Opinion: Akinbiyi: Lamentations of An Octogenarian Journalist, By Banji Ojewale
Jide Akinbiyi has a long tale of woes about the Nigerian project he has been part of right from his days as the pioneer news editor of WNTV, Africa’s first TV station established by Obafemi Awolowo in Ibadan in 1959. He claims however that he isn’t a hopeless pessimist at 86.
Through reportorial beats and the editorial desk, Akinbiyi has been an active witness to “how the country derailed from that great expectation, lost many opportunities to launch into the ranks of rich nations and frustrated the aspirations of its citizens.” He added: “As an individual, my profession as a journalist, my life as a citizen and a family man, has been intricately tied to the vagaries of Nigerian politics and the years of misrule by those in power.
Now as Nigeria drifted from civilian governance to military regimes, from one undemocratic government to the other, and with a series of political, social and economic upheavals, the fortunes of the country lumbered to the stages approximating a failed state. Before the country was forty years as an independent nation, it had witnessed twenty nine years of military rule, during which so much was taken away from the people’s well-being. As if that wasn’t enough, Nigeria’s military handed down to Nigeria a lop-sided constitution, which put many parts of the country at a disadvantage and brought a former military ruler as the civilian president to usher Nigeria into the 21st century.
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