TUNDE FAGBENLE

About

Born October 4, 1947 in Zaria, Nigeria, Tunde Fagbenle grew up in Minna where he had his primary school education. He was educated at Kiriji Memorial College, Igbajo and Goldsmiths College, University of London.

1989 - 1992
Publisher, Newspaper for Nigerians in the Diaspora
1996
Founded UK based Movement for Democracy & Human rights in Nigeria
1995 - 2017
Columnist, Sunday Punch Newspaper
2017 - Present
Founder, Values Volunteers

Tunde Fagbenle pioneered tourism journalism in Nigeria in the 1970s as Managing Editor of TRAVELS, a “Business-travels & Tourism” magazine published by the Biscordint Group, Western House, Lagos. In 1984 he founded Alfa Communications Limited, publishers of the authoritative Nigeria Banking Annual (incorporating Who’s Who in Banking) that instituted Banker of the Year Award.

Tunde Fagbenle was publisher of London based Nigeria HomeNews weekly newspaper – newspaper for Nigerians in the Diaspora – from 1989 to 1992. He founded the UK based Movement for Democracy & Human Rights in Nigeria (MDHRN) whose activism together with his vitriolic newspaper columns earned him a stint of solitary confinement by the General Abacha military government in 1996. Fagbenle began writing his weekly newspaper column in 1995 in The Punch newspaper and subsequently appeared in The Tribune and The Daily Trust newspapers. He was the popular columnist on back-page of Sunday Punch newspaper till 2017. Mr. Fagbenle is the founder/Chairman of Foundation for Values & Normative Change, aka Values Volunteers, an NGO that seeks to promote and inculcate positive values in Nigeria as a sine qua non for any hope of development. He has authored 3 books: Nigeria: This Is My Country, Damn It! (2000); Nigeria – A Thousand Laughs, A Thousand Cries (2010); And That’s Saying It The Way It Is (2017).

Fagbenle gives as much as he takes. He praises effusively, rolls with the punches and, damn it, as anyone at the receiving end of his attack might agree, he strikes like a rattlesnake. Love or hate him, you can hardly deny the honesty in his writings

Azu IshiekweneMD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview