Last Wednesday, August 11, I got an early call informing me of the sudden death of my dear father, Chief Adebisi Otufodunrin who among many other things inspired me to become a journalist.
In this excerpt from my new book, Journalism of my life, I recalled my journey to becoming a journalist, thanks to my father.
When I sat down on the three-seater in our family living room in my village, Imagbon, Ogun State, that Wednesday afternoon in December 2013, all I wanted to do was to relax.
After the journey from Lagos with my wife and children for the New Year celebration, I was a bit tired and would have loved to fall asleep on the chair.
However, as I saw the pile of newspapers and magazines on and under the centre table, I couldn’t resist the temptation of flipping through some of them. I was particularly attracted by copies of The Compass newspapers which I didn’t get to read regularly like other national newspapers. I reasoned that I might just find something interesting I had missed. I did.
In a back-page column by the former Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper, Biodun Oduwole, he lamented the lack of investigative reports by journalists in the country in recent years.
He noted that journalists were easily satisfied with official statements and didn’t try enough to verify claims by those who issued them. He recalled a case of how some years ago he checked a police claim about someone said to be an armed robber only to find out that the accused person was innocent of the accusation levelled against him.
I was very pleased by his counsel for journalists that I tried to call him immediately on the contact phone number on the column, but I couldn’t get through. I composed a long text message which I sent to the same number to let him know how valid I thought his observations were. Too didn’t go through and I gave up any efforts in that regard.
A first time visitor to the living room in our country home would most likely have been surprised to find many old and current copies of newspapers and magazines – the village has no newspaper selling point.
The visitor would have been more surprised that the main occupant of the house for most part of the year is a septuagenarian grandfather who relocated to the village some years ago from Lagos.
But the visitor would probably not be surprised if only he knew that the old man, Chief Japheth Bisi Otufodunrin, my father, is so addicted to reading newspapers and magazines that living in a village about a few kilometres to Ijebu-Ode where newspapers are sold is not enough to prevent him from getting his regular supply of the publications through any means possible.
Before leaving Lagos that morning, he had called to inform me not to forget to buy him copies of the day’s newspapers and bring along some copies of the weekly ones. Minutes after our arrival, he asked us for the papers he requested.
I grew up to find my father reading newspapers with so much relish. When I became old enough to run major errands for him, buying newspapers was one of my assignments. The vendors usually stopped by our residence on Bale Street in Ajegunle, Lagos. Whenever they didn’t arrive early enough, I had to walk down to the main selling point in Boundary Bus-Stop to get the papers.
With regular access to newspapers very early in life, my father soon infected me with his addiction which gradually stirred up my interest in becoming a journalist. I remember reading some fiery columnists in The Tribune newspaper, which was my father’s favourite paper then. Columnists like Seyi Awofeso of ‘Ink in my Blood’ column fame piqued my interest in the profession and I then began to look forward to being able to write like them someday.
My father didn’t expose me to reading only newspapers; he also regularly gave me copies of literature books to read and summarise their contents during holidays. Reading the books, which I found out later were texts prescribed for students in higher institutions, reinforced my interest in writing which I started doing in any way I could.
The authorities of Government College, Ibadan (GCI), which I attended for my Higher School Certificate, must have noticed my interest in reading and writing. I was appointed Library Prefect and Editor of ‘Swanston Echo’, the house magazine for Swanston House.
By the time I was to choose the course to study in the university, Mass Communication was a natural choice to learn all I needed to know to fulfil my dream of becoming a journalist of note like the ones I had been reading about in those newspapers and magazines, thanks to my father.
I probably wouldn’t have been patient enough to get admission to study Mass Communication in the university and would therefore have opted for another course which could have steered me off the terrain of journalism. My father insisted that, though he had no university education himself, he wanted all his children to be university graduates.
When the result of my first West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), which I wrote in 1979 at Christ Apostolic Grammar School, Iperu-Remo, my father’s Alma Mata, was released, it was not good enough to get admitted into a university. My father took me back to the school the same week the result was released and got me re-enrolled in the final class as a regular student.
It was not funny that I had to repeat the class with juniors who used to call me Senior Lekan. There was the option of coming back to write the exam as an external student, but my father would hear nothing of that.
I returned to school, wearing the uniform again. Some of my classmates who came to check their results were shocked to see me and wondered why my father, as they put it then, subjected me to such humiliation. After all, as they reasoned and as I also had thought, I could have attended private lessons in Lagos and come back to write the examination. My father obviously knew better than we did and he saved me from taking a wrong decision early in life.
Even when I could not get university admission with my second WASSCE result, my father refused to accede to the option of attending Advanced Teachers College at Ijebu-Ode, now College of Education. He wanted a university admission and nothing else. Not even a polytechnic, he insisted, if he was to pay the fees.
In 1980, I got admitted for HSC at GCI to qualify for direct entry into the university. I again wrote the University Matriculation Examination (UME), conducted by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), after my Lower Six, the first of the two-year HSC programme. Yet, I did not secure admission.
Some of my classmates got the required marks for the courses they chose in the UME and got admitted. Some were so desperate to get admitted that any course was good enough for them.
I tried to get admission into The Polytechnic, Ibadan, for Mass Communication with the hope that my father would change his mind about having university education or nothing but failed – I didn’t apply early enough.
Realising that the HSC exam was my last chance of getting admission into the university, I was determined to give it my best shot. I enrolled for the external General Certificate of Education (GCE) exam ahead of the final HSC exam after the Upper Six class.
I read for the GCE like my life depended on it and didn’t want to disappoint my father who was obviously not happy with my inability to get admitted into the university. I read every text I could lay my hands on for the three subjects – History, Literature, and Economics – that I registered for.
I checked bookshops for every useful book I could find. I remember buying a book on A Level Economics past questions written by an author who had marked the subject for over 10 years. By the time I finished reading the book, I was so confident that I would score very high in at least Economics, no matter hard the questions might be.
The author of that book gave detailed explanations on how to answer GCE questions, using sample questions from past examinations. While writing the Economics paper, I kept remembering everything I read in the book and by the time the paper was over, I knew I had done extremely well and expected nothing less than a ‘B’ grade.
When the result was released, I scored ‘A’ in Economics, ‘C’ in History and, poor me, ‘F’ in Literature. Nonetheless, I became a star of a sort among my classmates and other students. With eight points, my result was good enough to get me admitted for Mass Communication, even before writing the final HSC exam. I eventually got admitted with the GCE result because my aggregate score in the HSC was seven points.
When asked who inspired me to become a journalist, it’s usually not hard for me to respond. The answer is obvious – my father, the Balogun of Imagbon, whom God used to expose me early in life to newspapers, encouraged me to read and write, and ensured that I scaled the hurdle of university admission.
While by God’s grace my father was my inspiration for journalism, my mother, Rachael Jolade Otufodunrin (nee Ekisanya), was my all-round guardian angel whose motherly care, love, discipline and prayers kept me going from birth.
At crucial moments when I needed to pass the WASCE and HSC exams, Iya Lekan, as she is fondly called, never failed to encourage and assure me that I would make it and become what God wanted me to be.
