A veteran journalist and former lawmaker, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, has stressed the need for the upcoming journalists to tap from the wealth of experience and knowledge of the older people in the profession.
Ojudu, a former managing editor of the rested ‘News Magazine/Tempo’ said it is important for the older hands to sit down from time to time to share knowledge and experiences with the younger ones so that they learn and be in tune with what the profession entails.
He was speaking on the sideline of a visit by some members of the League of Veteran Journalists, LVJ, Ekiti State chapter, led by its Chairman, Prince Kayode Oni, to his residence in Ado-Ekiti, to keep him abreast of the League’s forthcoming ‘ Patrons and Matrons Day ‘ billed for September 2026, which he is expected to chair.
The former Political Adviser during the regime of the late President Muhammad Buhari, commended the leadership for putting the League together, describing them as people who had committed their entire life to serving the profession of journalism. ” Each time one looks back at your contributions, one cannot but say that the time you were in practice was a golden time for this country”.
”Many served shortly after independence, many served through the period of military regimes and coups and counter-coups, and all that. So you have seen quite a lot, and as it is now, we still need your knowledge and experience to form the practice of today so that the younger ones can learn from us. They can learn that journalism is not about money. Rather journalism is about charting a path of development for one’s country”.
According to him, the universities and other tertiary institutions in the state should benefit from the knowledge and experience of the veteran journalists if they are invited from time to time to talk to the younger ones who are being trained so that they will know people have gone through tough life, gone through hardship to build the profession and get Nigeria where everybody is today.
He promised to be present at the event, adding that it is an opportunity for him to make enriching contributions from different perspectives of journalism. To him, students of mass communication, journalism, lecturers, practitioners and others should spare time to come to share ideas.
Meanwhile, comparing the era when he was in active journalism practice to what the profession is today, the former lawmaker who represented Ekiti Central Senatorial District in National Assembly from 2011 to 2015, adduced that he has often criticized what is happening now to what they had done during their era of active pen-pushing.
” We spent most of our active years under the military trying to fight for democracy, for good governance, trying to uphold the rights of the people and campaign for an economy that serves majority of the people. These days, the kind of journalism we have is self-serving journalism where everyone wants to make money, they want to buy cars, they want to build homes. They are not well-prepared”.
He pointed out that even one of the vital tools of journalism, which is language is no more in full grasp by the practitioners of nowadays, the way they used it in their time. Hence,” it is incumbent on us while we are still here to assist in really putting these younger ones through”.
The journalist/politician further admonished that without a free press, without a robust press, you cannot have a robust democracy. He hammered that it is the press that assists democracy in growing and that is where the country is lacking today which has left our democracy in comatose. ” We have to question every turn, we have to investigate, we have to expose, we have to entertain and all of that”.
He frowned at the scenario these days where you pick up the newspaper and one cannot find anything in-depth, you cannot find good analyses,you cannot find good investigation and others, describing it as a shame.