Fisayo Soyombo, Ibidunni Ighodalo and the Danger of an Unlived Life

(Warning: This is going to be a very long read. Read to the end only if you want to get something out of life)

“Right before I die I gotta live.” {Kirk Franklin, Before I Die}

When the news of Mrs. Ibidunni Itua-Ighodalo’s death began to filter in on Sunday afternoon, I just wished and hoped it would be a lie.

I never met her during her lifetime. The only time I was at Trinity House was in 2016 during the service of songs for a senior friend who died dramatically on Christmas Day in 2015.

But then, she died and the eulogies started pouring in. All the people that knew her when she was alive. There was hardly any WhatsApp status I viewed that day that had nothing to say about her.

I decided to just look her up once again and then it dawned on me that the woman lived a full life even without living so long. She would have turned forty next month, but she died without any prior notice, leaving thousands of people who she had directly impacted mourning her departure.

While speaking with a client of mine that Sunday evening, she emphasized how Ibidunni’s death was a clarion call for her to do more than she was currently doing. She was going to ensure she died empty too.

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Today, I am not going to focus so much on the dead. I am going to focus on the living.

Have you heard about Fisayo Soyombo?

He is an investigative journalist who “came into the limelight” last year after he did an undercover investigation to unravel the malaise that has come to define the Nigerian criminal justice system.

Adopting the pseudonym, Ojo Olajumoke, he feigned an offence for which he was arrested and detained in police custody, arraigned in court and eventually remanded in prison.

Upon his release, he decided to tell the nauseating but not surprising story of how the criminal justice system in Nigeria is fraught with so much corruption and manipulation. The report was published in October 2019 and that instantly brought him to the limelight.

If you heard about him for the first time last year, you are not alone. Many people came to know his name for the first time at about the same time when he published that story.

I saw his name a few times in the past when I read some news stories online, but I never paid some serious attention to his name back then. It was after he wrote that three-part article on his experience in police custody, the kangaroo court session and life in prison, that his name came to be associated with something significant.

Before Fisayo ventured into investigative journalism, he was the Editor of an online newspaper, The Cable and also once served as the Editor of International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR).

For those who know anything about being an editor of a newspaper, you will understand that it is a position one can do anything to attain. During my days in the bank, the editors used to get the largest chunk of our media relation budget. This was because they determined what finally made it to publication and what did not.

If you are in their good books, you would not need to worry about negative press. If for any reason, they were forced to publish any bad story about you, they would have given you advance notice so you would prepare your mitigative action (more about this another day).

To curry their favour, Brand Managers and Heads of Marketing Communications would do anything to ensure they are ‘well taken care of’.

So, it was this role Fisayo Soyombo abandoned on May 31, 2019 to go chase his dream of becoming an investigative journalist, despite the fact that he had to do it on a freelance basis. This meant there was not going to be any guaranteed income, as he would have to depend on stipends and the goodwill of people who appreciated the work he was doing.

If giving up certainty for uncertainty was not enough problem, he faced constant threats to his life after he exposed the filthy operations of the police, the judiciary and the Nigerian prison system. At some point, he had to go into hiding.

Sadly, that firsthand investigation has not led to any tangible action by the Nigerian government. We have gone back to business as usual.

But then, that’s not my reason for writing this article.

The Nigerian government might not have done anything about the report, but the international community took notice.

On April 7, 2020, he became the only African to be longlisted out of ten journalists around the world for the One World Media International Journalist of the Year Prize. This long list had journalists from the BBC, Al Jazeera, Independent, Sky News, Vice News and other international media houses.

When the shortlist was released some weeks later, he was one of the three journalists that made the cut. The others were John Sudworth of the BBC and Alex Crawford of Sky News.

The prize might have finally gone to John Sudworth of the BBC, but Fisayo Soyombo’s name is now on the international stage and his work can never be forgotten any time soon.

Earlier this year, he was co-winner of the People Journalism Prize for Africa 2019 (PJPA) and also got an Honourable Mention at the Anthony Lewis Journalism Prize ceremony in Washington DC on June 2, 2020.

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Now, this is the interesting twist to the whole thing.

When he wrote a thread on the anniversary of his decision this year, he said that some people had described him as “one of Nigeria's unknown but quietly emerging writing talents”, while some others chose to describe him as a “young reporter” or “fast-rising investigative journalist”.

For someone who started journalism some fifteen years ago, that should normally come across as derogatory. On the contrary, Fisayo sees all of that as a compliment. It was a testimony to the great work he had done within the space of one year.

All the work he had done the fourteen years before seemed to pale in significance when compared to the groundbreaking work he did in twelve months. He has now established himself as an authoritative voice when it comes to investigative journalism in Nigeria and Africa. Who says you need a hundred years to make a mark?

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For those of you who are still afraid of taking that bold step, I will like to advise you in Fisayo’s words: “don’t let your fears or any negative talker prevent you from taking that step you’ve always wanted to…

“Take up that new job, launch that business idea, relocate to that city, walk up to that lady you’re dying for, get out of that unholy alliance.”

Earlier this week, a former colleague of mine who we joined the bank together in 2011 reached out to me. She said she had resigned from her banking job despite not having a fall-back plan. When I asked what her reason was for taking such a drastic decision, she told me she wanted more from life and she was tired of being trapped in the banking system. She believed that it would be easier to think clearly if she is no longer imprisoned by the monthly alerts.

When I heard that, I smiled because I had been there. I had walked away from my banking job in 2017 and also walked away from an FMCG company a year later when the role I was given did not really match up with what they put out in the job description advertised.

I did not have millions saved up in my bank account and my wife was heavily pregnant at that time. I had my fears and all, but beyond the fears, I was more afraid of living an unfulfilled life.

By the time I launched a digital marketing company with some friends in 2018, I knew the road would be rough but I was willing to brave it because I believed it was easier to go through pain on the road to success than live with the pain of regrets.

It was the American Spoken Word Artist, Prince Ea (look him up on YouTube) that once remarked, “everybody dies but not everybody lives.” He went further to say that it “is not death most people are afraid of. It is getting to the end of life, only to realize that you never truly lived.”

My people have a proverb that says, “any time a man wakes up is his morning.”

Your morning will only start the very moment you choose to finally do what you have been dreading for so long.

It will start when you embrace your calling and shut out every form of doubt that keeps you down.

Don’t waste the remaining years of your life trapped in fear.

Don’t allow the little baby on your inside die without seeing the light of day.

Don’t feed your dreams to your doubts for breakfast when you can be so much more.

All that you are now is not all you can be. You actually can be much more.

Like John Obidi would say, honour your destiny.

Peace.

Photo Credit: Getty