A veteran journalist and icon in the Nigerian media industry, Dan Agbese has passed on.
Family sources said he died in Lagos State on Monday morning. He was aged 81.
Agbese co-founded the iconic magazine, Newswatch, with Dele Giwa, who was killed by a parcel bomb in 1986, a case still unresolved decades later.
The late Dele Giwa was assassinated by a parcel bomb in 1986, an incident widely linked in public discourse to the regime of then Military Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, though no one has ever been officially prosecuted for the murder.
According to family sources, the veteran wordsmith passed away this morning in Lagos State at the age of 81.
Newswatch is a Nigerian weekly news magazine published by Newswatch Communications Limited in Nigeria.
Dan Agbese held degrees in mass communications and journalism from the University of Lagos and Columbia University, New York, respectively.
He was a former editor of The Nigeria Standard, the New Nigerian as well as former general manager of Radio Benue. Agbese was one of the founders of the trail-blazing weekly newsmagazine in Nigeria, Newswatch.
He was until April 2010 the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine.
He was the author of several acclaimed books, including Nigeria their Nigeria, Fellow Nigerians, The Reporter’s Companion, Style: A Guide to Good Writing and The Columnist’s Companion: The Art and Craft of Column Writing.
Agbese was also a highly regarded newspaper columnist.
