Dele Olojede

1961–

Journalist

As foreign correspondent, bureau chief, and editor at Newsday, Dele Olojede's reports from the frontlines of the world's conflicts appeared in thousands of newspapers across the nation and beyond. Ten years after the horrific genocide in Rwanda, Olojede returned to that small African nation. His Newsday special report on the war's aftermath won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, making Olojede the first African journalist to win the profession's most prestigious award.

Inspired by Nigerian Authors

Born on January 24, 1961, in the West Nigerian university town of Ife, Dele Olojede was the 12th of 29 children in a polygamous family. In 2006 he told Nicholas Asego of the Sunday Standard that he had always aspired to a career in journalism: "You had to know what you wanted to be and work towards it. By the time I was in high school I was certain of what I was going to be." As a boy Olojede wrote poetry in both English and his native Yoruba and, in addition to the daily newspapers, read the great Nigerian writers. He told Asego: "Africa was in its independence mode and many were going back to celebrating their cultures. These writers were very creative and inspiring, full of our flourishing African culture and we looked to them as our heroes."

Following high school, Olojede studied journalism at the University of Lagos, despite his father's desire that he study medicine, law, or engineering. While attending school he worked as a rookie reporter covering petty crime, the police, and politics. When one of his early stories appeared on the front page of the Lagos National Concord, his father was overcome with pride.

Olojede built a reputation as a principled investigative reporter. While many journalists were kowtowing to the wealthy and powerful Nigerian elite, Olojede strove for honesty and objectivity. In 1984 he quit the Concord because he felt that the newspaper's integrity was being compromised by its owner's political ambitions. Instead Olojede co-founded the weekly Newswatch magazine that was highly critical of Nigeria's military government. In 1986 his award-winning investigative reporting led to the freeing of the famous Nigerian musician, Fela Kuti, and the dismissal of the federal judge who had sentenced Kuti to prison on trumped-up charges. That same year, after his friend and mentor Dele Giwa, the editor of Newswatch, was assassinated, Olojede accused the government of having ordered the murder. Olojede was forced into hiding, but continued to edit the magazine from his apartment.

Fled to America

A $26,000 Ford Foundation Scholars Grant enabled Olojede to escape to the United States in 1987. The following year he earned his master's degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.

Olejede began as a summer intern at the Long Island, New York daily Newsday in 1988 and stayed on as a local reporter. In 1992, while working as a special writer covering minority affairs, Olojede was loaned to the foreign desk and made his first trips to South Africa. He later became Newsday's United Nations (UN) bureau chief, followed by a posting Johannesburg, South Africa, as Newsday's African bureau chief.

In 1992 and 1993 Olejede covered the war in Somalia. From 1993 through 1997 he reported on South Africa's difficult transition to black-majority rule. He participated in the Newsday investigation that revealed that a prominent Washington, D.C., foundation had been a front for South Africa's white pro-apartheid leaders.

Reported from Around the World

In April of 1994, while Olojede was covering South Africa's first democratic elections, the Rwandan president's plane was shot down. The government ordered the majority ethnic Hutu to begin killing ethnic Tutsi. Over the next 100 days, approximately 800,000 Tutsi and opposition Hutu were murdered. While the world stood by and watched, 80 percent of Rwanda's Tutsi were slaughtered. Olojede told Asego: "Like the rest of the world I never knew how big it was until it was too late. Had I gone to Rwanda I would probably have written stories about it that would have moved the world to action. Who knows? Things would have probably been different."

Olejede did cover the aftermath of the genocide, including the chaos, starvation, and disease in the Congolese refugee camps, where an estimated 1,300 people were dying each day. He also covered the spread of civil war from Rwanda into Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

In 1997 with China's impending takeover of Hong Kong, Olojede reopened Newsday's Beijing bureau. In 2001 he returned to New York as Newsday's foreign editor, overseeing its Latin American, African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Russian bureaus, as well as the paper's daily coverage of international news, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was well-liked and respected for promoting the stories of his correspondents around the world. In 2003 as U.S. troops approached Baghdad, Olojede helped secure the release of two Newsday journalists being held by the Iraqi secret police.

In October of 2003 Newsday's new editor announced that he was promoting Olojede to assistant managing editor for Long Island, with a staff of some 50 reporters. The job would have positioned Olojede to one day take over the newspaper. However the editor had not consulted Olojede beforehand. In addition, Olojede was enduring a long commute from his New Jersey home, as well as Friday trips into New York to meet with his UN sources. He refused the promotion and returned to work as Newsday's African correspondent. A foreign desk staffer at Newsday told Cynthia Cotts of the Village Voice: "To lose someone with that talent and credibility is pretty shortsighted."

At a Glance …

Born Dele Olojede on January 24, 1961, in Ife, Nigeria; married Amma Ogan; children: Oyinkan, Ngozi. Education: University of Lagos, BS, mass communication, 1982; Columbia University, MA, journalism, 1988; Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Management Development Program, 2003.

Career: National Concord newspaper, Lagos, Nigeria, reporter, 1982–84; Newswatch magazine, Lagos, founding staff writer, assistant editor, 1984–87; Newsday, Long Island, NY, intern, 1988, reporter and special writer, 1988–92, United Nations bureau chief, c.1992, African correspondent, 1992–1993, 2003–04, foreign editor, 2001–03, Johannesburg, South Africa, African bureau chief, 1993–97, Beijing, China, Asian bureau chief, 1997–01; Timbuktu Media Plc., Johannesburg and Lagos, founder and executive chairman, 2004–.

