Editors, Media Executives Hold Colloquium For Olatunji Dare At 80

Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), in collaboration with Vintage Press Limited, publishers of The Nation newspapers, is organising one-day colloquium on Wednesday, July 17, 2024, to celebrate Professor Olatunji Dare, who clocks 80 years same day.

In a statement by NGE president, Mr Eze Anaba and the general secretary, Dr Iyobosa Uwugiaren, yesterday, the professional body of editors and media executives, said that the event will start at 12noon, at Radisson Hotel, Isaac John Street, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos.

With “Dare @ 80: Same Craft, Changing Times – The Columnist as Societal Conscience“, as theme, the colloquium will feature chief executive officer (CEO) of Diamond Publications, Mr Lanre Idowu, as Lead Speaker.

Other panelists include Mallam Kabiru Yusuf, president of the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN); Mr Emeka Izeze, former managing director of Guardian Newspapers Limited; Mr Eze Anaba, president of NGE; and Comrade Chris Isiguzo, president of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ).

Professor Dare is the Editorial Adviser, The Nation, who is also renowned as consummate teacher and seasoned columnist.

He is globally acknowledged as “master satirist, stylist exemplar and magisterial editorialist.”

As journalist, scholar and public intellectual, Professor Dare has also been praised as the “language connoisseur‘s delight“, who deploys “a mixed menu of satire and mischievous parody“ to exhaust a whole gamut of social, political, economic, cultural and international events relating to each with equal passion and dwelling on specifics with the ease and familiarity which only outstanding scholarship bestows.

Dare earned the first-ever First Class Degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos, where he subsequently became a senior lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication.

He also holds a Master‘s degree in Journalism from Columbia University in New York, where he was the prizeman in Editorial Writing, and a PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

In 2014, when Professor Dare turned 70, the celebration by his constituency—the journalism and media industry—produced significant resource material entitled “Public Intellectuals, the Public Sphere & the Public Spirit—Essays in Honour of Olatunji Dare.”

The book was edited by Professor Wale Adebanwi. It is hoped that the colloquium on Wednesday will lead to similar outcome.