Mr. Shola Oshunkeye was the overall winner of the CNN African Journalist of the Year award in 2006. He tells SAM NWAOKO his journalism story.
You were the overall winner of the CNN African Journalist of the Year Award and many believe that you blazed the trail for Nigeria. How did you receive the news?
There were two other overall winners before me from Nigeria. I happen to be the third overall winner from Nigeria. However, the way I was celebrated by my employers, by my colleagues and even the government made people to have the impression that I might be the first. The President then, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, wrote me a letter; I was hosted by the Vice President then, Atiku Abubakar. Then my company, The Sun Publishing Limited hosted me at the Golden Gate restaurant in Ikoyi and people from the corporate world, especially those who did business with us were all present. Maybe because of the way I was received, that impression was created. I cannot forget all those various ways I was celebrated.
What story won you the award?
There was this famine that had become a perennial problem in Niger Republic and people were dying in their hundreds. The whole world was horrified and Nigeria as usual led the efforts in Africa to create humanitarian relief to the suffering masses in Niger. The lot fell on me to go to Niger Republic to cover the story. I spent 10 days in the country. It is a French-speaking country but I found favour at my first stop in Maradi. At the hotel where I lodged in Maradi, we were going for dinner and I started this conversation with this young man who happened to have graduated from the University of Ibadan and spoke Yoruba fluently, even though a Nigerien. He got me an interpreter and myself and my photographer enjoyed that favour because it became easy to do what we needed to do.
We saw horror there. People were queuing inside the blazing sun for rations. There was a woman on queue with a child strapped to her back. I noticed that the child’s face was skewed directly facing the blazing sun. My photographer, Sunday Adah and I were wondering what could be wrong and why the woman would allow her child in that position in the very hot sun and my photographer approached her to adjust the baby’s head. She replied in their variant of the Hausa language that the baby was dead! It was shocking that she could strap a dead baby to her back to search for food. There were very many different horrific episodes. We spoke with a government minister and the government was lying that there was nothing of such happening. It infuriated me that night after night, government was telling the world that nothing of that magnitude was happening. Yet they had a president, Mamadou Tandja, was telling the world that the issue was exaggerated.
We did what we needed to do and returned to Nigeria. We went by road and also returned by road. We decided to rest for a day or two in Sokoto and that was when I wrote my story. I sent it to Lagos and our Executive Editor then, Mr. Ayodele Akinkuotu, when he read that story called me and said “Shola, this is your magnum opus. This story will win an award, we will file it for an award.” I didn’t know he meant it. It was published on August 29, 2005. It made our front page and was entitled: “Horror in Niger: Why Nigeria may be the next”. Inside, we had the headline: “Niger: Graveyard of the living.” We filed the story for the CNN African Journalist of the Year Award jointly organised then by CNN and Multichoice, a South African company.
How did you begin your media journey?
I did not set out to be a journalist initially; I was in the federal civil service. I was with the federal Ministry of Science and Technology as a Science Technologist because I trained as a science technologist at the University of Lagos. Around 1988, I began to get bored with the civil service life in those days. Maybe it’s a bit better now, I wouldn’t know but it wasn’t much in terms of money for research and all that we needed to do. So, most of the time you just went to the office in the morning, loaf around and just wait for the closing time. At some point I thought that was not the way I wanted to live my life. Luckily for me, in the last quarter of 1988, I saw an advertisement by the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ), Ogba, Lagos, calling for admission into their post-graduate diploma class for graduates of other disciplines and all that. I put in and fortunately, I got admitted in 1989. It was a one-year programme. We were to go for internship and a classmate then, Mrs. Dupe Onabanjo, who was working in Concord Press said she would put in a word for me with Chief Mike Awoyinfa, who had just been appointed as the pioneer Editor of Weekend Concord, for the industrial experience. That was how she took me to Chief Awoyinfa.
