From the exchequer to the editorial suite: Dilating the intra-professional mutations of Onyema Ugochukwu

Abstract

This study seeks to dilate the professional enterprise of Onyema Ugochukwu, one of the most respected practitioners and influencers of  contemporary media practice and specialised journalism in Nigeria. It investigates his professional background as an economist and banker,  through his detour into the media as progenitor of a new genre of technicalized reportage, and a seasoned manager in one of Nigeria’s most  important newspapers in its time, the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc. It also scrutinises his later undertakings in political communication and public  information management in his polyvalent media career over a period of five decades. Deploying the historicanalytic method, this article probes the  career course of Ugochukwu as a reporter, writer, editor, editorial director, political publicist and presidential communicator. This is to  appropriately define his contributions to these aspects of the gamut of media practice, and to national growth. It successfully establishes that  Ugochukwu has contributed immensely to the elevation and standardization of media practice and its repositioning as a profession which  commands scholarship and intellectualism in the furtherance of national development.