Memberships: Alicia Paterson Foundation, jury member; Aspen Institute Africa Leadership Initiative, fellow; National Association of Black Journalists; National Press Foundation, board member; Pulitzer Prize, jury member.

Selected awards: Educational Press of America, Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in Educational Journalism, 1995; Times Mirror, Journalist of the Year, 1997; Newsday, Publisher's Award for Reporting (four times), Editor of the Year, 2002; Pulitzer Prize, International Reporting, 2005; Financial Times, most influential voice in the Nigerian public arena, 2006.

Addresses: Office—Timbuktu Media Plc., 28 Glamorgan Road, Parkwood 2195, PO Box 39, Wits 2050 Johannesburg, South Africa.

Returned to Rwanda

Olojede decided to return to Rwanda in 2004. Over several days he interviewed a Rwandan mother whose entire family had been killed in the genocide and who struggled to accept her young son, the product of gang rape and sexual slavery. Olojede found another such victim whose older children loved and protected their youngest sibling. He spoke to nuns who had watched their families butchered on the monastery grounds and he interviewed the murderer on death row. Olojede examined how religious leaders' complicity in the massacre had caused many Rwandans to abandon Catholicism. He also described ongoing attempts at reconciliation—traditional conflict resolution by village tribunals. His four-part series, "Genocide's Child," was awarded a Pulitzer, including $10,000 in prize money.

In December of 2004 Olojede accepted a buyout offer from Newsday. Olojede, his wife, a journalist and former editor of the Guardian on Sunday, and their two daughters moved to Johannesburg. There he began researching a book about the Rwandan genocide and broader African issues. He began speaking widely on government, corruption, the media, and citizen responsibility in Nigeria and other developing nations. He served as a member of the inaugural advisory board of the Global Integrity Alliance, a World Bank anticorruption initiative.

Olojede was particularly concerned with the development of indigenous African media. He told Firai Chideye of National Public Radio on April 8, 2005: "The Rwandan genocide simply proved that Africans are also capable of intolerable cruelty just as any other people…. There has always been this powerful unfounded imagery of Africa as this giant black hole, the heart of darkness. So the idea of approaching Africa as just a normal place where we want to try to chronicle the lives of its citizens … will change this attitude."

In 2004 Olojede founded Timbuktu Media, a newspaper and magazine publisher in Nigeria and South Africa dedicated to establishing the first continent-wide daily newspaper written from an African perspective. As he asked Nicholas Asego: "Why should we learn about what is happening in fellow African countries from the Western media?"

Selected writings

Books

Born to Run: The Story of Dele Giwa, Spectrum, 1987.

Periodicals

"Anikulapo-Kuti, Fela. 'My Life in Prison,'" Newswatch (Lagos, Nigeria), May 12, 1986, pp. 12-20.
"The Lost Generation-Boy-Soldiers Are Cast Morally Adrift," Seattle Times, December 9, 1992, p. A2.
"Rwandan Refugees Head for Home-'. We Prefer to Die in Our Country,'" Seattle Times, July 26, 1994, p. A1.
"Think Tank Spied to Help Apartheid," Seattle Times, July 17, 1995, p. A3.
"Any Word? How Newsday Got Its Journalists Out of Saddam's Prison," Columbia Journalism Review, May-June 2003, p. 48.
"Genocide's Child," Newsday, May 2-5, 2004.
"Conflict in Nigeria," Newsday, November 1, 2004, p. A.07.
"This Is How the Rot Begins," Zimbabwe Independent, November 10, 2006.

On-line

"Ask Nothing of God: The Good Society and Its Discontents," Aspen Institute, www.aspeninstitute.org/atf/cf/%7BDEB6F227-659B-4EC8-8F84-8DF23CA704F5%7D/DeleOlojede.pdf (January 29, 2007).
"The Challenge of Ethical Leadership in Africa," World Bank, www1.worldbank.org/devoutreach/september06/article.asp?id=368 (January 30, 2007).
"Post-Conflict Rwanda," World Bank, http://info.worldbank.org/etools/BSPAN/PresentationView.asp?PID=1545&EID=752 (January 3, 2007).

Sources

Periodicals

Financial Times, May 16, 2006, p. 3.

Jet, April 25, 2005, p. 40.

Sunday Standard (Nairobi, Kenya), November 12, 2006.

Village Voice, December 10-16, 2003, p. 34.

On-line

"Dele Olojede," Pulitzer, www.pulitzer.org/year/2005/international-reporting/bio/olojedebio.html (January 3, 2007).

"I Want the Children to Experience Africa," Africa Meets Africa, http://africameetsafrica.com/index.php?menuoption=article13 (January 30, 2007).

"'Life Has Been Complete Madness': African-Born Pulitzer Winner Catches His Breath," Maynard Institute, www.maynardije.org/columns/dickprince/050406_prince (January 3, 2007).

"Olojede: The Pulitzer Laureate Opens Up," Nigerian Muse, www.nigerianmuse.com/nigeriawatch/positivelyNaija/?u=Olojede_newspaper_editorials.htm (January 30, 2007).

"Pulitzer-Prize Winner Dele Olojede," National Public Radio, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4582608 (January 3, 2007).