I inhaled the air of life at the popular … Hospital in Lagos State. I am the first child in a family of eleven (six boys, five girls, one of the girls, Isioma, is late now) from my father’s two wives – Comfort (my biological mother, she had only two of us – boys) and Adaolie, my step mother who is still alive. My father, Micheal Chikwudi was a NITEL staff. I was born when my father and Mother, who was his first wife lived in Adewusi Street Fadeyi, along the popular Ikorodu Road, behind Right Time Hotel, now defunct, Lagos before (that was before they divorced) my dad moved to Alhaji Calfos Close, off Morocco Road in the same Fadeyi vicinty before we later moved to Sebiotimo Street Idimangoro Agege. It was at Alhaji Calfos Close that my dad married his second wife after the civil of 1966. I attended primary, secondary schools and my tertiary institutions in Lagos.
Chapter one: How my journalism journey started.
The year was 1988. It was the year I gained admission into the prestigious Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) straight from … College, Agege where I did my two-year A/L . It was also the year I unofficially became a journalist. Unofficial because by that admission I became a journalist in training under Chief Dayo Duyile, PhD, who was the director of the foremost journalism school set up by the late Lateef Kayode Jakande when he was the president of Nigerian Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria some ….years ago.
NIJ was not my first choice of higher institution after my A/L. It was more of: ‘if the desirable is not available, the available becomes the deserable,’ in the sense that I had wanted to go to the university straight but could not because Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) did not offer me admission for two good years. Or maybe I did not pass its exam. One was after my secondary education at Nigerian People’s High School (Nigerpeco) Ebute Meta and my A/L. As time was running out, I decided to try my luck with NIJ in 1987.
Heaven made that decision. The next hurdle I had to cross was getting the money to buy the school’s admission form since my parents had relocated to my home town, Adonte, in the present day Delta State and I was staying with my uncle, Mr. John Odinigwes who was a member of staff of the Nigerian Airways.
But that was not to be much an issue as after some days of thinking, something just asked me: why not approach your cousin, Patience?
Known as Miss. Patience Adolue then but now …, she was a civilian staff of the Ministry of Defence, Defence Headquarters at Race Course slightly opposite the famous Kings College if one is coming from the St. Nicholas Hospital end and directly opposite the cenotaph if one is coming from the NET Building end; the cenotaph is where presidents of Nigeria go to lay wreaths in honour of our fallen heroes.
One fateful morning, off I went to her office and after security checks, I was ushered into her office where I met with her face to face to tell her my intention of going to NIJ but that money to buy the entry form was an issue. As if she was aware I was coming and had kept the money waiting for me, she pulled open her desk drawer and counted the amount plus fare, handed it to me with an instruction that I should go get the form without delay.
From her office on the Island, I went straight to the Ogba-based school, obtained the form and months later did the entrance exam, passed and was admitted.
At the NIJ, I met beautiful people like Alex Jesse, Nkechi Mordi, the late Olumide Akande, Dada Jackson, Judith Akukalia, Peter Duru, Sunny Otoide, Livinus Ikpazu, Livinus Chijioke, the late Azu Akanwa Dr. Biyi Adegoroye of The New Telegraph Newspapers and scores of others during the course of my studies at NIJ. I did my mandatory three months industrial training (IT) at the now defunct Champion Newspapers owned by Chief Emmanuel Iwuayanwu and Emma Agu as our editor then.
My two-year training at NIJ was done and dusted in 1990 and on March 15, 1991 I got employed at the Daily Times Nigeria Plc after months of freelancing and was seconded to Evening Times, the biggest evening paper in Nigeria then, edited by Clement Iloba.
Chapter Two: From sports reporting to entertainment
I started out at Evening Times as sports reporter with the late Emiko Bake as the sports editor of the evening paper. Before then I had tried my hands on court reporting meeting regularly with the late Gabriel Omohinmi and David Ogah both are from the defunct Guardian Express, another evening paper and many other reporters from different newspaper houses some of who I cannot recollect their names now
Something happened in Evening Times that made me switch from sports reporting to entertainment and it was during a match between a Lagos based football club, the name of which I have now forgotten, and Wikki Tourist Football Club coached then by Christian Chukwu the ex-Green Eagles’ captain.