Chief Mike Awoyinfa gave me a simple test. He said I should go to restaurants around and ask beautiful ladies who came to eat that if they saw a man sitting alone in a restaurant and they like what they were seeing, would they make the first move? Being a rookie, I thought it was a difficult assignment. Somehow, I summoned the courage, went into the eateries that were just springing up everywhere then. Surprisingly, I interviewed close to 20 ladies and they gave interesting answers. Some said they wouldn’t mind approaching the man and some said they would ask him pointedly. So, I put up my report, rookie as I was and I took it to Mr. Awoyinfa. One thing about him is that if he saw a good script, he would scream from his office in excitement. That story was published on the centre spread – two pages! This was me with no plans for journalism. The best I had ever got was getting my opinion articles published in The Herald Newspaper when I was in Ilorin, Kwara State, which was my last post in the civil service. That was where I met Dapo Olorunyomi and Chief Ade Aweda of blessed memory. They helped to get me published in The Herald then.
So, from that internship, Mike Awoyinfa never let me go. He said ‘Oga, this is where you belong. You have no business in the civil service.’ So, I continued reporting but I went back to NIJ to complete my programme. I never stopped reporting and I was getting frequently published in the Weekend Concord, a paper that printed 500,000 to 600,000 copies and did not record a single unsold. So, if you got your story published on the front page, back page the centre spread or any of those strategic pages, you would throw a party. Because I was shuttling between Ilorin and Lagos, I would buy copies and when I get to Ilorin, I would distribute them to people in my church and the people in my office before I eventually retired from the civil service and faced journalism.
In your own way, you are among those who fought for the democracy we are practicing today. Looking back, would you say all that you did to enthrone democracy has been worth it? Do you feel satisfied with what has become of the democracy you fought for?
I would say that our democracy is still work in progress. There is a lot of room for improvement. Even America where we copied our democracy sell makes their mistakes. It’s just that we would have loved to see that in our democracy, whoever gets elected or appointed into office shows more responsibility and show more love for the country rather than the aggrandisement that you see everywhere. It is existential that somebody who had been struggling to survive would be elected as a councillor or even a local government chairman and then, six months down the line after the election, you will see him acquiring big cars and after two years, he acquires big houses. Where are these coming from? Could they have come from salaries? Were these things acquired through due process? The answer is no. So, it now gives the picture that what we have is that some people have tainted our democracy as if it is transactional democracy. You want to use it to get what you want to better your life. They acquire and acquire and save for even their unborn generations. You see prebendal attitude that makes people to acquire more than they would ever need. That’s madness.
There’s a lot of room for improvement. Like I said, it’s a work in progress. Media has a Herculean task of doubling their efforts in keeping our leaders honest and making them accountable to the people. People are supposed to be the first priority of these elected and appointed officials but it is the other way round. So, the media still has a lot to do in rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make sure sure that whoever occupies office holds it in trust for the people and must be accountable to the people. We are still so far away from that level of accountability as one would have expected, given our circumstances and our sacrifices for this democracy. One would have loved to see a better political recruitment process to see how these leaders emerge. I won’t write our democracy off because I agree that even the worst of democracy is better than the most benevolent military dictatorship. At least we have a voice, we can ask for accountability, we do a lot of things unlike what happened during our pre-democracy days. When you protested or raised your voice, some got killed, some disappeared without trace. Journalists were blown up by bombs: Dele Giwa on October 19, 1986 and Bagauda Kaltho was blown up in Hamdala Hotel in Kaduna. Many were driven into exile and many got imprisoned. With all those sacrifices we should get a better bargain than we are doing now. But that is not to say we should throw our hands up and surrender. We fought for it before we must fight for its existence and make sure that everything that concerns our leaders concerns us. We must keep them on the edge and make them accountable to the people. If they choose the way, we make them face the law, the system must be able to bring them to justice. And we have a lot in public offices who are not behaving well, who are behaving irresponsibly. It’s sad it’s been like that since the advent of this democracy up till now. Of course this admits ration is still very young so we have to give them an opportunity.
You were launched unto the big stage from the get go because the Weekend Concord was a big platform. Were you not awed…?
