Musibau Tunde Akanni, Ph.D

Currently an Associate Professor of Journalism at the Lagos State University, Dr Musibau Tunde Akanni is a first-generation distinguished graduate of the Better By Far University of Ilorin, Nigeria. He graduated from what used to be known as the Modern European Languages Department where he earned a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in English in 1986. He is today an alumnus of three other towering academic institutions across USA, Europe and Nigeria including the University of Ibadan where he obtained his PhD.

Akanni’s professional experience since graduation has also spanned journalism and development work across non-governmental and governmental sectors including the international arena. His career in the rather turbulent military years of the 1980s and 1990s took him through the leading print media titles of the era including ThePunch and NationalConcord where he rose to the position of Acting Features Editor.

Following the military government’s proscription of Concord titles in 1994, Akanni became the Head of Campaigns of Nigeria’s contemporary premier civil rights body, Civil Liberties Organisation, CLO. Akanni’s portfolio here encompassed functioning as the organisation’s spokesperson as well as cultivating media colleagues in activism, believing that it was everyone’s task to liberate our dear country from the shackles of military dictatorship. This career detour in Akanni’s life, punctuated by intermittent police detention and allied persecution has become an enduring game changer in his professional life.

With a most commendable measure of diligence, Akanni’s commitment to development work earned him some international recognitions at different times. In 1998, he was appointed a Visiting Scholar to the Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. A year later, he emerged a distinguished British Chevening scholar enabling him to enroll for a master’s degree programme in mass communication at the renowned University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. A consistent and genuine patriot, Akanni concluded his programme at Leicester with a dissertation titled “The Public Sphere and Nigeria’s 1998 Political Transition Programme”. In 2003, Akanni again made the list of the Netherlands ’NUFFIC Fellowship awardees making him emerge as a pioneer participant in the Netherland based Institute of Social Studies’ Globalization and Development Programme. Again in 2007, he bagged a travel grant from the US State Department to participate in the Michigan State University’s Responsible Governance programme. This enabled him to under study local governance in Michigan State, a couple of neighbouring states as well as the activities of the National Association of Counties, NACO.

Since joining the academia 2001, he has remained an active researcher, publishing extensively nationally and internationally. He is also a robustly media exposed public affairs commentator which enables him to model functionally for his students and his other mentees within and outside the university.

Duly respected for his pioneering research efforts on digital media and the adjoining legal and policy environments of Internet use in Nigeria, Akanni was in 2017 appointed to the board of the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism now called Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development, CJID.

A pioneer member of the budding Global Network of Scholars on Internet Governance, GIGANET, Akanni is also a member of other local and international organizations including the International Association of Media and Communication Research, IAMCR; Association of Communication Scholars and Practitioners of Nigeria, ACSPN; African Council on Communication Education, ACCE; Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, NIPR; Mapping Digital Media Network, MDM Network as well Media Power Monitor, MPM.

A member of the Nigeria Community Radio Coalition, NCRC, he is a development O

He is a happy family man and a responsible community leader