The referee of the match had made a call which both players and officials of Wikki Tourist had protested. And as that was going on, Chukwu who ought to be calming the aggrieved players, was the one that was almost going physical with the central match official as both were seen pushing and shoving each other. I thought that was my story, a good angle to take the story of the match that ended in a no goal draw. I was upbeat, enthusiastic that my story would hit the front or back page of the evening paper the next day. But that was not to be as the sports editor, Bake, consigned the story to the waste bin with no reason and I dare not ask him why because then editors were Lords, their decisions were final as there was no democracy in the newsroom.
So, I stomached my frustration about the story for many weeks but managed one day to pour out my mind to Kazie Ukoh who was the entertainment editor. Instead of finding out from Bake why he did what he did, he gave me a musical story press release to rewrite and I did and he liked it and asked me if I could join him on the entertainment desk, to which I nodded my yes and the rest became history.
Chapter three: How Ukoh handed entertainment pages to me
The two centre spread pages were called Music Time(s) and was produced and edited by Ukoh. I acted briefly as his assistant before he was promoted as the paper‘s news editor, the erstwhile news editor, Mr. Chris Eboigbe, now in the United States of America, had resigned to manage his hangout joint at Egbeda Road in Shasha area of Lagos. This was after the late Mr. Bake ‘frustrated’ me out of the sports desk of Evening Times.
That was how I became an entertainment reporter and I never looked back. After about three months of understanding Ukoh, especially in the areas of page planning on what we called layout sheet because most newsrooms have not been fully computerised those days; in fact, the Daily Times was one of the first newspapers in Nigeria to be fully computerised, that is, its production room and not newsroom(s) courtesy of Leo Stan Eke whose Task Apple office was at Agbalajobi Estate then directly opposite the former office of Independent Newspapers. I handled the pages excellently well. I cut my teeth in entertainment journalism there. I mingled and mixed with the who is who in Nigeria’s entertainment industry despite the fact that Evening Times’ circulation was not beyond Lagos then. I handled the pages till some times in 1995 when Saturday Times was established after the collapse of Lagos Weekend and Evening Times. It was a case of bad managerial decision then, if you ask me. I was redeployed to Saturday Times with Ms Dupe Ajayi-Gbadebo, as the pioneer editor. It was in Saturday Times that I worked directly with the likes of Adamson Momoh, an accomplished labour correspondent, who was the deputy editor; Musa Ebomina, the production editor; Bola Adewara movie reporter and Diji Aina, now a professor who also covered entertainment beat like me and many others. Some of my best stories on personalities like Fela Anikulapo-kuti, the pastor at INRI, Elijah Ayodele, were published in Saturday Times. While officially reporting for Saturday Times, I was also moonlighting for Sunday Times that was then edited at first by Mr. Dapo Adenriola (Africa), and Mr. Oni-Olusola Gbenga, a jolly good fellow who later left to join Thisday Newspapers as its managing editor and who Nduka Obaiegbena used to midwife the ill-fated ThisDay in South Africa. That was how we rolled in Daily Times until Mr. Mayor Akinpelu head hunted me to Fame Weekly in 1997
Chapter four: How we rolled in ST and ET.
I was one of the superstar-reporters on the stables of both Evening Times and Saturday Times. I was enjoying my work on the stables of the great Daily Times of those days until lord Mayor Akinpelu came to me with an irresistible offer of N12, 000 a month as against the N3, 000 I was paid at the Daily Times and which was becoming irregular because the newspapers conglomerate was beginning to bleed as a result of corruption, which led to its privatisation in the days of President Olusegun Obasanjo. I never gave the offer from Akinpelu a serious thought before I jumped at it. Who would not, anyway! However, in Evening Times, in the year … I was nominated alongside Ayodele Lawal of PMNews, an evening newspaper published by ICL jointly owned by Mr. Bayo Onanuga, Femi Ojudu, Idowu Obasa, Dapo Olorunyomi, Seye Kehinde, Kunle Ajibade and the late Sani Kabir, for the best entertainment writer award, which Lawal won that year. From the Evening Times stables, I was deployed to the Saturday Times that was founded when the evening paper and Lagos Weekend were collapsed in the wisdom of the management of the Daily Times then.
