Honoured with the 2013 Lifetime Award for Media Excellence was the veteran Amma Ogan, alias, “Correct Yellow” as the vendors of Kakawa street nicknamed her, when she started her journalistic career at the Daily Times in 1978, working variously as Senate Correspondent, Staff Writer, Senior Correspondent, and Editorial Board Member Daily Times until 1982.
In 1983 she joined The Guardian as Senior Correspondent and rose through the pole serving as National Assembly Bureau Chief, Editor Sunday Supplement, The Guardian on Sunday, Ag. Features Editor, The Guardian, Editorial Board Member, The Guardian, Deputy Editor, The Guardian, and finally Editor, The Guardian on Sunday. She brought substance and depth to the paper as editor and worked tirelessly closing at very odd hours.
Between 1990 and 1999, Amma worked in New York first as Sunday Times correspondent, and serving as Contributing Editor, Colors- an avant garde magazine of social affairs published in New York and Rome. She also served as a Contributor for Africa Recovery, a journal of African economic and development issues published by the United Nations in New York; also as Assistant Editor and Columnist, The Sunday Independent, Johannesburg, South Africa and as Copy Editor, 21st Century, Beijing, China published by China Daily.
In 2008, Amma collaborated with her husband to set up Timbuktu Media which published NEXT newspapers where she served as Director of Editorials, as the person in full charge of all matters relating to news content development. She also kept a column that Olatunji Dare remarked, “infused her wry observations and reflections with sociological insights that opened the readers’ eyes and minds.”
Calm and firm, Amma brings intelligence and wisdom, to the definition of her journalistic responsibilities. She graduated from the University of Sussex in 1977, and speaks English, French, Chinese, and Igbo. She lives in Johannesburg and New York.
Amma Ogan, one of our very best, remains worthy of honour for her years of exemplary ethics, true professionalism and unparallel courage on the beat.
