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Prince Adeyemi Adejolu studied Geography/Education at the University of Lagos but gained traction on life as one of the top journalists in the old Ondo State and later in Ekiti State. He tells SAM NWAOKO of his journalism experience.
Your job today does not erase your long years as one of the popular hands-on journalists in the old Ondo and Ekiti states. How did your journalism journey begin?
I started out as a campus journalist and student activist in the University of Lagos back then. Even though I was studying Geography/Education, I was the editor of a campus publication in UNILAG. After NYSC, I joined the Daily Sketch from where I joined a publication floated by Ondo State called Owena News, published by Owena Press Limited. It later became The Hope Newspaper during the administration of Chief Bamidele Olumilua, then the civilian administration of Ondo State. I rose to become News Editor, Assistant Editor until Ekiti State was created and some of us who are from the Ekiti side of the state were asked move on to Ekiti State. So, the service in the new Ekiti state absorbed us and I was posted to the Broadcasting Service of Ekiti State (BSES) as a Senior Editor. While at BSES I was also stringing for The Monitor Newspaper.
In the midst of it all, I had the desire to become a member of the Ekiti State House of Assembly in 1997/98 and I made the necessary move. Because of this, I had to resign from BSES to pursue my political ambition and also face other desires. When the election didn’t favour me, I focused on my journalism career. I was employed as the Ondo/Ekiti Bureau Chief of The Monitor Newspaper. While in Ondo State I had also joined and was participating in the activities of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR). I formally joined the NIPR as a member. By the time Ekiti State was created I was among the members that functioned as leaders of the NIPR in the new state’s chapter then until I became the Chairman in 2013.
You practised in the military era of General Sani Abacha. What was it like practicing journalism with all the tension of that time?
The experience wasn’t that smooth. There were fears all around the country but the only difference was that the activism in Lagos and Ibadan was not as pronounced in Ondo/Ekiti axis then. However, we all felt what was happening. The military administration of Ekiti State tried to work with journalists and gave us a place where we gathered as newspaper correspondents and they gave us a fax machine for our stories. They were concerned that the things happening in the country might rub off negatively and so, they wanted us to report the state government well. However, you can’t get the same feeling as you got in Ibadan and Lagos. When a bomb detonated in Ado Ekiti during the administration of Col Inuwa Bawa, we had to report it. That time, there was no GSM and we arranged how to cover for our colleagues who were not in town to get the story by themselves. It was during the Abacha era and you had these bombings across the country. It was like the Ekiti share of the bomb blasts.
Look at campus journalism in an active place like UNILAG and real journalism in sleepy Ekiti. What was the shift like or there was none for you?
There was a shift indeed. I schooled in Lagos. Part of my primary education; my secondary education and tertiary education were in Lagos. I even worked as a teacher before gaining admission to UNILAG, so my active youth life was in Lagos. When I was relocating to Ondo State to take a job at Owena Press, some people asked if there was something wrong with me. “How can you leave Lagos for Akure? Is there something wrong with you?” But there was this youthful passion to explore things. So, I began to work things out to adjust to the situation but it wasn’t exactly the same. The second organisation I worked for, Owena News was a community newspaper and you had to work to make yourself relevant. It was a challenge to make the people believe your journalism because people believed that it was a government mouthpiece. So, you had to be enterprising and hardworking to make yourself relevant in the comity of journalists. At some point, I became the toast of politicians across party lines and colleagues also found me useful. People would call early mornings or late in the night to give me hints or gist about stories. I had friends in both political parties of that era: the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
There must have been some people or events which made journalism worth the while for you. Which stories were outstanding and made you happy as a journalist?
There was a story that involved a popular lawyer who got into a messy car deal with a teacher. I got the hint during an informal gist at a WAEC marking centre in Akure and I wrote the story with the title around something like “NBA chief in a messy car deal”. It became so popular that the lawyer sued my medium for N5 million, which was a humongous amount of money then. My Editor then was of the Tribune stock, Mr. Ayo Akinyemi, and he encouraged me as we pursued the story to a logical conclusion. It was a case that could pass for advance fee fraud (419) now and such things were not common then. And it was a poor teacher that was ripped-off. We eventually settled the matter out of court though, and we later became the best of friends with the said lawyer. The man involved was even a legal consultant to the NUJ under the leadership of seniors like Mr. Deji Aiyelabowo and that made the story to trend for some time in Ondo/Ekiti axis that time.
