Sunny Ojeagbase, the former soldier who created Nigeria’s biggest sports newspaper, dies at 71
On Sunday, February 26 2022, Emmanuel Sunny Ojeagbase died in a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, in the US, after a brief illness. He was 71. He lived an illustrious life, and his contribution to the Nigerian media space, particularly sports media, were significant.
Ojeagbase was born on December 31, 1950, in present-day Osun state. Although his parents were from Edo state, he grew up and went to school in Osogbo, attending St. James’s Primary School, graduating in 1962. He briefly worked as a printer trainee and trained as a mechanic before joining the Nigerian army in 1976.
It was in the army that Ojeagbase began to write. From his post in New Busa, which was then in Kwara state, he wrote sports articles as a freelancer for the Nigerian Herald newspaper in Ilorin; then New Nigerian newspaper based in Kaduna; and then finally the Daily Times. Solomon Babatunde Oshuntolu, the Daily Times Sports editor, was impressed with the young soldier who wrote beautifully and helped publish his work.
In 1978, Ojeagbase left the army and continued to write as a freelancer for Daily Times before Oshuntolu offered him employment a year later, thus beginning his journalism career.
His printing training came in handy as a journalist, and he grew a reputation for turning in his already typed articles on time. When the National Concord Newspaper was launched in 1980, Ojeagbase joined as a reporter. He rose to the position of Group Sports Editor within two years.
His style of sports reporting soon caught the attention of readers. His vivid description of sporting events presented with simple and colourful language interested his audience. Fabio Lanipekun, former Director of Sports at the Nigerian Television Authority, said about Ojeagbase’s contribution to sport reporting at National Concord: “For the first time, Nigerians were feasted with imaginative display of sports stories from the front page to the center spread, embellished with bold, captivating pictures that seemed to leap out of the pages.”
When The Guardian launched in 1983, Ojeagbase was asked to join as sports editor. In that period, he also obtained a diploma in mass communication from the University of Lagos. He spent a year at the Guardian before resigning to establish Sports Souvenir, a weekly. It struggled to break into the market, being the first sport-focused paper.
But Ojeagbase remained undaunted in his goal of producing only sport-related content. In 1985, the journalist introduced Complete Football after registering Complete Communication, a monthly magazine that focused on football news reports and analysis. This coincided with the golden age of Nigerian football growth and helped to make the paper a household name. In that period, Nigeria qualified for the 1994 FIFA World Cup for the first time and also won the Olympic Gold medal in football at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. With limited access to real-time viewing of the football matches, many Nigerians relied on the newspaper to provide vivid reports of the sporting events.
The success of the magazine spurred the launch of Complete Football International, which was distributed to other African countries and some parts of Europe and America, Complete Football Extra and International Soccer Review.
It was in 1995, aged 45, that he launched Complete Sport, which would go on to be the largest distributed sport newspaper in Nigeria. In the same year, he established an NGO, Success Attitude Development Center, with his wife, Esther, which focused on raising “successful entrepreneurs in the data-driven global digital economy whose success in business is based on fear of God, a burning desire to care for their families and unquenchable thirst to give back to their communities.” He was also ordained as a pastor
Tributes have continued to pour in for the journalist and publisher. President Muhammadu Buhari commiserated with his wife “who worked with her husband in publishing, ministry, and charity.” In a tweet, Simon Kolawole, the publisher of TheCable, expressed sadness at his demise, revealing that Ojeagbase gave him his first job straight out of NYSC. Former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, described him as “a trailblazer who left indelible marks in sports journalism and publishing, ministry and charity.” The minister of youth and sport, Sunday Dare, prayed that “God should comfort the late publisher’s family, friends and colleagues and give them the fortitude to bear the huge loss which he described as “monumental”.
