27 yrs after parcel bomb: I could have been killed like Dele Giwa – Kayode Soyinka

Three years into his education at the Baptist Boys High School in Abeokuta, his father was retired from the Nigerian Tobacco Company and couldn’t get another job because he had come of age since child-bearing didn’t happen quickly for him. This was unfortunately when he needed to see his six children through school! The second child, Kayode Soyinka,

therefore decided to sacrifice his university education for his elder brother and siblings, and this soon landed him in the world of print journalism as a reporter with the defunct Daily Sketch in Ibadan at age 18 in 1976.

Despite the agony of watching his stories dumped in the news editor and sub editors’ waste baskets and never getting published for months, doggedness spurred him on as in two years, he transformed into a celebrity journalist. He was soon appointed the London Correspondent; a position he retained when he joined the defunct Concord Group at  22, working at the same time as its Bureau Chief.

Kayode also worked with the legendary editor Peter Enahoro and Dele Giwa until his 

mastery of the ropes culminated in the birth of Africa Today, a pan-African news magazine 

presently on international news stands in about 90 countries around the world. The author 

of ‘Diplomatic Baggage: Mossad and Nigeria  – The Dikko Story’, a book  used in many 

universities around the world, Kayode recounts his thirty-seven year romance with 

journalism just a day to his 30th wedding anniversary.