By Femi Adesina
I was both blessed and privileged to receive one of the icons of our profession at State House, Abuja, on November 15, 2022.
Call Mr Soji Akinrinade an “editor of editors,” and you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Fellow of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (FNGE), he was a founding member of Newswatch Magazine in the 1980s, a team that included Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese, Yakubu Mohammed, and himself. He later became Editor-in-Chief of what was the foremost newsmagazine in the country then.
The four surviving members of the team (Dele Giwa, you recall, had been bombed to death in October 1986) now run May Five Media Limited, publishers of books and other journals.
Mr Akinrinade, along with his younger brother, Tunde Akinrinade, visited, and came armed with two precious books: My Dialogue with Nigeria, a book on the innermost thoughts of Civil War hero, and former Chief of Defence Staff, Lt Gen Alani Akinrinade, which he edited, and Moving in Circles, a compendium of some of the articles written by the four top flight journalists over the decades.
It was sheer delight spending about an hour with Mr Akinrinade, discussing the media, the country, books, and politics in general. A really refreshing visit.
