I met Ladbone through an incredible whim of fate. Though I had served reluctantly in the Guardian upon my return from UCLA in 1986, I never met that great man whom fortune would later use to shape my formative expanses on this transient mother earth.
Yes, I had served reluctantly in the Guardian because my positioning had always been at The Daily Times which I had been made to believe was the best thing that ever happened to Nigerian journalism before the martial intrusion of Obasanjo.
It was almost eight years after I had hurried out of the African Guardian despite the entreaty of another great man called Andy Akporugo who plucked me out of Guardian on Sunday where I barely worked for a week before I would encounter Ladbone.
Of his fame and expositional eminence I had collided with in the Library of the Daily Times through his Critical Caught Out column that was incisive as an unyielding knife; confident, assertive, often balanced in unforced, unassuming intellectual simplicity with hidden grandeur.
His prose was abbreviational; pointed, striking, pithy, directed without rigour, effortless in that resplendent verity that only the gifted can command.
An encounter with him can only be surmised in the total weaving of a withdrawn philosopher as philosopher ought to be; suspended in that wisdom that does not intrude, that is instinctively animated in that mightiness of variegated erudition, that challenges one to bear witness to the shining path.
Ladbone is easily excitable to the fount of knowledge. Like Johnson, he is indifferent to accumulated certification within the groves of academia. He is an autodidact, naturally driven by proven, demonstrable well wrought excellence.
He is an exceptional editor and publisher in the realm of Catharine Graham, William Shawn Harold Ross and of course the great Ben Bradley who dined with kings as he moulded Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein; young brave men who unseated a mangled and corrupt Nixonian presidency.
The ringing leitmotif of the exceptionalism of Ladbone is the unfailing ability to recognise and appreciate distinction wherever it may be found. For he resides permanently in that wonderful isle Alexander Pope would call the Republic of letters unknown to race or tribal crudity. His fixity inheres in embracing and motivating intellect as he perceives it.
Here in his resolution, he is immovable, solitary in pursuit of excellence, firm and daring, unyielding to the polluted straying of anyone once his position is made, once his truth is confirmed, once his cause is defined.
He remains a rarity, an uncommon gem who invited me to the Guardian Editorial Board in 1993 simply because he was reading me from afar! And because I stopped writing! Yes, I stopped writing and he was perceptive enough that a conflict must have arisen and I that was then susceptible to move to a better isle.
That was enough for him. He was not interested whether I was a Muslim or a Christian. Nor was he interested in the tribal pull. He was addicted to expositional purity and the nurturing of the best and the brightest.
I may be prejudice, but if one were to bring forth the collectivity of this great man of variegated intellect, I would yield and surmise that for the largeness of his character, for the immensity of his unyielding wisdom, for his instinctive humility, Ladbone remains the greatest editor anywhere man still stirs in appreciative knowledge far beyond the limiting confines of the newsroom.
*By Prince Uthman Shodipe-Dosunmu
Oloriekun of Olowogbowo
Apesinola of Eyo Oba Alakete Pupa Ọkọlaba Ẹkun.