Weekend Concord was very big under Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe, who was out Deputy Editor. The two men were fantastic teachers who taught you what no teacher would teach you in the university. With them, you learnt on the go. You can’t get to Weekend Concord without being sharp because of the people that populated the environment. It was an ambience that paraded people like Dele Momodu, Omololu Kazeem, Kunle Ajibade who was brought from African Concord; Mr. Tunji Bello, Femi Adesina, Aliyu Mohammed. Later Louis Odion joined us and much later OSA Oyamedan and Yetunde Francis now Yetunde Oladeinde. We had a master photographer in Timothy Iyiola. It was a great team, the place was beaming with stars. Blessing Okpowho at some point joined us and he later became the Editor of Sunday Vanguard and now in the oil and gas industry. There was also Chika Abanobi, Sunday Umahi… I can go on and on. It was a place where you must be sure footed. However, if you got good stories, they would help you to polish it and that was how you learnt.
Fortunately, God helped me. I was getting big stories. My interest in particular was human interest stories. Stories that touch the heart were the kind of stories I went for and still go for because we are talking about humanity. I sort of created that specialty for myself. Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe told us that you can tell any story using human angle.
Even if you are a business reporter, you didn’t need to push hard figures, you can write you story and put all those hard figures and statistics in a way that people can read and still enjoy. No matter how bitter the statistics might be, you can present it using the human angle. That was the environment and fortunately, Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe gave us the latitude to express ourselves and to do things on your own. You could travel and come back to make your claims and I did that a few times. I went to Sokoto, Bauchi and a lot of places to cover stories. God was merciful in putting me at the right place at the right time in terms of getting good stories.
This was how God was helping to get promotion and in no time I became Assistant Editor and eventually, I succeeded Mr. Mike Awoyinfa on December 1, 1999 at the dawn of democracy in Nigeria.
Where do you think the flair for writing came from, were you a member of the press club in your school?
Interestingly, I never belonged to any press club. All I knew was that I was writing shortly after I left Ilesha Grammar School. Interestingly, I was writing in Yoruba when I left secondary school in 1974. Later on when I began to consume James Hadley Chase, I began to write in English. It was not as if I got exposed to media practice as such. Everything that man wrote I was reading voraciously and I began to write in English. Like I said, I was sending my articles and they were published by The Herald in Ilorin. It’s not as if I got exposed to media practice as such prior to my contact with Awoyinfa.
What was your first experience in the newsroom like?
I saw a market place of ideas. I also saw that as serious as journalism is I saw a ‘crazy’ environment, by that I mean that I saw very exciting things people did and said in the newsroom. There were very few words and you must laugh because people would crack jokes that you would almost crack your ribs. When you contrast that with the regimented life of the civil service, you will understand what I’m saying. So, I just came into a kind of mystery world where you expressed opinions freely regardless of your status. You just banter on and all that. It was also exciting to learn about speed in doing whatever you needed to do which was writing especially. This is because the ‘enemy’ called deadline is always chasing you. So, no time to waste. You will do whatever you needed to do to keep your deadline and afterwards, you can go on a drinking spree if you wanted or do whatever else you wanted to do to relax.
From Weekend Concord, what has your journalism life been like?
It’s been very interesting. Every step of the way has been very interesting and exciting. At some point, Concord Press ran into turbulent waters. The military government and the fact that our publisher went into politics and the politics of that time turning the way it did… Our publisher won an election, Babangida would not hand over to him and there was that chaos that we had. We were hunted like rats by soldiers. We were still doing our stories but at a very great risk to our lives and limbs. It was a very turbulent period. Later on the campaign became larger than us and spilled all over the country. Eventually our publisher got arrested and that was the beginning of our problem. Once our publisher got arrested, the fortune of the company began to dwindle gradually until the military suffocated us. The government can fight you in many ways. If you are into publishing, one of the lifelines of publishing is advertisement. When you are confronting government, some advertisers will run away from you, they will not want to identify with you so that they will not be seen as enemy of government or as one who is providing the necessary oxygen for the enemy of government. So, that affected our advert revenue and other things. From one problem to another, eventually Concord went the way it did.
