79 Cheers For Fabio Lanipekun, The Encyclopaedia Of Nigerian Sports
Y OU1989
It was an encounter of the rarest kind. just do not get to meet with 3 of the greatest sportscasters in Nigerian history in one place, for an entire week, talking food, family and football. It rarely happens like that.
But that was what happened to me in 1989. Thinking about it now, I was a bit naive. I could have made bigger capital of the meeting offered by properly documenting it for history. I didn’t and memory fades and fails with time. It has been almost 32 years since then. Don’t blame me, I was a rookie journalist.
It was my very first assignment as an ‘ untrained’ reporter. I say so because I never had any formal training as a journalist even though I had been writing a column in the Sunday Tribune 10 years before, since 1979, at the height of my football career.
Banji Ogundele, previously of the Daily Times, had moved to Ibadan to take up his new appointment as Editor of Sunday Tribune. He kicked it all off when he saw some of my work ( writing and illustrating) as the editor of a campus magazine when I was at the Polytechnic, and suggested that I could pen my peculiar football experiences in a special column in his weekend newspaper.
It sounded interesting and I took up the challenge. That’s how I became, probably, the first African football player to maintain a newspaper column.
That was my baptism into journalism, providing a footballer’s perspective of things on and off the football field.
Banji had been my friend in Lagos, one of a group of renowned journalists around ‘ sports city’. I don’t recall who made the connection, but I was welcomed into their fold and integrated seamlessly into their social circuit, a completely different world from the football field. The group included Dayo Sobowale, Yinka Craig, Toyin
Makanju, Philip Phil Ebosie, Tunde Oloyede and so on. It was an honour and a privilege to walk in their circle.
That was how Banji made me to bite the writing bug, and I started to write without any formal compass.
By 1989 when I arrived the Scottish City of Glasgow and ran into the trio of Tolu Fatoyinbo, Ernest Okonkwo, ( both, sports commentators in Radio Nigeria) and Fabio Lanipekun ( television commentator in NTA), I had ended my football career five years before, practised as a Senior
Industrial Engineer for 2 years at the Western State Industrial Investment and Credit Corporation, WSIICC ( from 1984 to 1986) and joined Sunny Obazu- Ojeagbase ( S. O) as a columnist in the bouquet of sports publications from his stable since 1984. I was a writer, not a reporter.
So, when the FIFA Under- 17 Championship in Glasgow came along in 1989, although I was not originally scheduled to attend, but having secured a work permit to reside and work in the UK, and secured part- sponsorship of the trip, I convinced S. O that I should go in order to experience, firsthand, the world of sports reportage of an international event and to write about it from a football player’s angle.
That’s how I plunged into the deep end of sports journalism under the tutelage of
S. O, and fulfilled my aspiration - observing and reporting the matches involving Nigeria’s Under- 17 national team at that year’s FIFA Championship. The Nigerian team was loaded with very talented youngsters like Victor Ikpeba, Godwin Okpara, and others. They put up such a great show that Pele, who was a special guest of FIFA at the event, predicted that Nigerian youngsters would win the World Cup before the end of the last Century.
So, besides having my baptism as a reporter at a global event, the icing on the cake was the rare opportunity to share time and space, upclose for several days, with three masters of radio and television broadcast in Nigeria at the championship. For several days, I had unfettered access to them. I shared lunches and great conversations, mostly around his family, with Ernest
Okonkwo. I went shopping a few times with Tolu Fatoyinbo as we discussed mostly social life in the Lagos and Ibadan axis. It was with Uncle Fabio, who rarely ventured out of the hotel except when he had to do his journalistic work at the stadium, that we had the most productive conversations on sports and television in the lounge of the hotel where we all stayed together.
Every time we all met together I would quietly just sit and listen to them share their incredible stories as they traveled the world covering all the major sporting events. It was a fascinating and invaluable experience.
It was that trip and my interaction with Uncle Fabio in particular that ignited my interest and incursion into the world of broadcasting - television.
My conversation with him about ‘ Sports Spectacular’ on NTA, a sports program anchored by Chuka Momah and Yinka Craig, opened my eyes to the possibility of becoming only the second independently produced sports program on Nigerian television.
Sports Spectacular, mostly great boxing fights from the past, was the first. Uncle Fabio told me I could be the second if I chose to go that way in sports journalism. He promised to guide and support me. That was the birthing of my interest and subsequent foray into television documentaries and production. When we returned to Nigeria, I visited him in the NTA sports office inside the National
Stadium, in Surulere, Lagos.
Surrounded by tapes of sports events and matches from the past, he triggered my interest to retrieve some footages of my own matches. He gave me advise and support that eventually led to a career in television presentation and production.
Meanwhile, Chris Ebie, also of NTA, took me under his wings, offered me a 4- minutes weekly slot on Livi Ajuonuma’s ‘ The Sunday Show’ on NTA, to taught me how to present the sports segment which was mostly a prepackaged American sports program called the ‘ George Michael Sports Machine’.
Within a few short months after returning from Glasgow, I was deep in the heart of sports journalism, getting first- hand and onthe- job experiences in both television and the print media. But it was television that was more challenging, more glamorous, and much more rewarding.
Uncle Fabio’s ‘ hands and legs’ were in my making. His mantras were strict disciple, moral uprightness and professionalism. He was also a great writer.
When I decided to write my first book, “The history of Nigerian Football - 1960 to 1990” in 1991, it was to him I went for the contribution of the history of the media in Nigerian football. Within a week I had his script, a compelling read of the genesis and journey of the media in Nigerian sports.
After that experience, my visits to him became routine. He was a repository of information of the totality of Nigerian sports. He was always available to talk sports and grant interviews. He knew everything by heart, never consulting to extract names, dates and events from his detailed mind. He was, indeed, a great encyçlopaedia of Nigerian sports. No wonder, he titled his own weekly column that he religiously maintained until recently, for decades in the Sunday Tribune, “The Grandmaster”. It was very apt.
Uncle Fabio offered me easy access to footages and tapes in the NTA archives and never held back anything or information that I needed.
Getting very close to him in 1989 in Glasgow was the opener to a new world in my life. When I was to consult for Rod Hay, an Australian Film producer, in 1993 for the production of ‘ The Sleeping Giants’ series, a global 6- part documentary on the 5 African countries that had qualified for the 1994 World Cup, Uncle Fabio was a rich and deep source of information for the documentary.
All those experiences deepened my relationship with him. I owe a great deal of my venture and success in television, in particular, to Fabio Lanipekun.
That’s why as the celebrations of his 79th birthday since the 2nd of March, I am joining millions of his fans and followers on television and his column in the newspaper, to wish him well.
It is very shocking that, although he was a recipient of the national sports merit award some years ago, the federal government has not found it worthy to give this pioneer of sports casting on Nigerian television, this teacher and mentor of journalists, this encyclopaedia of Nigerian sports history, this doyen of professional sports journalism, a national honour that could represent the country’s gratitude to man that served sports, journalism and the country so well.
I hope that can still be done sooner rather than later.
This is a call to all those that drank from his well of tutelage to join in this clarion call.