We now have Yoruba children who can’t read, write correct Yoruba and English sentences —Funke Egbemode, ex-MD, New Telegraph

Mrs. Funke Egbemode is an accomplished journalist. The two-term President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and former Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of New Telegraph. She also the immediate past Commissioner for Information in Osun State tells SAM NWAOKO some of her journalism experiences.

 

How did you start out in journalism, how did media journey begin?

I had gone out and on my way back I decided to see my cousin. Even though we would have seen at home later that day because we were living in the same house, I decided to stop over in his office and say hello as I was in the neighbourhood. His name is Bisi Ogunlade. He said I should meet the General Manager of the organisation where he worked. It was the Prime People, the pioneer soft-sell general interest magazine in the country. The GM asked me if I loved writing and I said I had always loved writing and he asked if I would like to work with them. I said I’d be honoured but I was still doing my NYSC. My NYSC was in Ilorin, I was in Lagos on a visit. The GM said they should take me to the Editor who was then Mr. Klosa Kargbo. Mr. Kargbo promptly gave me an assignment. He told me to go and research something in the National Library and come back with it within 72 hours. I went there, did the research and submitted in 72 hours like he instructed. After that, they gave me assignments as a freelancer. After that, I went back to Ilorin and continued as a freelancer. That was how the job started, the rest, they say, is history.

 

It looks more like a fortuitous thing. How did your studies prepare you for this experience?

I am a daughter of two teachers. My father and mother retired as head-teachers and so, I was exposed to books quite early. I loved reading and I started reading quite early for my age. My father had a rich library for a school teacher. He had full set of the Ladybird Series for children. He also had the simplified version of Charles Dickens and, because he was a West African Examinations Council (WAEC) marker for Yoruba, he also had a rich Yoruba library. So, I was exposed to those two languages. He forbade us children from speaking English at home but nobody was allowed to score below 90 in English in class. But you must speak Yoruba at home. I read a lot of Yoruba books. I read all the D.O. Fagunwa books; I read Oladejo Okediji and other kinds of books.

By the time I got to secondary school – Baptist Girls High School, Osogbo – I started reading other things. I fell in love with James Hadley Chase; I read virtually every copy published by Pacesetters and then I moved on to Sidney Sheldon. Sidney Sheldon was my favourite and still remains my favourite. I like the short, witty and loaded sentences that are not long. Simple English. I’m telling this because my journey as a pupil, as a student, and as an undergraduate had always been guided by what I read and how I wanted to write. Whether I was going to be journalist or not, I knew I was going to write. And when I read my first copy of Sidney Sheldon, I knew I wanted to write like him. My English language teacher at Baptist Girls High School was an Indian called Mrs. Alexander, who insisted that for you to have an A1 in English you must write an essay a day. I did create a book for it, I wrote an essay a day and I made an A1.

So, all these things guided me towards writing and reading. Even after I had finished my O’Levels and passed, I still felt that need to write. So, I opened another book for myself and wrote an essay a day. I actually wanted to publish it to guide secondary school students, but in those days, those things were hand-written and I lost them while moving from one place to another. That was my journey all the way to the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and all of that.

I knew that I wanted to write and getting to Prime People on that day was just a divine arrangement. Somebody approached me to say he wanted to write a book about me and I asked what about? He said “A child of grace.” I’ll say that I’ve enjoyed plenty of God’s grace from the beginning.

 

What was the feeling like when your first story was published by the Prime People Magazine?

I was very, very excited. Usually in those days they gave you a complimentary copy as staff and if you had stories you were likely to get more copies. I’m sure I must have also bought extra so as to show my uncle and so I could keep. I kept them for years.

As they did it in those days, once you were a female, you were expected to write you’re supposed to write a column in the female department. So, I was writing apart from those unusual and odd stories that Prime People was known for in addition to every other thing. I was also contributing to the women pages. Tokunbo Francis was the woman editor. She noticed, the way I wrote delighted her and that also pushed me in that direction. One day, it was my day off and I was at home and I did a piece I called “Wanna lose your husband? Here’s how”. I can never forget the headline. Instead of writing ‘how to keep your husband’, I just wrote ‘wanna lose your husband? Here’s how’ and it really, really impressed her. She said would I love to do a column? I said yes. I started writing a column called Single Girls because I was still single. The column caught a lot of attention. One of my very first rejoinders came from the United Kingdom. Prime People had offices and circulated outside the country. I can still see it with my mind’s eyes. It was written with a blue writing pad. The person was full of glowing words for me. I was just very happy and it pushed me.

That was how Prime People became my launching pad and Single Girls became the first relationship column that I wrote that became what I’m still writing today. That’s the column that launched me into column-writing and Single Girls by Funke Aderanti eventually became Intimate Affairs by Funke Egbemode eventually became Adam’s Apple by Funke Egbemode and then just plain Funke Egbemode in some quarters and I’m still writing till today. I became woman editor of Prime People in less than one year. I continued to freelance throughout my NYSC days and I joined full time as Staff Writer in 1989.

 

You were in Ilorin, Kwara State as a youth corps member while freelancing. What was it like when you met Tokunbo Francis for the first time?

