Caption: Queen Janet Mba Afolabi of Apomu Kingdom,
Like Roberta Flack’s 1973 Grammy Award-winning song “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” there are deaths that announce themselves softly, almost apologetically, yet leave behind an echo that refuses to fade. The passing of Newswatch magazine’s superstar journalist and writer per excellence, Dan Agbese belongs to that category. He left quietly, as he lived—without fuss or theatrics—but his absence has filled newsrooms and consciences across Nigeria and beyond with silent thunder strikes.
At a recent memorial in Lagos, the atmosphere was less a funeral and more a roll call of gratitude, reminiscences,—call it journalistic flashbacks. Among the voices was one both regal and reflective: Queen Janet Mba Afolabi of Apomu Kingdom, author of a slim, biographical book of tributes to her four bosses cum mentors who inspired and trained her while at Newswatch. Before the crown and the throne, there was the newsroom. Before the Queen, there was the reporter. And before that reporter became a CNN award-winning journalist, there was Dan Agbese—editor, mentor, tormentor, and midwife of excellence.
Agbese, the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Newswatch, died on November 17, 2025 at 81. He belonged to a generation of journalists who believed that words mattered, facts were sacred, and mediocrity was a moral failing. He edited stories the way a surgeon handles a scalpel: no sentiment, no apology, only precision. If the patient screamed, so be it. The goal was the survival of the craft.
Queen Janet remembers him first as an editor with an uncanny instinct for the “soul” of a story. “Dan Agbese had an inherent ability to edit,” she says. “He edited the two stories that won me both local and international awards.”
The first was her 1998 report on the death of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, which won the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME). The second was her coverage of the Jesse fire tragedy, where 1,000 lives were lost in a pipeline explosion. That story earned her the top prize at the CNN African Journalist Awards in 1999.
Awards glitter, but behind them lies a story of sweat, resistance, and a leap of faith.
The Jesse assignment almost didn’t happen. Originally assigned to another reporter, the story fell to Janet by chance. She spent two days amid ashes and a silence heavy with the scent of death. Upon her return, newsroom politics intervened. The story was deemed “too big” and reassigned to a senior colleague. Janet was told to submit her notes and step aside.
She refused.
In that refusal was the making of a journalist. She insisted on writing her own version from her exclusive reports. “Let Dan Agbese decide,” she challenged. It was a dangerous move—Agbese was not a man to trifle with—but he listened, and he agreed.
That night, she wrote from dusk until dawn. By morning, exhausted and anxious, she went to check the fate of her script. Agbese had already gone home, but her story had gone to production. She danced in the newsroom. Somewhere between Jesse and Atlanta, a career had pivoted. “If he had denied me that opportunity,” she reflects, “the CNN award would have passed me by.”
Agbese denied many things: laziness, sloppy thinking, and bad English. But he never denied talent its due.
He was famously quiet, yet his silence was thunderous. When his office bell rang, anxiety rippled through the room. His assistant, Samuel—stern and ceremonial—would appear, point silently at the summoned reporter, and vanish. The walk to Agbese’s office felt like a march to judgment.
Stories rarely survived first contact. He cut them to pieces with what reporters called his “long knife.” One celebrated writer reportedly rewrote a single story thirteen times before Agbese accepted it. Stardom dissolved into humility at his desk.
Queen Janet confesses she once dreaded him, avoiding his shadow whenever possible—until a story about a wedding forced a confrontation. She had opened with: “It is unusual for someone to marry at 38.”
Agbese peered over his glasses. “What is unusual about getting married at 38?”
That question was an education. She rewrote. She studied. She found her voice. When Agbese finally read the revised version and shook her hand, that handshake changed everything.
From him, she learned that active voice breathes life into prose, while passive constructions slow it down. She learned that a story should never “just stop writing”—it must arrive.
He was relentless. One Friday evening, he shut the newsroom doors and refused to let anyone leave until they provided two viable story ideas. “You are reporters,” he said. “You should always be prepared like the Boy Scouts.”
Some broke under the pressure. Janet herself once tried to transfer to a “calmer” sister magazine, but Agbese refused. Years later, she would thank him; the other magazine folded, while Newswatch endured.
Yet, this man of fire was also a man of profound kindness. He gave her $500 for her trip to South Africa, unasked. He shared his hot suya with her on a rainy day when her car had been towed at the Murtala Mohammed International Aiport, while covering a story, and her spirits were low. He protected her through pregnancy and mourned with her when she lost a child. He wrote commendations—not verbal, but handwritten on his personalized notepad—which she treasures to this day.
Dan Agbese was a master satirist and a prose stylist of rare discipline. For fifty years, he trained generations who still hear his voice in their heads before they hit “submit.”
Queen Janet is grateful she celebrated him while he was alive, dedicating a chapter to him in her book, The Masters Who Trained Me. He read it. He knew he was loved.
Now he is gone to join Dele Giwa, the famous pioneer Editor-in-chief of Newswatch who died violently as a result of a novelty parcel bomb delivered to him at home which killed him, making big news in Nigeria and all over the world. But editors like Dan Agbese and Dele Giwa never truly die. They live on in clean leads, fearless analysis, and the quiet confidence of the journalists they refined.
May their souls rest in perfect peace.