At Saturday Times, the editor gave me the free hand to publish anything I like provided it did not go against the ethics of the profession or editorial policy of the paper. Here, I wrote all kinds of story about Fela to the extent that if the editor was aware I went to Fela’s commune at Gbemisola Street, the paper would not go to bed, until I came back because I must hit the frontpage. I may not be the most liked reporter on the stable by Ms Ajayi but she never joked with my stories. In fact, she was the first person in my entire journalism career to give me a query followed by Mr. Olumide Iyanda who was directed by the then editor-in-chief of Independent Newspapers, Mr. Ted Iwere, to query me over a story against Chief Tony Anineh (Mr Fix It) filed in by the newspaper’s Abuja correspondent, which alleged that one of the reasons President Olusegun Obasanjo’s third term agenda failed at the senate that was presided over then by Ayim Pius Ayim, was because Chief Anineh sat on the millions he collected from the president to lobby the National Assembly members, especially the senators for the third term agenda. My relationship with Ajayi was more like: ‘take-his-story, leave-his-personality.’
Another person that I found favour with was Momoh. He was the one that fired me up to write the story of the Primate at INRI; the man who predicted the murder of Kudirat Abiola if she did not abandon her struggle for the revalidation of the June 12 presidential election that was annualled and today I am a proud owner of a KIA Sportage gifted to me by the Primate at INRI.
After our usual Monday editorial meetings, Momoh would take us to a place called Iya Gloria opposite Daily Times where the Mobil filling station is situated to eat goat meat’ intestine. In Saturday Times, we had an office boy, Ajani, who took delight in sipping editor’s spirit kept in her office refrigerator. One day unknown to him, the editor had marked the level she left the content of the spirit the previous day; maybe she had been suspecting that the content of the strong drink had been reducing and it was only Ajani that had access to the office when she was not around. On that particular day, as usual, Ajani might have taken his usual shot from the bottle but unknown to him that the editor had taken notice of the level she left it. So in the afternoon when she arrived and called for the drink she noticed that it had gone down and when she asked Ajani who duunit, he denied flatly and all hell was let loose that day. It took the intervention of Momoh, Ebomina, Adewara to restrain the editor from firing the office assistant. The Daily Times was a good on-the-job training ground for me. There, I learnt in practical terms what I did not learn in school aside working with veterans who knew the job like the back of their palms.
Chapter Five: From DTN to Fame Weekly
I joined Fame Weekly, which was then at WEMABOD in July 1997. I cannot recall the exact date. Here I met with people like Niyi Akinsiju who was the editor; Billy Adedamola, the general editor; Afolabi Odeyemi, the movie editor; Babs Adegbenjo, the society editor; the late Kayode Tijani, Starrys Obaze, Livinus Ikpa, Joseph UBA and a host of others. We related at Fame Weekly as a family; every production day , Fridays, are like Christmas Day to us as we would go out to eat and drink together, exploring hotels like Jolly Friends and all other surrounding joints around Ikeja and Adeniyi Jones axis. Working in Fame was one of my beautiful years in journalism. During that period too I met and interviewed Mr. Femi Otedola, then he was the MD of his father’s, Sir Michael Otedola’s, Impact Press at Eric Moore Surulere. That was before he ‘blow’ like the GenZ people will say now. The interview was arranged by Mr. Mayor Akinpelu who was then his close pal. I don’t know if they are still close. Fame Weekly also brought me closer to Sir Shina Peters who was also a friend of Akinpelu. That was how we rolled at Fame till 1999 when I left for Global Excellence to become one of its pioneer staff with the likes of Adedamola, Austin Oniyokor, Isiaka Mustapha, Yetunde Adegbenjo then, but now Yetunde forgotten her surname. Kehinde Taiwo. In Fame Weekly we were one family, did things together. At Fame Weekly, I was exposed to rudiments of soft sell magazine reporting.
Chapter six… The Global Excellency days.
Global Excellence Magazine, the oga of magazines came on board on September 1999. I have forgotten the exact date it hit the newsstands with that exclusive interview its pioneer editor, Mr. Billy Adedamola conducted with the Chief Security Officer to the late Head of State, Al-Mustafa, in Kirikiri Prison where he was detained and tried on allegation of ordering St. Rogers to shoot and kill Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, the late widow of MKO Abiola.
Global Excellence was peopled at inception on September 1999 by tested hands in journalism like Messrs Ladi Ayodeji, Mouka Popoola, Gboyega Adegbenro all of whom were contributors.
