was already Controller of Documentary Programmes at NTA Headquarters, Lagos. Ideally in the media, few people go from the glamour of television to the relative obscurity of a newspaper. But the challenge of being part of the vision he had for the new paper was irresistible.

But the token invitation turned out to be symptomatic of the abject disregard which The Guardian celebrants displayed for their founding fathers. I saw no evidence that anyone of us was scheduled to play any meaningful role, especially as no programme of event was communicated to me. My understanding was that we were [at least I was] to attend the event like any other invitee.

Well, perhaps you the reader can again pardon my immodesty in considering myself more than just another invitee to the event if you ponder this single fact. I personally stood in the dock of the special military tribunal that sentenced Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor to jail for doing their job. And if the Guardian Press Ltd [the third accused which I represented as Managing Editor of the paper], were a human being, I too, would have ended up in jail like Tunde and Nduka. Instead the GPL was sentenced only to a fine.

I therefore did not see how I should pay for a return flight ticket to Lagos, put myself in a hotel for two days to share in a celebration which would not have happened without the collective sweat of many of us who were conspicuously absent on the day.

But my role in the founding of the paper and its early travails is nothing compared with those of the other pioneers, certainly not with the suffering and deprivation experienced by Thompson and Irabor in the dungeon of the Buhari-Idiagbon Gulag, or the trauma that Mrs Tunde Thompson went through.

Of course the founding of the paper was not entirely a story of trials and travails. But there is no greater landmark in the history of The Guardian, or indeed in post-colonial Nigerian newspapering, than the fact that in less than six months of its founding, the paper had a head-on collision with Buhari and Idiagbon. We stood eye ball to eye ball with one of the most fascistic military regimes Nigeria was cursed with, and in the end it was the military that blinked first. Their regime collapsed, and The Guardian has lived to attain the age of 25 years.

The Guardian was also a shared experience of the pioneering spirit and the delivery of excellence which many thought impossible in Nigeria even today. It was also a tale of sacrifice of many man hours that knew no leisure time, as well as a challenge of creativity and rigorous intellectualism. What was being celebrated on the 9th of October was, therefore, in essence the legacy of the founding fathers of the newspaper.

As I looked at photographs of the great and the good who graced the occasion, and pondered the front page shot of the cutting of the anniversary cake, I wondered how many people there noticed those who were conspicuous by their absence. Where was Dr. Stanley Macebuh, the first Executive Editor and later pioneer Managing Director of the paper? Where was Professor Femi Osofisan, Professor Chinweizu Ibekwe, Professor Onwuchekwa Jemie, the first Editorial Page Editor and Chairman of the Editorial Board, a moderator of conflicting views and positions that proved most valuable in reconciling the doggedly different ideologies and philosophies of Chinweizu and Femi.

As I read the reminiscences at what The Guardian report quite rightly described as an "epochal event," I did not read of any one recalling what went into the fashioning of the Flagship. Few there can tell how the editorial policy, which immediately established the paper's liberal credentials, or the motto, the emblem, the masthead etc, came to be, because they were not there.

These were not happenstance, accidents or incidents, but the result of rigorous and exhaustive enterprise that promptly showcased The Guardian as the Flagship. These, alongside the travails and personal sacrifices are among what the paper should be celebrating.

It is, in my view, another classic example of the collective amnesia which frequently afflicts Nigerians when it comes to giving honour to whom it is due that you can cut the anniversary cake of the newspaper they founded without a single one of its founders, except the Publisher who owns the paper!

Of course no one can understate the risk to his resources and person that Mr. Alex Ibru staked when he funded The Guardian. You may even pardon him if he entertained second thoughts in 1984 when these brave and crazy people put his business and even his life at risk as we clashed with the military regime. But not even he will claim that money alone could have built what quickly became the most respected newspaper in Nigeria. Money can establish an institution, but it is the people who build and nurture it that give it a dream meaning and substance.

But as my Igbo people would say, he who does not know where the rain begins to fall on him is usually fully drenched before he reaches his destination. I hope our Guardian gets it right on its 50th anniversary.