There was no internet, so you had to submit your hand-written stories to the office. So I came to the office. When I finished service I was still going to the office. I was still contributing until I became a staff member. That was how I was asked to contribute to the women page, human interest pages and to any page for that matter. I read English so, they didn’t have to do a lot of work on my copies.

 

From Prime People, where was your next port of call?

Seven years in The Punch. From Prime People, I joined The Punch in January 1993. I was there till 2000. It was in 2000 I became a title editor, I became the Editor of Post Express on Saturday. From there I moved over to This Day as Associate Editor of This Day Style. From there, I took some family time off; I was away from the newsroom for two years. I returned in 2004 and went to be the Assistant Press Secretary to the Director-General of the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation under Mrs. Omotayo Omotosho. From there, I was invited to come and start the Saturday Independent. I was the pioneer Editor of Saturday Independent and I was there till 2007 when I took a political appointment as Special Adviser (Media) to the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mrs. Olubunmi Etteh. That was short-lived and I returned to Lagos but I did not go back to the Independent because I didn’t want to.

At that point I was already considering giving journalism a break and go into business. But, there was pressure from family and friends that I should continue. So, I applied to The Sun as Editor-at-Large. It was my way of leaving pure editorial duties because as Editor-a time-Large I just needed to bring in my stories. I could live in any part of the country. I joined in December 2007 as Editor-at-Large but, as God who has been my guide would have it, there was an opening by March 2008 and so, I became Editor of Sunday Sun.

I continued writing my column and I took over the back page of the Sun as a columnist. I was in The Sun till 2016. We had tenured job as editors in The Sun. When my tenure expired, I handed over to another editor and then put a breather. My life became easy again. I had plenty of time but I was supervising the production of inside pages on Mondays only. I had plenty of time until Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, the Publisher, said they should hand me a letter that said I should go and be the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The New Telegraph. From New Telegraph, I went to become Commissioner in Osun State. Now, I’m retired from The Sun officially.

 

Being a state commissioner is a completely different kettle of fish from your primary calling and your previous political appointments. What was it like dealing with reporters and editors alike as a commissioner and a journalist who had seen it all?

That grace that led me to Prime People has always been the guide. I was fortunate to work for a principal that did not give me any hard work to do. He instructed me to report and talk about his activities with no embellishments, only what he has done. That made it easy for me to respond to enquirers by my colleagues. So, it want difficult. The ones that proved difficult eventually became my friends because I told them that they were going far and didn’t need to create enemies for themselves. For the correspondents, if you call me and cannot reach me, we live in the same town. You can find me. It wasn’t difficult at all. I had a beautiful rapport.

I owe my colleagues a lot because they have been very kind to me. You don’t get to run as President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors unopposed twice. My colleagues have been very very kind to me. If Funke is running, they don’t want anybody else to run. It’s the same cooperation and concession that I enjoyed from them as Commissioner for Information. For them, I will take that office again and again. But, of course, it goes beyond their support. The whole world can see that my principal had no can of worms but at the same time there was nothing that they needed to do for me in terms of support that they did not do.

They capped their support when I was invited to speak at an event. I didn’t know that everybody else got a different invitation. What I got was that I was speaking at an event at the Lagos Airport Hotel. I dressed up to go and speak. When I got there, it was a welcome back reception for me.

 

People no longer read like before. Back in the days we had the Pacesetter Series, we had Mills & Boons, James Hadley Chase, Nick Carter and so on. You write a column. Are you not discouraged or worried that people are not reading, especially the younger generation who are not into the hard stuff?

That is true. Even parents are finding it difficult. If you don’t start early, even your children don’t want to read anything apart from doing their school assignments. We have to start from there. The newsrooms are in trouble today because people who don’t read can’t write. People who do not read cannot write because it is when you read that you find more expressions and find ways of putting sentences together and develop how to use your imageries and the place of alliteration in your sentences that would give it colour. Not reading is a tragedy. Even I think that I don’t read as much as I should. You can now imagine somebody who didn’t have the habit, who didn’t see it as anything important. I read for pleasure and I still read for pleasure, and it is in reading for pleasure that you hone your writing skills, not in reading textbooks to pass exams.

When you read for pleasure, you will be shocked at how many words you would learn and can spell not because you had written it before, they jump at you when you encounter them. Even as an editor, when your reporter uses a particular word in a sentence, you will know immediately that something is wrong with the word. You will see the difference in how to write excerpts and how to write examples. These are some of the little things that have disappeared. Indeed, they are the big things that have disappeared slowly in bits and pieces and until those who want to read increase, we will continue to have these bad vibes in the newsroom.

It is very bad. You now find Yoruba children who can neither read nor write correct Yoruba sentences nor correct English sentences. Ask yourself, who are the people you truly enjoy reading going through their pages on Facebook? You see people who cannot express themselves and I urge people to use the language they are comfortable with. For me I really enjoy those who express themselves occasionally in Yoruba. It’s really nice. But we all must go back to reading if we must write well.

 

Looking at journalism now and when you started out, what comes to your mind?

Journalism has become very easy. One of the difficult assignments in my early days was one in which we went by bus and then got to a place we could no longer move by bus and we used a bike. We got to a river and I had to roll up my dress and cross the river while the bike man had to find a way to also get the bike across. Those hard things are no longer there for the younger people. You must make sure you make a success of it because you can do your research by sitting down somewhere.

 

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