The founding staff like Charles Okogene the pioneer general editor who marshalled the newsroom, Austin Oniyokor, a fantastic wordsmith, Mustafa Isiaka whom the late Alex Akinyele once described as a ‘courageous crook, ‘ Sam Awoyinfa who knew where all the dead bodies were buried in Nollywood then, Mrs. Yetunde Babs-Adegbenjo then.. They have since divorced and gone their separate ways after two boys. Global Excellence, to say the least, was a place of fun to work as we all bonded as a family. In 2003, Adedamola suddenly resigned and went to Anchor Newspapers in the same Oregun vicinity. Global Excellence base was in Sanyaolu Street when it started. At the departure of Adedamola, I was made the editor of the magazine by Akinpelu. And when Awoyinfa who was the entertainment editor (music/movie) left to seek greener pasture in Mr.Toks Modupe’s PR outfit, TPT, I personally brought in Mr. Ejiro Rene-Adigbo a one time movie editor of CityPeople who had resigned from the tabloid to publish his own paper … but failed after several editions.
In April 2004 a slight misunderstanding between Akinpelu and me over the quality of photographs I brought from an interview with Kenny (Keke) Ogungbe led to my resignation.
The story of my resignation took root from the day Akinpelu suddenly suspended the publication of the magazine on the altar of rebranding. Then he was still in Abuja as one of the media aides of Wabara. He might have told the world that Global Excellence went off the newsstands to rebrand but those of us privy to the real reason knew he suspended publication due to lack of funds and this was what got me thinking that that is how he will one day close shop. So, I began to look for alternative which I got through information from Messers Soji Williams Oyinlola/Jide Ige both of whom told me that the Independent Newspapers was shopping for capable hands for its weekend titles that it was about floating. Well, more stories on that in the next chapter.
That Akinpelu’s acceptance of the job of media aide to Wabara and the temporary closure of the magazine were the biggest mistakes he made in the life of Global Excellence. He handed its managing directorship to Ms. Tosin Ajayi who before then was a contributing editor, Gardening, of the magazine and his personal friend.
A big mistake in the sense that he, Akinpelu, did not last on the job as he resigned less than a year or so and returned to his publishing business but by then a lot of key staff members’ confidence in the company had been shaken and were no longer committed. But one thing I can say of Akinpelu is that for the six years I worked closely with him, two years in Fame after the departure of Kunle Bakare/Femi Akintunde-Johnson and their group of Journalists and four years in Global Excellence, he never owned any staff a dime. However, I do not know of now.
Chapter Seven: My INL days.
I resumed as an entertainment correspondent in the Sunday Independent Newspapers owned by the former Delta State Governor, Chief James Onanefe Ibori, on May 1st 2004. The position was more of a ‘demotion’ considering that I had edited a whole magazine, Global Excellence Magazine, for close to four years, was the showbiz editor of Fame Weekly under the editorship of Chief (Dr.) Niyi Akinsiju, for two years. However my desire to leave Akinpelu’s employment and all that is Global Excellence before it closes shop and the salary I was offered, were what made me throw in the resignation letter without having a second thought.
At Sunday Independent that was edited then by ….Bankole, an ex- Puncher, I met the following fantastic journalists: Messers Austin Avwode, Chenche Chinda, Miss Rita Smith, do not know if she is married now, though, she, at a point ‘japa” to Germany, Odeh Onche, Habibi Aruna, the former Chief Press Secretary to the former Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, the most fearless aviation correspondent I have ever met in my entire journalism career, Mr. Rotimi Durojaiye. Remember the story of the tokunbo presidential jet story they bought in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s days, that led him (Durojaiye) into DSS underground dungeon for months. Well, let us leave that story alone. Mr. Bassey Udoh, Onyema Omenuwa, the late Maxwell Oditta, Dr. Olayinka Oyegbile, Sissa Agbor, Tunde Abatan and many others.
Though, in INl, I was taken many steps backward, as it was my choice because I needed to leave Mayor Akinpelu and his Global Excellence Magazine, as just a correspondent, not even senior correspondent but my experience and work rate gathered from Daily Times/Evening Times, Fame Weekly and Global Excellence Magazine combined to aid the accelerated promotions I got within a short while to become a substantive editor of Saturday Independent after the pioneer editor, Funke Egbemode and OLUMIDE Iyanda. INL exposed me to the topmost people in Nigeria, especially politicos world. It gave me the opportunity to see some African countries like South Africa, to cover Big Brother Africa in South Africa, Ghana and Kenya en route Malawi for the pre-Award parties of Peace Ayim-Osigwe founded Africa Movie Academy Award (AMAA).
In INL, I got married to my beautiful wife, Esther and God blessed us with
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