Dele Alake Biography
Henry Dele Alake Listen is a journalist, activist, and technocrat from Nigeria. He was born on October 6, 1956, and is known as one of the heroes of Nigeria’s democracy. He used to be the commissioner for information and strategy in Lagos State from 1999 to 2007. This was when Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was the governor of Lagos State. He got involved in active politics in Nigeria because he was Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola’s communication advisor and close friend.
Abiola was the winner of the June 12 presidential election in Nigeria in 1993 that was thrown out. In December 2014, Dele Alake made a comeback in Nigerian politics when he was hired as the director of Media and Communication of the Buhari Campaign Organisation. His job was to help General Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s former head of state, win the country’s presidential election in February 2015.
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Education
From 1961 to 1967, Alake went to the Surulere Baptist Primary School in the Lagos neighborhood of Surulere. He later went to Christ’s School Ado Ekiti, where he got his West African School Certificate.
Between 1973 and 1975, he went to Igbobi College in Yaba, Lagos, to get his Higher School Certificate. During that time, he got his General Certificate of Education. Later in 1975, he went to the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, to get a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Political Science. He graduated in 1978. Later, he went back to the same school and got a master’s degree in Mass Communications in 1981.
Journalism career
Alake got his start in journalism when he joined the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and worked at the Ogun State Broadcasting Corporation (OGBC). Nigeria’s government required everyone to do one year of national service. After that, Alake got a job as a Senior Sub-Editor at the Lagos State Broadcasting Corporation (LSBC), where he worked until 1980.
He had been an Officer in Charge of Current Affairs and a Senior Officer in Charge of Current Affairs. In 1983, he was given the title of Principal Current Affairs Officer. Alake’s experience in broadcasting helped set up Lagos Television (L TV 8), which is a sister station to the one he worked for, the Lagos State Broadcasting Corporation. After doing well as a journalist for radio and TV, Alake switched to the print media.
At the end of 1985, he started working as a writer and editor for the Concord Press, which owned the National Concord and Sunday Concord newspapers. After working for a year, he started writing a column for the National Concord, which he did until 1989. He was named editor of Sunday Concord later that year, a job he held until 1995. Before that, he wrote a column for the Sunday Concord as well. He became editor of the National Concord later in 1995, a job he held until June 1999.
Politics
Alake got involved in politics when his boss and mentor, the late Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola (publisher of the Concord Group of Newspapers), asked him to be his Adviser on Information to help Abiola run for president in 1993 and win. Even though he was the editor of Sunday Concord, Alake was right in the middle of the electioneering that helped business magnate M.K.O. Abiola win the controversial Nigerian presidential election on June 12, 1993. [needs citation]
In the wake of the arbitrary cancellation of the presidential election result, Alake was terrorized and tortured by the dictatorial junta of Late General Sani Abacha because he was honest and brave enough to push for the 12 June 1993 Presidential Election to be overturned.
Alake then went into exile, where he met and worked with other patriots like Senator Bola Tinubu, Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade (Ret. ), Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, Chief John Oyegun, and other leaders of the National Democratic Coalition of Nigeria, NADECO. From there, Alake kept up the hard fight to bring democracy back. In 1995, when the Concord Press was reopened, he went back to Nigeria.
Senator Bola Tinubu, who was governor of Lagos State at the time, named Alake to be his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy in June 1999. After the old Bureau of Information and Strategy was turned back into a ministry on October 6, 1999, Alake became the State Commissioner for Information and Strategy.
He held this job and did a good job of it until 2007. Before he was put in charge of Lagos State Information, the ministry was called the Ministry of Information, Sports, and Culture. As soon as he got into office, Alake asked the governor for permission to change the Ministry of Information and Strategy. He wanted to get rid of the ministries of culture and sports to make the ministry more relevant and active to deal with the challenges of modern information management in an emerging democracy.
The governor agreed. Alake was the first person in Nigeria’s history to be in charge of information and strategy. In 2010, Alake said that he wanted to run for the Ekiti Central senatorial seat in Ekiti State. His hopes for politics were cut short, though, when a fight within his own party forced him to drop out of the race for senator. Alake was wrongly mentioned in a Nigerian news story that said a traditional ruler had tried to kill a man named Dele Alake. After the story caused confusion, Dele Alake released a statement that disproved it and asked all the news outlets that had reported it to publish a correction.
Awards and associations
Alake used to be the vice president of the Nigerian Guild of Editors. He is a member of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the West African Union of Journalists, among other national, regional, and international groups. He has also won a number of awards and honors for his good work as a journalist. He won the International Gold Award from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 2000, as well as the Special Recognition Award from Radio Lagos and the Public Service Award from ECHNONEWS. He used to be chairman of the Lagos State Broadcasting Corporation Chapel of the N.U.J. and is now a Fellow of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (E.N.G.E).
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