Akande’s appointment, according to an online news medium, Premium
Times, would be among several others to be announced Monday or Tuesday.
Under the present arrangement in the presidency, there would be only
one presidential media and communication office but that individual
appointees would be given separate responsibilities.
Akande would be deployed to work with Osinbajo, our sources said.
It is not clear whether the journalist has returned to Nigeria to take
up the appointment. He could not be reached on his US telephone
yesterday.
He was however in Nigeria in May to cover the inauguration ceremony for
his media agency, ‘Empowered Newswire’. He returned to the US shortly
afterwards.
Akande, a pastor, was a former Editor of Saturday Tribune.
He cut his journalism teeth at The Guardian in 1989, and was a foundation staff of The NEWS magazine.
He moved to the United States in 1997 after agents of then dictator,
Sani Abacha, began harassing him over perceived critical stance of his
paper (Saturday Tribune) against the administration.
According to his brief bio on the website of the CANUSA, a Christian
organisation for which he works as executive director, Akande is
regarded as “the longest serving African correspondent at the United
Nations, and the only Nigerian journalist so far to have interviewed a
sitting American president in the White House when he interviewed former
President George W. Bush.
“He has also exclusively interviewed American folk hero, General Colin
Powell, as well as billionaires like Microsoft founder ,Bill Gates,
Donald Trump and several African leaders and presidents.”
An adjunct college professor, Akande worked with leading American
newspapers including the Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Newsday.
He worked briefly at the United Nations as a press officer and later as advocacy consultant between 2002 and 2004.
source:ThisDayLive
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