Otunba Olufemi Salako turned a yr older on October 8, and anybody who has adopted Nigerian media over the previous decade will recognise why that date mattered past his speedy circle.
Salako is the Publisher of Triangle News International, a platform he constructed from its Ilaro, Ogun State roots into certainly one of Nigeria’s extra revered names in investigative journalism. What started as a Nigerian publication now has worldwide headquarters in London.
For the previous 5 years, Salako has organised the Face of Africa Leadership Awards within the United Kingdom, an annual occasion honouring Africans whose management shapes communities and establishments throughout the continent and its diaspora.
The 2025 version, marking Triangle’s tenth anniversary, was hosted at the Great Hall of King’s College London’s Strand Campus, putting an African media model inside certainly one of Britain’s most storied tutorial venues. The subsequent version strikes to Oxford in April 2027.
What makes Salako’s trajectory value noting is how intentionally it has moved from reporting tales to convening the individuals these tales are about. He has offered award nominations on to conventional rulers, together with the Ooni of Ife, thereby putting himself inside rooms most journalists solely cowl from outdoors.
That shift from chronicler to convener isn’t quite common in Nigerian media, the place publishers usually keep mounted to 1 facet of the story. Salako seems to have constructed a platform versatile sufficient to do each with out dropping credibility on both facet. His affect now reveals up much less in particular person headlines than within the youthful journalists who level to his profession as proof {that a} small Nigerian publication can develop into one thing with real worldwide attain.
As he marks one other yr, the truthful measure of Salako’s milestone isn’t the awards he has collected however the mannequin he has constructed: one the place African excellence will get a stage, and the tales behind it get instructed correctly.
