Peace Fekumo Sinclair gets excited whenever she is assigned to go around town and grab a story. She goes about it with a sense of mission, with an awareness that she is in the process of making history, and glad to be a part of it. She demonstrated that passion when she was recruited into the editorial team that gathered bits and pieces of news for the maiden magazine story with which The Tide on Sunday broke new grounds in Port Harcourt in the last days of military rule.
The assignment was to fish out everything there was to know about Harcourt, the white man after whom Port Harcourt was named. Like her colleagues, Sinclair met with the high and low, out in the street and into exclusive offices, digging for what she could find and bring back to her editors. Her contributions came in useful, and the story emerged as a winning copy that established the reputation of the paper as the newest dazzle on the news stands in the Garden City and beyond.
Since then, Sinclair has contributed to several exclusive stories, and written many of her own, all of them proudly displaying her by-line. From the beginning, she had no doubt about what she wanted to do in life. She wanted to be a journalist, simple and short. She did not need anyone to tell her to take the first step when she enrolled at the Times Journalism Institute, Imam Dauda Close, off Bode Thomas Street, Surulere, Lagos, and dutifully took lessons on how to write a news story, how to write a features story, and how to write a magazine story.
For all of two years, from 1991 to1992, she got to know what makes media houses tick, and she resolved to be in the thick of the action. Sinclair thought that she stood a better chance in her chosen career if she equipped herself with a degree in History, and she was right. She pursued the course with great vigour and determination at the University of Port Harcourt, enrolling in 2002 and graduating four years later in 2006.
Now she can put all her stories in proper historical context. The events of the day go all the way to make history, and therefore it was right and proper to report the news of the day with probity and objectivity, always in the light of history. She subscribes to the dictum that journalism is history written in a hurry. Not surprisingly, Sinclair has already finished course work on her Masters degree in History & Diplomacy, and she is merely waiting to defend her thesis. Before you know it, she might jolly well become a don in history sooner than later.
Ask Sinclair what her primary interest is, and guess what she has to say. ‘I love travelling’, she says as if there was no need to debate the matter. ‘I have been to almost all the states in Nigeria’. Yes, travel is uppermost on the mind of Peace, and she is glad to recall that she gained the leverage to do so when she emerged as the Vice Chairman of the Bayelsa State chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). She ranks as the only female journalist in Bayelsa who has gone so far as to serve two straight terms under the helmsmanship of Samson Amaran and Tarinyo Akono.
Journalism has taken Peace to Egypt, Holland, and China. She was in a position to secure a place in the various journalism exchange fellowship programmes initiated in those countries, and she came away with sufficient experience to recount the high points of her journey. ‘I stayed in Cairo, the capital of Egypt, for two weeks. Cairo is a beautiful city-state. I visited historic sites. It is a city of great historical significance. I visited the pyramids, and had an opportunity to see what Egyptian mummies, embalmed bodies, look like’, she recalls.
In 2002, Sinclair also visited Rotterdam, Holland, where she stayed for another two weeks in a journalism fellowship. But it was in China that she spent the longest stretch of time, six weeks in all, during which she stayed in three principal Chinese cities, namely Beijing. Guangzhou, and Zinou. The most remarkable memories that Peace took away on that trip came to her when she visited the CCTV cable television headquarters in the Beijing Central Business District. She also took note of how factories work in Beijing.
‘I saw industrial robots in car companies, and I came to know that cars are machines and they are built by machines under the guidance of computers in the hands of human beings who use their minds to think. In China, it is the military, the Peoples Army, that undertakes public works. The engineering and technical corps of the army go to work in their military uniforms. They work at huge construction sites. They can be seen repairing bad roads or building new ones altogether. In other words, in China, to join the army is to undertake community service as a rule, and it is an army of great discipline. One thing I also learnt in China was this. There’s no room for careless spending’, she says.
And so saying, Sinclair told the story of what happened when Smart Adeyemi, in his capacity as National President of the NUJ and leader of the delegation, made a quip in his presentation to the effect that he could be entitled to 12 cars, if he wanted. In Nigeria, he declared, you can grab anything, leave your neighbour stranded, and get away with it.
Members of the Chinese audience were scandalised that this could ever happen at all. They couldn’t fathom why it should be so, why one person should have so much, and leave others without anything. They were so shocked, so petrified by the selfish proposition, that Adeyemi had to remind them that he was merely putting forward a stray hypothesis. They need not take it out on him.
That was long before Adeyemi became a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. But for Sinclair, the lesson was clear: ‘Our leaders are not disciplined at all. They could not be bothered about principles. One word for it is corruption, and the Chinese officials did not hesitate to spell that out as the main problem with Nigeria’.
Sinclair began her journalism career in 1992 as a cub reporter for the New Nigerian newspapers in the Lagos office. She soon moved over to the Nigerian Economist, a subsidiary of New Agenda, published by Haroun Adamu. She remembers her office at Ojota as if it was just yesterday.
‘Uche Ezechuwu was my editor at New Agenda. I was reporting business, and then I cultivated an interest in politics. I did that for one year before moving over to Financial Post magazine by Warehouse Bus Stop along Wharf Road, Apapa, Lagos. It was owned by an Igbo muslim, Abdulazeez Udeh, and I worked as a correspondent for politics and business until 1994′, she recalls.
That same year, Sinclair returned to Port Harcourt apparently to get a more fulfilling job. The following year, the clear choice was between a job in an oil company, and going back to school. ‘My mum encouraged me to go for a degree. Otherwise, I was to join Agip or Elf. The manager at Agip said categorically that he could give me a job, but he wanted me to go back to school since I was so young. He didn’t want me to work with just a diploma, and my mother was all too glad to agree with him. That’s how I turned my attention to the University of Port Harcourt, and gained admission to read History’.
But just then, The Tide newspapers in Port Harcourt began advertising vacancies for editorial staff. Sinclair felt a rush of journalistic adrenalin in her system when she got to know that. She did not waste time. Her love for journalism took over at once. She passed the interview at one seating, and was promptly engaged as a reporter in 1996.
Working under the guidance of a new crop of experienced editors carefully selected by Dr. Kudo Eresia-Eke, Commissioner for Information at the time, Sinclair fine-tuned her reporting skills with every new story that was brought to her attention until she gained the trust of her editors.
Following the creation of Bayelsa State in October of that year, she relocated along with her colleagues to constitute the first crop of editorial hands at the new state’s newspaper corporation. She earned her quick appointment as Political Editor of New Waves, published by the Bayelsa State Newspaper Corporation (BSNC), and she still serves in that capacity.
Again, ask Sinclair what attracts her to politics. ‘I like hard news’, she says without hesitation. ‘I like to know how history evolves from everyday events. Politics is not the exclusive beat of a male reporter. It’s not a man’s beat only. It’s not just about style and fashion for women. I opted to cover the busy points in the polity, and I am happy doing so’.
And that’s how she earned her alias. Amongst her colleagues, she is known as No Shaking, following the ardent way she followed the story of the then President Olusegun Obasanjo at some of the most dramatic moments in the political life of Nigeria, especially reporting his predilection to throw in street-wise quips in his analysis of everyday events.
Born on Wednesday, 3 July 1974, at Aguda-Surulere, Lagos, to Simon Fekumo Sinclair, a soldier; and Victoria, a real estate landlady, the lanky baby girl with the graceful walk of a model soon attended Army Primary School, GRA, Port Harcourt, finishing in 1983. She remembers the major landmark of her school to be the Polo Club. She often looked out for the horses and their riders.
She missed that when she proceeded to Government Girls Secondary School, Harbour Road, Port Harcourt. She remembers how proud she was to wear the famous uniform of that school, light blue top on a dark blue skirt. Her favourite subjects were English and History. Not surprisingly, she went on to read History as a course of study at the university, and is neck deep in a work schedule that requires her to write English every day. She speaks Yoruba fluently, and understands the languages of her parents, Kolokuma and Nembe.
Sinclair has always preferred working in the print media for the simple reason that she could see her stories as words on a printed page that can be kept for reference many years later. But that is not to say she does not like the electronic media. She does. In fact, she began to take conscious interest in the electronic media when the ace newscaster, Ruth Benamiesia-Opia, former Commissioner for Information in Bayelsa State, told Peace Sinclair that she had a microphone voice. ‘I have been thinking about what Ruth told me since then. I’m still thinking about it, but my big ambition is to own a magazine, my own magazine’.
That dream may jolly well come to be. At the moment, however, Peace Fekumo Sinclair sits easy in her swivel chair as the first female Editor-in-Chief of BSNC.
