CHASING MY DREAM

This is the story of my life as knocked into shape by a five-year period (2002 to 2006) during which things were so low for my family that I practically had no legs to walk on. It was a period so devastating that it was a major miracle that we all survived it.

However, the simple fact is that I am privileged to hold this pen now. I sincerely hope that someone may peel through the layers of dehumanizing episodes of my life, and see where you can right your own boat if it is keening off course – just about now.

My ‘wahala’ did not start because I left Fame magazine (1997) in controversial circumstances. It was the launching pad. You see, in 1990, I joined two colleagues and friends (Mayowa Akinpelu and Kunle Bakare) to register a company. Then, I was a heaven-may-fall-I-don’t-give-damn reporter with The Punch newspapers. I had won few awards for my work in reporting arts and entertainment, here and there. And was saddled with the opportunity to refashion a new, livelier and breezier Saturday Punch…but my heart had been stolen with the explosive idea of running a news organization of my own.

You see, many people, today and forever, are always scared to launch into professional wilderness; unable to dare to follow their dreams. My employers did not want me to leave. I loved the Saturday Highlife weekend column I was handling, and sundry other pages and articles I was contributing to…I truly enjoyed working in Punch, even when my salary was less than N500 every month (that was in 1989). I chose the harder route…

Now, I needed magazine production experience. Both my friends were working in a magazine stable (Vintage). I was a newspaper man, a rat of the features department, with the strange capacity to work four days in week, straight out of the office! Then, enter the sports writer extraordinaire and publisher, Mr. Sunny Obazu Ojeagbase. Of course, I didn’t understand what God was doing, since I had only a fleeting appreciation of the role of God in my life.

In retrospect, it was a divine set-up: I wanted a magazine experience; he was desperately head-hunting for a noisy entertainment reporter/writer. He was a humble strong-willed successful journalist that many of my contemporaries looked up to. But there was nothing humble about his approach. He spread out the red carpet. I had a lunch with him at Sheraton Hotel, where he bowled me over with his familiarity and admiration with my work, and my style of writing. He shocked me further when he offered me an amount about four times over my Punch take-home.

Need I tell you what I did next? After several days of negotiating and whathaveyou, I resumed at Okota as Climax magazine’s Deputy Editor (Entertainment/Leisure). The other deputy was Ehi Braimoh (Moji Danisa was the editor). That was June 1990. What lesson does anyone get from this? You may end up on the wrong side of life on account of your decisions; don’t ever be too scared to make a life-changing decision when the opportunity knocks on your head. Think, yes. Pray, yes. Ask experienced, yes; but make sure you make up your mind and take a clean plunge…and before you fly, prick yourself - never assume nothing can go wrong.