SOLA BALOGUN: CAMPUS EXPERIENCE THAT CHANGED HIS DESTINY

Sola Balogun has a deep interest in Drama and theatre and that was why he set out on the journey to becoming a dramatist in the University of Ibadan’s Department of Theatre Arts. He loves for the theatre was so much that when he was asked to choose between English and theatre which he was combining at that time, he choose theatre.

 His destiny took a twit in his final year when he was elected  Editor of his departmental magazine, The Masque which Ruben Abati, almost completing his Ph. D then, served as the Editorial Chairman. Sola recalls: “The unique experience of getting The Masque published, courtesy Prof Femi Osofiason, actually triggered my interest in professional journalism. By the time I graduated in 1990, my interest in journalism had grown to the extent that I left the NYSC in 1991 to join the Arts Desk of the Guardian.”

He was attached to the Guardian in 1991 on a long mandatory apprenticeship until he was promoted to staff correspondent in 1995. At the Daily independent, he worked as the Arts Editor until The Sun was born in 2002 where he went to work as the pioneer Arts Editor.

He has been in the beat of arts journalism for twenty-three years despite the less attractive and juicy nature of the beat. He explained that “both education and passion has sustained my interest in the arts.” He owe whatever success he has made in journalism to journalism icons like Dele Giwa,  Den Tomoloju, Femi Adesina among other.

Sola Balogun has been until recently the Art Editor of The Sun Nigeria Ltd . It was under his watch as the Arts Editor that The Sun started their monthly insert Literary Review “an intellectual arm of the paper that promote literature and writers.” He has been in the field of journalism for twenty three years and it has earned him fame, popularity and wealth.

Today he is back at the ivory tower impacting the knowledge of theatre, his fist love, at the Federal University Oye-Ekiti.