By Omoniyi Ibietan
For the umpteenth time, Oyekunle Oyedapo Olorunyomi, publisher of Premium Times, possibly contemporary Nigeria’s most honoured journalist, was garlanded earlier today, with the Hallmarks of Labour Foundation (HLF) Award.
Olorunyomi, popularly called Dapsy, famous for his public spiritedness, brilliance, grit and vision, and particularly renowned for his pragmatism and love for investigative and interpretive reporting, media independence, accountability as well as advocacy for public interest journalism, in his words ‘journalism of relevance’, received the HLF-Christopher Kolade Award for Excellence in Leadership and Professionalism in the Media at an event in Lagos.
Reckoning Dapo Olorunyomi’s journalistic antecedents and the trailblazing Premium Times Media Group – which houses the Premium Times newspaper (an online newspaper), Dubawa (a fact-checking entity), the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (a tech-oriented knowledge production centre instituted to empower and support African media), and Premium Times Books (a book publishing arm) – the Hallmarks Foundation found a repository to draw form and content that gave expression to professionalism and leadership.
As captured by Premium Times, this award celebrates Dapsy’s “established track record” in championing media independence, accountability journalism, and ethical standards.
An incurable believer in the promise of newspapering for the promotion of freedom and democracy, a leading light of best-rated, innovative journalism in the service of society, iconoclastic and radical, I first took note of Dapsy as a social actor in the Nigerian space after reading the cover story of the African Concord newsmagazine titled, “Has IBB Given up?” an exceptionally objective unsparing analysis of the Babangida regime. The publication’s factuality and poignancy was so stinging as to precipitate the sealing of the premises of the medium for six months and its proscription in 1992 by the military regime.
Unbeknownst to me, Dapsy and I have a deeper historical connection. For instance, he was in the league of student leaders of the early 1980s who pitched their tent in the left pole of the ideological spectrum. It was he and his comrades who drafted the Charter of Demands of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), a document that would become a consequential duty of my generation of student leaders to implement.
Born in Kano, educated at Ife, Oxford, Washington and across the world, ever since Dapsy enrolled at the then University of Ife where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s in Literature, he has been on the famished road of knowledge production, journalistic rectitude, organised, conscious self and collaborative activities of social action and uncommon charity. As a student at Ife, he spent his holidays working PRO BONO as a press officer at the South Africa’s African National Congress Office in Lagos, and he continued to live a life marked by ecumenism and charitableness.
Exactly two years ago, precisely on January 11, 2023, I published a tribute to honour him when he was announced the first African fellow of the Poynter Institute, alongside 26 other global media entrepreneurs and actors for the 2023 Media Transformation Challenge (MTC) programme. The Poynter Fellowship had recorded 350 alumni as of 2023, and Dapsy broke the jinx by becoming Africa’s first alumnus.
In 2020, the International Press Freedom Award was presented to him. Earlier, in 1995, the World Press Review garlanded him as the International Editor of the Year. In 1996 he was awarded the Freedom to Write Award by the PEN Center, as well as Press Freedom Award by the National Association of Black Journalists in New York. For his involvement in reporting on the Panama Papers, he won a joint Pulitzer Award in 2016. The Global Investigative Journalism Network also honoured him with the Global Shining Award in 2017. Still in 2017, he carted away both the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Press Freedom Award and a distinguishing fellowship of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ). Olorunyomi equally received the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence’s Lifetime Award.
He had worked for The Herald newspapers, was an editor at Radio Nigeria, African Guardian, and the African Concord before co-founding TheNews magazine, Tempo, as well as AM and PM News. He became the Enterprise Editor and head of investigation at the Timbuktu Media, publishers of 234Next. Olorunyomi has served on the board of many international organisations including Panos Institute West Africa, Norbert Zongo Cell for Investigative Journalism (a United Nations initiative) and he continued to serve on the jury or as chair or African analyst for many media initiatives or country surveys.
He was the Director Nigeria Project for Freedom House (FH), during which I worked with him as FH’s Regional Media Researcher for the Niger Delta. Freedom House is America’s oldest NGO focused on curating the state of press freedom in over 190 nations and territories. While at FH, he founded the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (now Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism). He was Director for Policy and Chief of Staff to Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, when the latter was Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. It was he who essentially developed crime prevention and education policy at EFCC.
He was on exile for a while when the Abacha regime launched a serial crackdown on activists and journalists. He returned to Nigeria at the onset of Nigeria’s renascent democracy and continued his works without ceasing as a dedicated Nigerian patriot. In 2021, he was arrested ostensibly for publishing a libellous story about former Army Chief Buratai, an incident that suffered a natural fate as cases of unsubstantiated allegations.
The Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission aptly described Olorunyomi as ‘Akinkanju’ (the Valiant man) of Nigerian journalism. His story continues to serve as an unvarnished reminder of the value of focus, love for man and country, determination, selflessness, and living for others.