I take your point.
I changed my description of Jerry to read "muckraker" instead. (American journalism has had a long and proud tradition of muckraking. That style of journalism is not always carefully reasearched but it can fulfil an important social role. In a country with true freedom of the press, though, muckrakers do not usually have to pay with their lives, as many feel Jerry did.)
"Noise-maker" was not a well thought-out moniker and I apologise for using it, not that I find it totally unfair, given that out of all that Jerry spoke out against, did anything really change for the better? I should not blame Jerry for that, of course.
I knew Jerry a bit myself, just that we would nod and say hello as our paths crossed here and there in Nigeria, a rather small place when you are flying around it in an airplane.
I first heard about Jerry second-hand from one of my colleagues at the Lagos Flying Club when I asked him where his bruises had come from! That meant that when I met this rather freakish figure in person I was quite dubious of him until I got to know him a bit.
Too, there would be the odd sulphurous article from his pen about throwing all of us expats out of Nigeria. Now, I knew it was not "my country," as you lot love to say at any opportunity (especially when writing from London, for some odd reason) but I did feel a certain attachment to Lagos and my paychecks so that I rather wished Jerry would change the record.
Unfortunately for him he did, turning to raking some of the other muck that the local aviation scene has in such abundance, at a time when that could be highly dangerous. It looked as if he had tipped over some big dog's dish with his muckraking, perhaps not thinking of or caring about the risks. It was one thing to rail against expats but quite another to dish the dirt on what the local movers and shakers got up to, I guess.
Latterly we enjoyed hearing him as he was flying that calibration King Air, when it was obvious that he was enjoying his work, which I am sure he was good at.
Not to speak ill of the dead but many of Jerry's actions and words spoke of his "shoot-from-the-hip" style, sometimes the product of more passion than thought. Never mind, he took his actions, wrote and spoke his thoughts and he was always willing to pay the price for that, perhaps right to the end. If you had more like Jerry then Nigeria might be a better, different place.
As it is, well, he was killed in very dubious circumstances, wasn't he? Jerry shot by the cops, that girl supposedly asleep during the shooting so that she remembered nothing at all of what happened ... the official version read as if he was set up to be killed.
So, Balewa, feel free to moan, as Jerry did, about expats working in Nigeria. I will be very interested to see if you wish to go further, as Jerry did, and look much more deeply into why that is and what is really wrong with the way things are done in Nigeria. Having taken your point, do you now take mine?
Writing for your on-line Nigerian audience you can find sympathy here, and fair enough. For non-Nigerians, especially those who have spent time there, you may come across as a bit precious. It might be worth thinking about how to appeal to a wider audience.