Mabogunje’s Day with Literary Fresh Blends

From a business tycoon to a literary icon, her writings have the potentials of travelling farther than her legs. Toki Mabogunje’s words are never short of inspiring.  With an enviable national and international status, the Association of Nigerian Authors, Lagos last month made Mabogunje its literary figure at Vintage Wine and Fresh Blends May Edition. The event was held at the University of Lagos, Akoka. Mabogunje has paid her dues. A business development consultant, with interest in the growth and management of small and medium scale enterprises on the African continent, Mabogunje laid the foundation for a rewarding career having obtained a law degree from the University of Ife, Nigeria (now ObafemiAwolowo University) and a post-graduate degree (LLM) in international business law from the University of Exeter. Over the last 26 years, Mabogunje has been involved in several business enterprises drawn from both the public and private sectors. For starters, she honed her skills in legal practice as an assistant legal adviser to a former Minister of Defence and later Senior State Counsel at the Mercantile and Industrial Law Department of the Federal Ministry of Justice. She later moved to the private sector which provided her with the opportunity to attain a well-rounded perspective of business enterprise in Nigeria. The poet, in her speech, pointed out one factor at the crux of writing; which is practice. As a young child, writing was her hobby. It metamorphosed into her passion when she tirelessly worked to fine-tune her writing skills across the various genres of literature. “I started writing at the age of six, likewise my son,” she recalled. “Throughout my elementary and secondary school days, I wrote poems, fables, plays, essays, dialogue and songs. I thoroughly enjoyed it and continued to write poetry until I became an adult. As a child and young student, I had a few adults around me who encouraged me and those who did not even understand what I wrote. But I wrote them anyway because I enjoyed writing and reading them.” She, therefore, urged the students, who crave to become writers, to have a clear imagination, read, enjoy story-telling and writing. “To grow as writer can be tough in this world because the youths are busy with school, homework, sports and chores. But they must read whenever they can find time to. Always have a notepad or some paper handy so that when that idea clusters in a thought or something that they wish to express, you can write it immediately so you don’t forget, lest your thought may be lost forever,” she urged. continued