Unilag mass comm felicitates four alumni conferred with national honour
The Head of the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos, Prof. Oluruntola Sunday, has congratulated four distinguished alumni of the department — Professor Olatunji Dare, Bayo Onanuga, Dare Babarinsa, and Late Dr. Yinma Sen — who were among those conferred with the revered national honour of the Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON) by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu while delivering his Democracy Day speech at a joint session of the National Assembly last Thursday.
According to the president, they were awarded for their immense contributions to the development of the nation and humanity. Reacting to the awards, Sunday congratulated the awardees for being exemplary ambassadors of the department and UNILAG. He urged them not to relent in their contributions to the development of journalism, journalism education, and the growth of democracy in Nigeria.
Dare is an erudite scholar of journalism who taught at the Department of Mass Communication, UNILAG, where he was also the first student of the department to finish with a first-class degree. As part of an illustrious career which commenced upon graduation, he has served as editorial page editor and chair of the editorial board of Nigeria’s leading newspaper, The Guardian.
In 1994, Nigeria’s military government shut down The Guardian because of its editorial outspokenness. The following year, Dare was awarded the Louis M. Lyon’s Prize for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, recognising his steadfast commitment to journalism’s best practices.
After The Guardian apologised to the military government, Dare resigned his position at the newspaper and relocated to the United States in 1996 to take up a faculty position at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois.
The same year, he was awarded the Hammet/Hellman Grant for Courage in the face of Political Persecution by Human Rights Watch, an accolade which recognised that phase of his career. He was a columnist at The Nation for decades until last year, when he retired after his 80th birthday.
Fellow recipient, Onanuga, is similarly an alumnus of the Department of Mass Communication, UNILAG, where he completed his degree in 1980. He has played a pivotal role in the Nigerian journalism space, co-founding TheNews and P.M. News in the early 1990s, and serving as News Agency of Nigeria’s (NAN) Managing Director in 2018. He directed the media strategy for the Tinubu/Shettima 2023 presidential campaign and now serves as Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Tinubu.
The third awardee, Babarinsa, is a veteran journalist, who served as former Executive Director of TELL magazine, Editor-in-Chief of The Westerner, and is now Chairman/Managing Director of Gaskiya Media Limited.
The late Yinma Sen, a prominent pro-democracy advocate and respected public intellectual, was awarded posthumously for his various contributions to the nation’s governance and unity. Also an alumnus of the Mass Communication Department at UNILAG, he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1974 and went on to pursue a distinguished career spanning fields such as media and public relations, politics, civil society, and academia.
