By Fredrick Femi Robinson
 Published
December 28th, 2008
I was searching for some information on the internet when I
came across an interview Mr. Sam Omatseye had with Chief
Wale Adenuga. I am glad I read it today 24th of December
2008. I wish you will give me a chance to set the records
straight before people tarnish the good name I have tried to
build all these years. I am aware that Chief Wale Adenuga
has just been honored by the Federal Government; an award I
believe he deserves. However Chief Adenuga has an apology he
has to make to me and many Nigerians.
Chief Wale Adenuga came to my office in Unilag requesting
that he teamed up with me in publishing Bazukka the first
indigenous comic magazine for school children. Do not forget
that at that time I was the Village Headmaster and the whole
nation saw me as a role model. He showed me some of the
things he would like us to include in subsequent issues of
Bazukka if we wanted it to sell. It was obvious he had just
left the University because he wanted me to be involved in
publishing the 'campus like' junk they use in attacking
female students. I told him those him those who
conceptualized the publication of Bazukka would not share
his beliefs. The founding artists and writers were Mr.
Joseph Afolabi, Mr. Kayode Idowu products of Yaba College
and the Late Miss Ekefre product of Unilag and myself.
As far as I was concerned there was no competition between
Bazukka and Ikebe Super. Bazukka was publishing educative
materials which we believe parents should be able to buy for
their children. There was no time I wrote a petition to the
ministry about Ikebe Super. I know that at a national book
publishing workshop organize in Unilag, I presented a paper
in which I warned that lack of educative comic materials for
our children would seriously affect our reading culture. I
warned that immoral comic magazines which were easily
available on the news stands should be discouraged. If we
can ban selling of hemp on the streets why must we allow
immoral comics to be sold to school children on the streets?
What ever happened with the communiqué issued by the
ministry after the workshop couldn’t have been my fault?
I am surprised that the names of the likes of Alhaji
Babatunde Ajose, the father of Journalism and Otunba Segun
Osoba a contemporary and mate whose journalistic ideologies
I share could be referred to by Chief Wale Adenuga as one of
those who saw the distribution of pornographic comic
magazines as justified. That statement not only diminishes
the person of the late Alhaji Babatunde Ajose and Otunba
Segun Osoba, it is a disgrace to the profession itself.
I am convinced; the two respectable icons in journalism were
never involved in the arrest saga Chief Adenuga is talking
about. If they were, they would have asked to see the comic
publications in question. I am sure Otunba Segun Osoba would
have called me and talked to me if he was approached. He was
not a Governor then ; and for your information Segun Osoba ,
Chief Sam Amuka, I and other top journalists were always
meeting at parties then.
I have nothing against competition. It is on record that I
have pioneered so many ideas from which people have made it
and I do not jealous them. If Government and the people on
Nigeria have not recognized it, perhaps they would when I am
dead. For example I pioneered independent Television
productions in Nigeria with NTA. To date Chief Wale Adenuga
is one of the beneficiaries of that excercise. I saw Chief
Wale Adenuga last, when he came to ask to join in publishing
Bazukka. If he was told I did not like him, has he had the
courage to ask me why?
Yes I still maintain that it was wrong to publish the kind
of cartoon drawings Chief Wale Adenuga published in Ikebe
Super in those days. I am angry he was instrumental for
making them easily available to schools. I tried to tell him
but he was avoiding me. Would Chief Adenuga know how many
children those publications encouraged to be promiscuous?
You will remember that those were the days when young girls
boycotted classes in order to service some brothels. I am
surprised he is happy to be associated with Ikebe Super.
Will Chief Wale Adenuga permit a publisher of such comics to
sell them in his wife’s school today? I wish he knows the
families that became victims of his Ikebe Super
publications. Families whose little once put into practice
those things he published in his Ikebe Super and became
addicts. Please you can confront Chief Wale Adenuga with
these facts. Femi Robinson
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