Prince Dotun Oyelade’s sterling career as a journalist, reporter, and media manager spans over four decades. And it is fitting for him to dig into his rich professional shelf and produce this equally rich recollection of that brimming career, with this book, Dotun Oyelade Reporting: Memoirs of a Newshound.
The book was published in 2022 by Current Incorporated, and released to the public during the 70th birthday of the author.
In the preface, Prince Dotun Oyelade, who is currently the Commissioner for Information and Orientation in Oyo State, writes that the book “should serve the purpose of encouraging broadcast journalists, and those aspiring to be, to further improve their trade by learning from the little efforts of reporters like me and using them as a fillip to excel in their chosen profession. This book is equally targeted at broadcast media practitioners in the practical excursion of their assignments.”
Thus we begin to encounter reporter and journalist Dotun Oyelade in his elements, and a scintillating voyage through the exemplary career of a super reporter and media mogul.
The author is very well travelled in the media and political communication space. He was Private Secretary to Governor Lam Adesina (1999 – 2003), Special Adviser, Public Communications to Adebayo Alao-Akala (2007 to 2011), and Chief Executive Officer (twice) at the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS). So he is very well (over)qualified to write a consequential book as this one.
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He opens this 18-chapter and 270-page book with an “Encounter with the General” where he recalls his experience with General Olusegun Obasanjo during a 1978 commissioning ceremony in Ondo. And this episode in his unique career as a television reporter immediately throws up one of the hazards of the media profession. He reports that his attempt to conduct an ambush interview with the head of state earned him some beating from the General’s orderly. However, his rescue by the ADC to the head of state made sure that the job got done that day.
In the second chapter, Prince Oyelade recalls with deep nostalgia his interview experience at NTA Ibadan, then NTV in April 1977, when he applied for, and got employed as a reporter. He gives us a thorough rundown of the personalities who grilled him for the job, under the leadership of the General Manager, Dr Yemi Farounbi whom he describes as a wise and highly respected druid. He gives us a list of the highly eclectic team that he worked with, and gives an account of his early days at Television Service of Oyo State, TSOS (chapter three). And he gives us a glimpse into his exploits as reporter at NTV Ibadan, and TSOS (BCOS), including his numerous reportorial encounters, the “Ali Must Go” protests that greeted the hike in school fees imposed on tertiary institutions across the nation by the Obasanjo military regime.
The author also presents his reportage of the trials of Lawrence Anini, the notorious robbery kingpin who terrorised Benin City and environs in the mid-eighties. The author recalls that at some point during his coverage of the Anini trial in Benin, he had become well-known by the judge, the commissioner of police, and even Lawrence Anini himself, to the extent that Anini was granting him more interviews than he did with other reporters. He also gives a recap of the trial of Mamman Vatsa and others implicated in the failed coup to displace the Ibrahim Babangida military junta in 1986, and particularly beams his light on Mamman Vatsa the alleged leader of the coup, and Major Daniel Idowu Bamidele, (pp67-69) giving us a slice of his near-depression bout after consistently listening to Bamidele’s pleas during the trial period.
Included in the narratives of the mercurial reportorial chest of the author is his coverage of the inferno that engulfed the Cocoa House, Ibadan on 9 January 1985. Described as the first known skyscraper in tropical Africa, the 24-storey building had been struck by an 18th floor fire, and the BCOS team, led by the author, quickly headed to the scene. And the author recalls one of his most daring reportorial assignments, the death of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, former premier of the Western Region. Next in line comes the author’s rendition of his reportage of the death of Dele Giwa, pioneer Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Newswatch, which birth in January of 1985 the author describes as the beginning of real investigative journalism in Nigeria. The author writes (p85) that, “Newswatch was deemed too hot for the authorities to handle, digging deep in its investigations and information gathering, and publishing without fear, such that it became quite a pain in the neck of the Buhari administration and the Babangida government that came afterward.”
In Dotun Oyelade Reporting … Memoirs of a Newshound, the author writes about the tricky matter of political influence on the media. He hints about the tendency of pressing political tendencies to influence professionalism and drown the voice of the people. In the light of this the author makes reference to the three months during which the Olunloyo government dealt with the personnel of the Television Service of Oyo State, TSOS, having perceived the station as pro UPN and anti-NPN, the ruling party at the centre the previous years. In this fifth chapter of the book titled, “The Olunloyo Story and the Exit from BCOS”, the author provides big indictments on the person and government of Dr Omololu Olunloyo. The three months of Olunloyo’s government before the military incursion were described as “dreadful”, as “some were summarily dismissed from work the very day the Governor was sworn in, while others were deployed to the state secretariat at Agodi for months, to pine away in deliberately induced idleness. I was one of those left to rot in the conference room of the Head of Service.” (P98) But has anything changed today?
One of the key elements of the book is the injection of the author’s reportorial verve, and vast experience as a reporter on the field and difficult terrain, to enlighten the broadcast professional of today. For instance the author adds a chapter which references a textbook titled The Broadcast Journalist, previously written by the author. Of course, there have been about nine books after that.
The final part of the book is a collection of testimonials and eulogies about Prince Dotun Oyelade by people who work with him, those whose part and his crossed professionally, including and other well-wishers. It also has a section in which his great family, wife and children share their thoughts, fond moments and so on.
One of the key points of the book is the author’s lamentation about the poor remuneration and respect accorded journalists today, in relation to welfare packages handed to journalists today. While he avers that he “couldn’t have been successful in any other trade other than journalism,” the author vehemently rejects the tag “veteran journalist”. For him, (pxiv) if medical practitioners, engineers, lawyers, and so on are not described as “veterans” after over forty years of practice, “why should older journalists be tagged veterans and revel in it?”
Indeed, it is important to interrogate the essence of that group of journalists (which in any case has not formal toga), who just (pxv) “pine away in nostalgia and obvious poverty or something near it”. For the author, even though many journalists in Nigeria have crossed the bar of excellence and gone beyond the brown envelope tag, the profession still lacks “‘second-hand” value. This is a point that managers of the profession today need to seriously and rigorously consider.
Ultimately, the book, Dotun Oyelade Reporting… Memoirs of a Newshound, is a well written, well-illustrated, no-holds-barred work. In the 18 chapters and over 270 pages (including pictures), you would be spurred on by the powerful display of the author’s dexterity with the English language. The book is a must-read for all lovers of books.
. Olatunbosun is a broadcast journalist, fact-checker and book reviewer at Splash FM 105.5, Ibadan. He can be reached via molatunbosun@splashfm1055.com, on X @miketunbosun and +234-802-351-7565 (SMS only).
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