Former North American Bureau Chief of The Guardian, Pastor Laolu
Akande, has resumed as the spokesman of the Vice President, Prof. Yemi
Osinbajo.
Pastor Akande was in the Aso Villa on Monday as President
Muhammadu Buhari and his V.P officially relocated to the seat of power.
As a journalist reporting for the leading Nigerian
newspapers including The Guardian, Pastor Akande is regarded as the longest
serving African correspondent at the United Nations, and the only Nigerian
journalist so far to have interviewed a sitting American president in the White
House when he interviewed former President George W. Bush. He has also
exclusively interviewed American folk hero, General Colin Powell, billionaires
like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Donald Trump and several African leaders
and presidents.
Pastor Akande started his journalism career as a Reporter in
1989 writing for the Guardian titles and later moved over to the founding team
of The News Magazine in 1993, where he became that magazine’s Senior Writer. In
1995 he joined Nigerian Tribune titled first as Special Projects Editor and
later became the Editor of Tribune on Saturday in 1997, before he relocated to
the US in 1998.
In the US where he is also an adjunct college professor,
Pastor Akande is the founder of Empowered Newswire, and has continuously
reported about Nigerians and Nigerian issues especially in the US and Canada in
the last 13 years.
He had earlier worked with leading American newspapers
including the Philadelphia Inquirer, and New York Newsday. Also at the United
Nations, he worked briefly as a Press Officer and later as Advocacy Consultant
between 2002-2004.
He became a pastor in 2007 at the Redeemed Christian Church
of God, Jesus Friends Assembly in Long Island, New York. Pastor Akande
is Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans, CANAN’s Executive
Director.
