Tribute to Tribune @ 75

Let me congratulate the Nigerian Tribune family on the 75th anniversary of one of Nigeria’s best and courageous newspapers known to some of us as ‘Apamaku’ and ‘Tetebun’yan’ because of its consistent, courageous and sometimes ‘confrontational’ journalism.

I celebrate with you for taking this voice of the people this far. As a journalist who schooled in Ibadan, Tribune’s home base, I learnt a lot from this septuagenarian tabloid, particularly reading its editorials, erudite columnists like Abba Saheed, Justice Adewale Thompson, Ebinotopsy, Tai Solarin, political news of those days.

It was a controversial newspaper for us as student journalists in the Mass Communication Department of The Polytechnic Ibadan those days particularly because of its political stance on issues and pro-people brand of journalism.

My first article in print, a letter to the editor,  was published by this newspaper in 1978 and you could imagine my joy seeing my name in a national newspaper of that distinction. It is the same paper that featured my name on the admissions list of the Polytechnic, Ibadan, amongst many others in 1979. Thus, it led me into journalism career, a journey that has brought the best out of me so far.

While I tried unsuccessfully to join the Tribune’s editorial team after graduation in 1983, fate made me practise journalism in rival newspapers in Ibadan, as an intern in defunct Daily Sketch, and as editor of the defunct Monitor, Daily.

That the Tribune is not defunct is certainly by God’s grace and the ‘apamaku’ culture in its employees and its notable founder, the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who though physically dead, still lives in the hearts of many Nigerians.

May you continue to survive these slippery times that make newspaper publishing only fit for the tough and the daring. Amen

‘Dipo Onabanjo, journalist formerly with Punch, Monitor, Tell, National Outlook and Treasure Newspapers.

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