Introduction: Coming of Age

COUNTERPOINT  BY Femi Akintunde Johnson
Life is hard and harsh – depending on your current or past experiences. The texture of your circumstances is not necessarily a by-product of losses, poverty, or some other unfortunate incidents. Sometimes, professionally astute and well-remunerated folks have Goliaths of emotional baggage – matrimonial, relational or even spiritual. Issues that eat up one’s courage and vitality such that people outside of your inner circle wonder if you were gravely ill or bereaved. Some ‘ailments’ are not sharable, and they torment and marginalise your existence, wIth such alacrity that the phrase “life is harsh” becomes your sighing admission of frustration – even as you watch numbly while your subordinates strut majestically and nonchalantly across the same space and time as you do.

At some point in one’s life, you realize that time has gone far – that you have spent more than half of what you could ever live on this earth. A man at 60 is nearer to the grave than a restless 35-year old executive who is wondering why the day is so slow. Both men may share similar peculiarities, their visions and ambitions, in the context of time and space, are inexorably controlled by the investment spent on some issues of life and living. Investment in this case could be money, energy, thoughts, time, emotions, and sundry other varieties of human activity.

At 60 and beyond, you ought not to worry much about impressing your neighbours or friends; at thirty you’re amazed at the seeming insensitivity or sloppiness of your elderly neighbours or friends of your parents. The agile and zestful fellow wonders why some people are so slow to embrace modernity and progress; while the man coming of age counsels caution, patience and hindsight.

It is in this somber mood, I pluck out a piece of text that I hope will resonate far and wide about the demands and desires of polishing one’s legacy, however small or modest it is, with the trusted brush of clarity, faithfulness, openness and maturity. Join me in reading this, and more afterwards, as we come of age…in an era of confusion and indifference.

“This memoir is my most ambitious writing project yet. It’s a hard and frank recollection of the unforgettable ups and downs of birthing, sustaining and losing Nigeria’s No. 1 Celebrity Journal (1991 and 1997) – FAME Weekly (magazine) – an exercise that has taken more than two decades of preparation and prevarication.
Many times I have been asked in different forms something like this: “What happened to FAME? Why did you guys allow that beautiful project ro die?” Oftentimes, the dynamics and strands that concern the crises of FAME were too deep, too serpentine, too extensive, and too emotionally draining to be condensed into short takes, banters, and power-points.

For many years, one had made resolutions to consign the pain and despair of issues and intrigues of FAME to the dustbin of history and notorious forgetfulness.
Yet, once in a long while, memories surged to the forefront whenever a nostalgic reference was made to actions or interventions once produced during the FAME era.

Over the years, less than a decade after we were forced out of FAME, the project suffered some sort of cardiac arrest, and has since ceased to exist. One could argue that most publications founded in the 1990s have also suffered similar fate – even so did the Encomium that we started with hoopla, after leaving FAME, and which soared to great heights for many years – including other titles I had the privilege of starting (New Treasure [interview magazine], Treasure People, Treasure Life & Style, Surprise magazine, etc).

Valid point… especially as the vicious disruptive elements of online publishing, social media invasion, and deplorable economy have combined to choke life out of traditional publishing – forcing few of the old publications to hang on to existence via the internet platforms with varying degrees of success.
So, a few years ago, I began to gather information – once scattered – all over again; materials that I had thrown away in disappointment. I sought out old workmates, associates, friends, and erstwhile admirers – asking for this picture, or confirming that statement. In spite of our atrocious lack of maintenance culture, quite a tidy bunch of ex-FAMEous people still kept staggering volume of materials (textual and pictorial) from our mutual past – even after 24 years!

However, the few months of 2021 have been quite cathartic and anaesthetic, at intervals, as I dug back into decades of memories and recollections – sifting and tugging through junks and pieces of distorted or dismembered scenarios, events and activities of the past 30 years.
On several occasions, I sought clarifications from, and perspectives of former colleagues, in knitting the stories of FAME that have remained untold for so long.

In (the) book, I have traced my movements all the way from The Punch newspapers – detouring to a few significant events that dotted that experience: the making of the popular tags – ‘Elegant Stallion’ and ‘RMD’, and my first almost catastrophic encounter with Shina Peters. Then, on to my short tour at Climax magazine…and its peculiar impressions in my preparation for greater engagements. And then to FAME: from the nappy-moments, to its pulsating first year, and the sundry upheavals that define the unique experiences of three young Nigerian journalists and entrepreneurs welded together in a colourful and turbulent partnership, with a bullish aspiration to succeed in a tumultuous Nigerian media space where many had failed spectacularly.

With deep and sombre reflections – always praying for clarity and recall keenness – I have attempted to write all I know and was a witness to – within reasonable and responsible limits – about all that transpired in the making of FAME: its production, management, and the prosecution of its attendant crises and disruptions.
My depictions in these memoirs have been frank, deliberate, and to the best of my recall abilities and consultative privileges, and hope I have painted a candid and clear-headed panorama of attitudes, actions, reactions, schemes and other emotions.

Hopefully, the readers, and lovers of FAME, of truth and historical exactitude, would find in these texts and photos (all but one of the over 200 were sourced from my aged private library), a compendium of facts, figures and failings that can translate into winnable lessons for some; an opportunity for others to apply themselves more successfully in building businesses.
Ultimately, may truth and closure prevail.”
––(Adapted from the Introduction and Description of the forthcoming book, ‘FAME: Untold Stories of its Rise and Fall’ – Amazon KDP, 2021 – 354 pages)