Photo Credit: AFAS Press

Ayobami Atanda 

Olanshile Ogunrinu who recently won the Alfred Opubor Campus Journalist Award has said that his desire to amplify people’s voice motivated him as a campus journalist. 

Olanshile, the Editor-in-Chief of AFAS Press and Bello Press and former Politics Editor of Union of Campus Journalists University of Ibadan (UCJUI), became the winner of the Alfred Opubor Next- Gen Campus Reporter Awards in the Data Reporting Category.

He expressed his desire to amplify people’s voice and change situations by telling the stories that motivated him as a journalist. 

” I reiterated recently in an interview that it is the desire to amplify people’s voice and change situation by telling the stories that motivates me as a journalist. I believe so much in the transformative power of journalism. This is what drives me and the experience so far has been a rollercoaster of emotion,” he said. 

The former UCJUI Politics Editor expressed that being a journalist could be awesome, tedious, and palpitating. However, he believed that journalism is something worth doing regardless of the backlash that comes with it. 

Olanshile revealed that he was surprised when he was called as the winner of the category he was nominated for, having been shortlisted among outstanding campus journalists. 

“I was surprised. I was nominated alongside some of the really outstanding campus journalists in Nigeria and getting nominated alongside these people is something I find enough. I was surprised and it was a good feeling,” he said when he was asked about how he felt when he got the award.