The current chair of the editorial board of ThisDay newspapers, Olusegun Adeniyi has recounted how he started off as a columnist twenty years ago.<\/p>\n
Recounting his odyssey on his Thursday, April 8 \u201cThe Verdict\u201d Backpage column on ThisDay Newspaper, Adeniyi noted how Prof. (then Dr.) Dele Sobowale\u2019s \u201cPlease Give Me the Bones\u201d published in Vanguard Newspaper early in 1996 stood out for him.<\/p>\n
According to Adeniyi, his foray into column writing started five years after starting off as a journalist \u201cat the instance of Mr Tunji Bello, the current Secretary to the Lagos State Government, who was my editor at the time\u201d at Sunday Concord.<\/p>\n
After writing it for three years, Adeniyi left Sunday Concord for ThisDay. At ThisDay he recounted thus:\u201d I had concluded that was the end of \u201cThe Verdict\u201d but it turned out otherwise. A few weeks after arriving at THISDAY, the Chairman, Mr. Nduka Obaigbena, called a meeting of the Board of Editors on a Sunday afternoon and said he had decided to designate the back page to individuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn that day, Mr. Obaigbena just asked for some sheets of paper and started writing. Then he said: \u201cI am writing my back page for tomorrow as I will be writing every Monday. Victor Ifijeh (current Managing Director of \u2018The Nation\u2019 newspapers) will be writing on Tuesday. Eniola Bello (current THISDAY Managing Director) will write on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cSegun, you can resume your Verdict column on Thursday. Festus Eriye (current editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019 on Sunday) will write on Friday. And Waziri Adio (current NEITI Executive Secretary) will write on Sunday. There will be no back page columnist for the Saturday Newspaper,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
Having written articles on \u201cmundane issues that do not in any way advance public good: fuel queues, shortage of food, kidnappings, violent elections, looting of public funds, ASUU and doctors\u2019 strikes, killings between farmers and herdsmen, electricity systems collapse, exchange rate fiasco, settler-indigene crisis,\u201d Adeniyi noted his sadness about the situation.<\/p>\n
For him, he craves for a time when he and a generation of writers will pen ennobling issues\u00a0about the society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The current chair of the editorial board of ThisDay newspapers, Olusegun Adeniyi has recounted how he started off as a columnist twenty years ago. Recounting his odyssey on his Thursday, April 8 \u201cThe Verdict\u201d Backpage column on ThisDay Newspaper, Adeniyi noted how Prof. (then Dr.) Dele Sobowale\u2019s \u201cPlease Give Me the Bones\u201d published in Vanguard…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projects"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t