One of the things God helped me to achieve in Concord was that I made good friends both in and outside the media. I had mentors too in journalism. I had mentors in Tell Magazine who were calling me to come to Tell. Eventually, I had to resign as Editor of Weekend Concord in May 2021. I resumed in Tell Magazine on June 1, 2021 as Senior Associate Editor. I spent a short time at the headquarters at Acme Road in Ogba, Lagos before I was transferred to Abuja as the head of Abuja operations. I doubled as the State House correspondent. So, I was the Abuja Bureau Chief for Tell Magazine and at the same time, I was the state house correspondent.
That was another level of journalism that I enjoyed because Tell Magazine exposed me to indepth investigative journalism. Tell Magazine would have a single story and they can deploy as many as 10 reporters travelling round the country interviewing people and by the time they put the story together, you could not fault any aspect of the story. They would hit with a bang because they would not spare any resource to get a balanced report. I learnt a lot from Tell Magazine in terms of investigative journalism. I learnt a lot about good writing too from Tell Magazine.
You were once writing in Yoruba whereas today, we have young people who can hardly converse in their mother tongues. This seems to have eaten into the newsroom also and many think the newsroom is endangered. What do you think?
Our profession is endangered if we don’t read and, very sadly, I must say that people don’t read. You can see that in the depth of reporting that you get these days. In those days, you could learn a lot reading newspapers, watching TV or listening to the radio and that was because people were on their toes. They would never miss any opportunity to self-improve. People just barge into the profession now, whatever it takes to be a journalist and they just keep on like that. This is just like when you have a bank account and you keep withdrawing without giving back. It would get to a point when you would have nothing left. If you are writing without reading, very soon you will begin to sound like a broken record. Soon, you will begin to overuse phrases. It is sad but we have no alternative to reading, no matter how tight our schedule is. It’s all about your survival because you have to do what it takes and do things in your capacity to stay on top of your game. Look at our role as journalists. We are to inform, educate and entertain the people. If you are not educated, how can you educate the people? It’s not just acquiring education within the four walls of a classroom and all that; you must continue to develop yourself through training and retraining.
Another thing affecting journalism in Nigeria is poor welfare. I might be taking a risk if I say that our profession is the lowest-paying profession in the world. People are paid peanuts as salaries where they are paid, in most organisations, the salaries are not regular and some don’t even get paid at all. So, with this how do you combine being ethical with staying on top of your game and all that? People fall into error when they struggle to survive. I’d love to see where media owners would do whatever it takes to pay their workers. It is unacceptable for people to work for you for months and they don’t get paid. If they don’t get paid, how do you expect them to chase stories and give you a sound copy? In some organisations we learnt that workers are told ‘you have my platform, what salary are you talking about?’ That cannot happen in a saner society. The situation is very tough and we must admit that the media is not where many investors a keen to put their money because it is a high risk environment. So, the needed economic push to run a good media organisation is not there. Something needs to be done. Maybe proprietors should look at the business side of journalism without compromising the ethics of the profession.
To our young ones, I will say if their primary motivation to come into journalism is to make money, I’m sorry to disappoint you. There is no big money to be made. If your motivation is your passion to serve the people, yes. “Seek first the kingdom of God and every other thing shall be added unto you” is what the Bible says. In the newsroom, we say “sky first the kingdom of news and every other thing shall be added unto you.” Do your own beat very well and the society has a way of rewarding people who are diligent. You can imagine what a single award can do in the life of a journalist. So, the key word is passion. Do what is the best in the best interest of the society. If you do what is right, God Almighty has a way of rewarding the diligent.
We should not be worshipping politicians. Our role is to keep the people who serve the people on their toes. What they struggle to hide, you struggle to expose for the benefit of the society. But what do you find now? If a story is not about politicians then they have not done stories. Why? Why should it be so? Then you have adults who have turned themselves to “press boys”! It’s a very sad term to describe adults. These politicians see us as “press boys” because of our disposition and the way we package ourselves. It is derogatory. We must repackage ourselves in order to protect the society. We must strive to do what is right at all times, God helping us.
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