How Nigerian Tribune raised its young

While at the University of Lagos, there was a great philosopher that my friends and I admired the most. His name is Ralph Waldo Emerson. He wrote The American Scholar and Self Reliance among other notable works. One of his statements almost always began our personal statements for post-graduate studies applications. The quote is, “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius” For years, and as curious students, this statement was without spot or wrinkle in our eyes. It was, in fact, the oil with which we ate our intellectual yam, the seminal robe that tied us together as budding academics. In most of our gatherings, we would praise Emerson for glorifying non-conformism.

I grew up in Ibadan, Oyo State, the epicenter of South-Western Nigeria, in a part of the city called Challenge. I was a conformist. Young people in my city obeyed their elders as the Lord. We prostrated ourselves, flat-bellied when an elder walked by. We did not shake hands with persons older than us except they reached out first – and when they did, we wedged our right hand with the left to accept their handshake, genuflecting at the same time in perfect adulation. Such was the reverence for age in my city. If you did not grow up in my city, you might never understand the semantic harakiri of using ‘o’ instead of ‘e’ when addressing an elder. Our elders took notice of everything. They held the ladder to heaven. Thus, a non-conformist could not enter the heaven of my city. We were humble and respectful because to be anything else was eternal damnation. I was a young person who wanted to go to heaven. But I heard voices that screamed– Challenge!

By October 2011, I had completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the Department of English, University of Lagos and I was roosting at home in Ibadan, waiting for the one-year compulsory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) call-up letter. It was going to take a six-month wait at best. Meanwhile, two kilometres from my house stood a private newspaper house – the oldest in Nigeria. All my teen age I read the Nigerian Tribune. I read about the inimitable Obafemi Awolowo, Tribune’s founder and foremost nationalist. Unlike me, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was a non-conformist. He understood what opposition to established system felt like. My soul was in Nigerian Tribune. However, to observe national protocol, I was not supposed to engage in employed labor until I had completed NYSC. For those who live in Challenge, you can tell that when we call our city, it was a clarion call, it was a command.

On the 11th of December 2011, I was at the gate of the Nigerian Tribune newspaper with a Curriculum Vitae that had zero journalism experience. The gatekeeper sent me home. My story was not checked. On the 13th of January 2012, I returned to the gate. I had a good story. “I have an appointment with Daily Editor, Mr. Edward Dickson.” I was ushered into the editor’s office. To my surprise, there were a dozen other applicants seeking employment. My interview was short. After two questions, the interviewer sent me to Mr. Edward Dickson. “He said he wants to work for free” was what he whispered to the daily editor as he introduced me. I wanted to intern at the Nigerian Tribune until I received the call-up letter for the NYSC. I was asked to write a four-page essay on the spot and after it was graded by Mr. Wale Emosu, the then desk editor, my internship, and, indeed, my journey to journalism and Nigerian Tribune, began.

At Imaleafealafia newsroom, you will find a firmament of bards and sages, people who spoke only in proverbs, metaphors, end-rhymes and allusions of every sort. Even of junior staff, dialogue rolled off like a ping-pong of the quickest, wittiest repartee. I was absolving the lustre quietly, until Mr. Lasisi Olagunju, the Saturday Tribune Editor, spotted me. He was not a doctor yet.  “Do you write poems?”  I nodded. He asked for my work. He was just returning from Mr. Dickson’s office, alongside Mr. Debo Abdulai and Aunty Tinu. You could tell he was the golden boy of Tribune. His carriage was measured, so were his words. “Now, I understand you.” That was all he said after reading my poems. And that was all it took to be one of the Golden Boy’s golden boys. He took a celestial interest in me. When it was time for national service, Mr. Olagunju, and the entire Tribune family, made sure I arrived safe in Niger State. They even handed me over to someone in Minna. I knew I had a galaxy of guardian angels in Nigerian Tribune.

I got a text from Mr. (now Dr.) Olagunju months after national service. “Do you like hip-hop music?” I didn’t reply. I called. “I would like you to cover the Entertainment beat for Saturday Tribune in Lagos. You report to me. This is on trial basis.” He said over the phone. Although my three months sprint in the newsroom was mainly on editing capacity, I said, “Yes”. There was no other answer.  I returned to Lagos with two missions in the bag: to commence a master’s degree program at the University of Lagos and to report entertainment for Saturday Tribune.

To cover the entertainment beat, you needed to be hip. I was not hip. Lagos was my academic city. People had other experiences and stories. But I saw Lagos from the four walls of the University of Lagos. That was my community. I didn’t see the clubs, the nightlife or the hustling and bustling. I was the opposite of hip. But after the publication of my first celebrity interview: Iyanya, the then rave of the moment,           I couldn’t defend that I wasn’t hip. I owned it. It was within a month of reporting to Lagos. And after months of turning in top-ranking celebrity stories and interviews, I earned the respect of the beat.

In April 2014, my position as a Senior Reporter was confirmed. My friend, Chinaza, joined the Tribune family, reporting on the features desk of Saturday Tribune. We answered to two bosses: Saturday Editor and Lagos Bureau Chief. The Lagos Bureau of Tribune was breeding a brand of go-getter reporters at that time. Mr. Lanre Adewole, our charismatic Lagos Bureau Chief, had the teeth of a lion-king. With them, he would caress a ‘fighting’ reporter, pruning and cleaning like a loving father, and, with them, he also devoured lazy and jejune stories. We had Weekend Lagos, a feature column, to tell stories of the bizarre happenings in Lagos. We all contributed to it. Monday meetings at Motorways, Ikeja, were fun, intense and both sometimes. We also adjusted. I took on more beats. I also developed more appetite for feature stories leading to my first-ever national nomination and award.

With Mr. Adewole, every event has a news-breaking angle. You just must find it. Chairman/CEO of Nigerian Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri called. She wanted me and a group of journalists to cover the Badagry Diaspora Festival, a two-day event that also marked the opening of the Door of Return to people of African descent who were escorted to the Americas on chains and heavy rods as slaves. It was an emotional event. We were about 8 journalists from Lagos. When our bus arrived Marina, Badagry, I transformed: eyes like Bureau Chief and mind like Saturday Editor. I was looking for the scoop. I was not at the press conference or the event. I didn’t take a seat with the journalists. I was roving the sandy shore. And shortly enough I found it: a young girl made a remark in passing calling Seriki Williams Abass, the foremost slave trader, her great-grandfather. I followed and interviewed her. I was intrigued; so was Dr. Olagunju. “This is going to win you an award”, he told me while editing my work. And it did.

I won the 2018 Nigeria Media Merit Awards Adamu Mu’azu Prize for Tourism Reporter of the Year with the entry titled, “Badagry: descendants of foremost slave merchant now live in cells he built for slaves”, and a year later, the 9 Mobile Innovative Reporter of the Year Nomination. On the day of the award ceremony, Nigerian Tribune won the Platinum Award for its 70 years of leading Nigeria’s fourth estate of the realm. It was a fulfilling year, not just for me, but for a newspaper that has endured times and seasons, epochs, governments, trends and technologies. I know that my story is one of many stories, but I couldn’t be any less grateful. In the classic ‘Self Reliance’, Emerson writes: “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion”. It has been 75 years since Nigerian Tribune took itself for better, for worse. It has been 75 years of non-conformism.

• Newton-Ray Ukwuoma, a former senior reporter of Nigerian Tribune, is the Founder and CEO of Mamaket Inc, an e-commerce company in the United States.

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