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Journalism adjunct bids farewell
Professor leaves Metro to work for newspaper in native Nigeria
By Clayton Woullard
cwoullar@mscd.edu

Photo by Jenn LeBlanc/jkerriga@mscd.edu Sam Omatseye shares experiences with Metro colleagues and students at the Denver Press Club July 13. Omatseye is returning to Nigeria to work for "The Nation" newspaper in Lagos. He spent nine years in the United States, after seeking asylum because of death threats.

Sam Omatseye came to Denver for what was supposed to be five months, but during his stay he received death threats from the military in his native Nigeria for his political commentary and was forced to seek asylum in the United States.

That was nine years ago.

Now the Metro adjunct is returning home to work again as a journalist, what was once a more dangerous profession.

“It was different because it was a military dictatorship and they closed newspapers at will and shot people at will,” Omatseye said. Now the civil society in Nigeria has taken back the news media.

He left this week to begin his new position as chairman of the editorial board and executive of external affairs for The Nation, a newspaper in Lagos, Nigeria.

He said he has a list of 23 things he’s going to teach his new staff.

“I’m going to tell them if you want to write an editorial, it has to be about yesterday,” he said.

Much of what he learned about journalism in the U.S. he learned fast. He came to Denver as part of the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship program, which brings journalists from developing countries to work in American newsrooms. In the five months he worked at the Rocky Mountain News, Omatseye wrote 67 articles.

“I think he set a standard for the Friendly Fellowship. I’m not talking about the number of stories, but the quality of stories,” said John Ensslin, News reporter and mentor to the Friendly Fellows.
Ensslin said he wasn’t Omatseye’s mentor for long.

“He took a lot of his own initiative,” he said. “I went very quickly from being his mentor to being his peer.”

Omatseye said reporting was the best way for him to learn about the culture and the community.

“It was not really a challenge to do it,” he said. “I think the way to find out about things is go out there and find out.”

He’s also learned much through his teaching experience here.

“I’ve learned more about American culture and the give-and-take of teaching. That you don’t always teach, but you also learn,” Omatseye said.

Before he arrived in Denver, he had only taught high school.

After he met a Metro journalism professor at a conference where Omatseye was giving a lecture, he started what would come to be eight years of teaching classes at Metro.

“I had a few anxieties about teaching in a different culture,” he said.

Joshua Lawton, a Metro journalism graduate, said Omatseye always tried to have his students think beyond just their community.

“He presented many points in his class … you had to examine everything,” Lawton said. “The impact of everything that happens locally affects things globally,”

Metro alum Shannon Davidson said he encouraged students not to trust everything in front of them.

“With Sam, he always boiled things down, but in a way that you had not thought before,” she said.

Omatseye said he’s been homesick often, though he has traveled back to Africa a couple of times.

“But when I’d go back, I’d get U.S. sick too,” he said. “I’d ask ‘What’s going on with the Broncos?’”

While he said he will miss watching American sports, he’ll have the opportunity to catch a game when he returns every five months, as required to keep his green card.

No matter where he is, his journalistic drive keeps him wanting to improve the world.

“I want to get the story done that improves the society,” Omatseye said, “or that commentary that will make people see the world in a different light, for the better.”