There was also the story of Michael Oyinbo Ajasin and Ifeoluwa Abiose Arowosoge over local government chairmanship. Dare Bejide, with whom I had been friends from the days of students’ union politics – he was in Ife and we were leaders of the National Union of Ondo State Students – was involved in that case on the NRC side. I also had my friends on the SDP side. So, whenever there would be a hearing on the matter, I would have had hints of what would happen in the court from both sides of the divide. Sometimes, my story would even be ready before the court sits and all I would do afterwards was to simply add the minor things to back the story. These kinds of relationships made my job easier. As a journalist, you have to maintain neutrality in your stories, ensure balance and keep secrets secret. The moment sources suspect you as a spy, you would lose that trust and you may never recover it. It’s not everything you hear on one side that you trade on the other and when sources see you as trustworthy, you will enjoy their patronage.
When you look at your experiences in active journalism and now in the corporate world, how would you say journalism has helped what you are doing today?
As a journalist, you are confident, you are bold and you are so sure of yourself to have the temerity to go for anything that you want. You are daring. And to cap it all, you should be focused on your goal or target as a journalist. Journalism also taught us to know a bit about everything; so also did Geography. Apart from a degree in Geography/Education I also got trained in NIJ and IIJ in addition to other short courses by various local and international organisations, these courses help us gain valuable experience. In January 1993, I was in Ibadan attending a course when I learnt that Chief M. K. O. Abiola had gone to collect a form to vie for the presidency. Overnight I thought, ‘why will this man do this? I’m not sure this thing will lead him anywhere good’. From my contemplation, I wrote an opinion article entitled “Highway to nowhere.” Through the instrumentality of Mr. Sina Adedipe, who was one of the editors at the Concord Group of Newspapers, I got the article published in the then African Concord. In Nigeria, Chief Abiola was larger than life while in other African countries, he was installing presidents and was ruling their economy. I asked ‘what else did he want, what was he looking for as the president of Nigeria?’
Thankfully, Chief Abiola came to Akure during the period and in an interaction with correspondents, I asked him: You have all that you need and all that you want. What else are you looking for? In answer to that question he gave this anecdote: “My mother taught me that you know a good fish from the head.” He narrated how his mother said if you want to buy fish, you smell the head. If the head smelt nice, the fish was good otherwise the fish was apparently not good. And so, he said he suspected that there was a problem with our leadership in Nigeria – the head – and that he wanted to make a change. Somebody else asked him: “Will they allow you? What if you don’t get what you want?” He said he would look at it and deal with it as it best appeared to him. When Chief Olu Falae wanted to vie for the presidency in the PSP era, we asked him the same question and he said “if I don’t get it, I will go to church the next Sunday and thank God for saving me from myself.” Considering the way things went, my write up and the questions we asked him at the press conference turned out to be prophetic. That ambition took his life and nearly everything he worked for. Concord Press is no more; his bookshops and other businesses are all gone. Today, only those who grew up in that era remember the kind of image Chief Abiola had then.
Now, when you relate with and look at practicing journalists, what do you see?
I think people now are not as hardworking as our time. During that time, you go the extra mile to look for information. If need be, you tip to get it or you even buy it. But the social media have made everybody to be a reporter or journalist, and even the active journalists themselves sometimes rely on what is obtained from the Internet. Some feel that they can get everything that they need online. So, the passion to go deeper and go the extra mile is not there anymore as we had it before.
So, what you are saying is that the advent of social media has whittled down the quality of journalism?
Yes, because everybody just posts whatever they like because they have the space and the means to do that. The real journalists will first of all look at the basics, including the 5 Ws and H. For a real journalist, when you’re not sure you leave out, but is it so with social media journalists? All they want is traffic.
But some believe that the coming of the social media has enhanced the quality of journalism?
I’m not saying it has not. Of course it has its merits and demerits. In terms of advancing the technical quality, yes, the social media has really helped. But it has also limited journalists and a lot of people are eating into their space. So, if a journalist is not sure of himself these days, he or she will be contending with all manners of people who present as journalists out there. So, you need to up your game to be ahead of the very many unlicensed reporters out there. I call them unlicensed because anybody with an android phone can just post something as they like, not minding the quality of the language and whether it is libelous or what damage it would do to the society or anybody involved. As a trained journalist, you will be mindful of all of these and the public good. So, a proper journalist will not publish what he cannot back up with facts and even if he has the facts, he would look at how it would impact the society. Broadcast journalists are bound by codes but what restricts those on the social media? So, we must be careful.
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