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My earliest memory of Sam Amuka Pemu, the Vanguard publisher, comes from an essay I read in the Drum magazine when I was a boy. The column was Sad Sam, and it showed the young Amuka already balding (perhaps he was just clean-shaven). In any case his head was Sahara bare when everyone else spotted afro. To my young eyes, he looked so tough – not the sort to flinch from evil. He looked like the original combative journalist, cynical and aggressive.

The piece itself was titled, ‘My eyes have seen the glory of God,’ and the glory of God for Sam was a young man in a molue who gave up his seat for an old woman. I don’t remember the details, yet that piece has stayed with me over the years and I still wonder why. Perhaps it was the face and the tone, and the fact that I was reading that ‘racy’ magazine for the first time.

I have never bothered to see Mr Amuka-Pemu in person, because whatever he is, he will never live up to that image of his that I saw in Drum as a boy. It may even have played some role in my desire to become a journalist: to be so sure of yourself and your role in society, to be so feisty and gloriously free to go where you please and write what you see.

And who knows, it may also have a tiny part in why I started writing the Danfo Chronicles.

I have recently been reading Sigmund Freud’s ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ again, and it seems that so much of what we become as adults have their root in our childhood.The other night as I took the big bus from Obalende to Oshodi, with almost as many people standing as were sitting, I thought my eyes had seen the glory of God when a young man left his seat for a woman who had just entered. He had looked at her and smiled, and suddenly he was standing up and she was smiling back and moving towards his seat. But things happen fast in a Lagos bus and she was slow. An old man who had been standing there all the while, dashed in front of her and took the seat and, as harried reporters used to say, hell was let loose.

People urged the old man to leave the seat – the young man even said he was no longer vacating it for anyone – but baba would not budge. “Na you say you no wan seat again and I dey here before her.” Finally, the conductor intervened, though as always it was about the money for him. People who get to seat pay N100, those standing pay N70, which was what the baba had paid. Would Baba therefore pay the balance of N30 now that he has a seat? Baba said no. Would he refund N30 to the young man who was now standing? Baba would do no such thing.

“Wetin she for payam?” he asked, pointing to the lady who now looked sad and kept apologising for causing the youth his seat. The drama was endless; everyone had an opinion.

“Leave baba and let’s go” said a chap sitting beside me, suddenly standing up. “I say let’s go. Matter don end.” His voice carried a warning, as if he would take on anyone who said anything more, and as no one did, he sat back again.

As the bus left, I turned to him, “Are you saying what the baba did was right?” “Xcuse me” he said, “but you know the baba before? You no see say na troublemaker? Look at me.” So I looked, though I am not sure I can say what I saw here without opening myself up for libel.

“Before, I for stand up carry the baba throway out of the bus. No be all this noise una dey make. You dey feel me?” I said I was indeed, feeling him. “But trouble no good. Na me dey tell you. People are making money and we are talking of seat. I say leave matter.” I left matter.