He holds the national honours of the Commander of the Order of the Niger. He is a man of great achievements and merits The Sun Lifetime Achievement Award

Chika Abanobi

They say the Godfather never sleeps. Chief Olusegun Osoba, the man everyone calls “Aremo” (because of his chieftaincy title, Aremo Awujale of Ijebuland) is one man who proved, by act of bravery, in his journalism heyday at Daily Times, that the Godfather they are talking about, as far as he was concerned, is the hard-nosed reporter. That’s how, by riding on his seemingly ubiquitous scooter, he was able to find and photograph the bullet-riddled body of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime Minister, killed during the 1966 military coup.

READ ALSO: 2019: Osoba cautions Ogun APC over complacency, disunity

Until this happened, nobody knew the late Nigeria’s Prime Minister’s whereabouts. Osoba’s bold journalism reflex provided the first and only clue in those hazy days. He is, without any doubt or debate, Nigerian journalism finest copy.

Born on July 15, 1939, he attended Methodist Boys High School, Lagos, University of Lagos (where he obtained a Diploma in journalism), before proceeding to United Kingdom for one-year advanced diploma course on the scholarship of the Commonwealth Press Union in 1967.

In 1969, he read Journalism at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA and in 1974 won the Nieman Fellowship Award for journalism (the first Nigerian journalist to win the prestigious fellowship award) before going for his postgraduate study at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Osoba started his journalism career in 1964 by working with the Daily Times, first as a trainee crime reporter (1966), then diplomatic correspondent (1967), news editor (1968), deputy editor, Sunday Times (1971), deputy editor, Daily Times (1972), Editor (1975) before leaving to become General Manager, Nigerian Herald. He returned to Daily Times in 1984 as the Managing Director.

In politics, Osoba was two-time civilian governor of Ogun State, first, from 1992 to 1993, under the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and, 1999 to 2003, under the Alliance for Democracy (AD). He holds the national honours of the Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON). He is a man of great achievements and therefore merits The Sun Lifetime Achievement Award.