Bankole Timothy - Obituary of Bankole Timothy

Obituary of Bankole Timothy

By Kaye Whiteman

(Guardian Newspapers Ltd) 25 June 1994

BANKOLE TIMOTHY, who has died aged 70, was in his day an important figure in West African journalism. Even though he left in the 1960s for the calmer waters of public relations, he retained his abiding interest in the world of the press up to the end of his life.

A Sierra Leonean by nationality, born and educated in Freetown, he came to Britain in 1943 intending to become a dentist, but journalism was making siren calls. Legend has it that he presented himself at the black glass building of the Daily Express in Fleet Street with a sheaf of cuttings and Lord Beaverbrook himself took the decision to take him on as a reporter in early 1945. It was another newspaper tycoon, Cecil King, who recruited him starting in 1951 to go and work in the Gold Coast on the Daily Graphic, a newspaper that formed part of King's recently acquired West African newspaper empire. As Assistant Editor and later Editor, he made a name for himself with his controversial work 'Bankole Timothy's Notebook'.

When he was deported in 1957, soon after the Gold Coast's independence as Ghana, it was a blow both to press freedom and, in a way, to West African unity. The reasons were never fully explained, though the Ghana government said his presence, and that of two other West Africans, was 'not condusive to the public good'. He never let it become a cause celebre and, to his credit, never knocked Ghana for having done it in a sensational way. After a further spell in journalism in London, and five years in the Sierra Leone Information service (where he ended up as Director), at the time of independence in 1961, he took the plunge into the world of business, doing public relations for the West African side of the major diamond mining and marketing operation run by De Beers. Like many public relations practitioners, he remained a journalist at heart, writing for 'West Africa' and other publications, as well as producing a number of books, such as one of the first biographies of Kwame Nkrumah, and general books about the African condition. The post-independence decline in his own country distressed him greatly, and, although a convinced democrat, he took heart from the new spirit that the present young military rulers seemed to generate.

Although afflicted by tragedies in his personal life, he bore them with fortitude, retained a lively and mischievous sense of humour, and entertained a wide circle of friends. In later life, his fluency with words became increasingly directed, in his role as a lay preacher of the Methodist Church, to the composing of powerful sermons.

Emanuel Bankole Timothy, born July 3, 1923; died June 20, 1994.