Pa Clement Ndanusa Isaiah, the father of the founder of LEADERSHIP Group and APC presidential aspirant, Sam Nda-Isaiah, has passed on. He died in Kaduna at a little past midnight this morning after a brief illness.
He was 80-years-old….
He is survived by his wife, nine children and grandchildren.
He was an outstanding newspaperman. He worked with The Nigerian Citizen and Gaskiya Corporation in Zaria, and then The Mail, the Northern People’s Congress (NPC)-owned newspaper in Kano. He was a pioneer staff member of the New Nigerian in 1966, where he held several top positions.
He was Sports Editor, News Editor, Chief Sub-Editor, Assistant Editor (North), and Associate Editor (North).
His friend and renowned journalist, Dr. Haroun Adamu, poached him to The Triumph, the national newspaper out of Kano during the Second Republic. At The Triumph, he was managing editor and acted as managing director on a few occasions.
In 1983, Governor Solomon Lar offered him the job of managing director of The Standard newspaper in Jos, but the Second Republic ended before the announcement of the appointment in January.
In a tribute in his column on July 21, 2014 to mark his father’s 80th birthday, Nda-Isaiah wrote, “I have known my father only as a newspaperman. He has not done any other job all his life and all my life. My father loved to speak about the power and authority of the New Nigerian of those days.
“The story of his entry into the New Nigerian is one he still enjoys to tell. Most northerners of those days who had anything to do with newspapering (and they were very few in those days) moved into the New Nigerian as a matter of course, as the newspaper promised to be bigger and different from all those before it in Northern Nigeria.”
In a brief comment yesterday night, Nda-Isaiah said though the family was deeply saddened by the loss, his father had lived a full and remarkable life.
The family will announce burial arrangements later
