David Hundeyin is an author, investigative journalist, and broadcaster whose work has appeared on CNN, The Africa Report, Al Jazeera, and The Washington Post.
His work as a satirist on ‘The Other News,’ Nigeria’s answer to The Daily Show has been featured in the New Yorker Magazine and the Netflix documentary ‘Larry Charles’ Dangerous World of Comedy.’
David Hundeyin Biography
David Hundeyin started pretty much as someone who wanted to write for a living. He has been winning recognition for his writing for a long time, for over two decades. And this goes back to when he was in primary school.
The first time he won a national award in Nigeria, he was 12 years old, and this was in 2003. David won the “Peak Man of The Year” essay writing competition. It was a national essay writing competition organized by WAMCO – producers of peak milk in Nigeria.
Three years later, in 2006, David came 3rd, worldwide in the “Royal Commonwealth Society Write Around The World Essay Competition” in his age band. That was his first international award. Around this time, he had made a decision that he wanted to write for a living. It was then the case of what career path allows someone to write for a living and journalism was the one he felt was the most in line with what he wanted.
His encounter with a teacher
In 2007, David began his UCAS application to attend university in the United Kingdom. He was planning to major in Business Administration, but when he asked his English teacher to write his recommendation letter. The teacher responded, “Why choose business administration when you are a good writer?”
That was the first time David ever heard someone tell him that doing something he enjoyed could lead to a successful career. But his parents were not pleased with the idea of him studying journalism, so they had a lengthy discussion. They didn’t get it, but he was set on doing it.
This cost David a year because he started his program in the United Kingdom in 2008 rather than in 2007. Reason being that he had started studying Mass Communication at Igbinedion University in Okada, Edo State. And he stayed there for around 8 months.
University of Hull
Eventually, his parents ended up sending him abroad to study Creative Writing and Media Culture & Society at the University of Hull. When he finished, the idea was to do what was the typical UK job. The typical career path for journalists is to get a training position at BBC, move with the ranks at the BBC or move to something bigger. But that didn’t work out.
So, David found himself working in a contract role at KPMG. There he wasn’t doing anything close to what he wanted to do. The job wasn’t even a graduate job, it was a contract job. It felt like a dead-end.
In 2013, David came back to Nigeria to restart his career. He did his youth service (NYSC) for a year in Ekiti state, at the state broadcast service. In 2014, David was to resume at Vanguard newspaper. He got a job there passing their assessments but on the day he went to pick up his offer letter. The then-editor brought him to his office and he said,
“You know what we have looked through your assessments, we have looked at you, and we know if we take you, you’re not going to spend six months here. You’re going to leave.”
Then the editor picked up his phone and called his friend who ran a PR agency. That’s how David ended up starting his career in PR, instead of journalism.
Joins BHM
Because people typically move from journalism to PR and communications. But David started in PR and communications and moved in the opposite direction. So he started at (BHM) Black House Media as an executive intern in October 2014. By the time David left in May 2016 he had risen to become head of content at BHM.
David left BHM with the idea to start his own content creation agency. But that didn’t work out because it was in the middle of the recession. So he spent three months driving Uber and doing freelancing work.
Joins Channels Tv
Then at the start of 2017, he went back to paid employment, and got a job at a digital agency called “Acquiring Digital Estates”. It used to be in Lekki phase one. He was there for just three months and then the opportunity to join Channels TV came up in April.
Channels TV was starting up a show, the show didn’t have a name yet. All that was known about it was that it was a political satire show, it was going to be the first of its kind in Nigeria. And David was the first creative team member to come on board – the creative team is the writers, the correspondence, and the host.
David became the first member of the creative team to get a contract and then actually recruited the rest of the writing team. Eventually, that show became what you might know as “The Other News” with Okey Bakassi.
It no longer runs, it ran for six seasons. David was there for the first three seasons. Season one started in July 2017 and season three ended in June 2018.
Relaunched his content creation agency
In 2018, David left Channels TV and relaunched his own independent Content Creation Agency. This time it took off this time because he focused exclusively on a foreign clientele. And it was a bit more successful, and he made some good money.
At his peak, David had five people on the payroll. This time was when he started doing some work in the Nigerian space but nobody knew who he was. At this point, David had been nominated for a State Department award under the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP). And he had appeared in The New Yorker magazine.
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David had a base reputation outside of Nigeria, but within Nigeria, he was completely unknown. To give you an idea of how unknown David was, he had about 800 followers on Twitter and this was in 2018.
Going into 2019 when he started doing some work in Nigerian space, which started almost by accident. For whatever reason, his work was taking off in Nigeria. People seem to be resonating with his work, so he just didn’t stop.
But this wasn’t investigative stuff yet. It was just like opinion columns, editorials, analysis pieces, etc. People liked his voice, his perspective, and the way he wrote, and he just kept doing it.
David Hundeyin’s Father (David Fakunle Hundeyin)
David Hundeyin comes from a family of seven – his parents and five children. He has a brother and three sisters, and he’s the fourth child.
Raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. David made the difficult choice to leave the faith. A decision that came with the consequence of losing contact with his immediate family due to the strict practices within the community.
Despite this, David maintains close ties with his extended family, sharing a strong bond with his cousins and aunts. In the midst of religious differences, David draws inspiration from his father, David Fakunle Hundeyin, whom he considers a model of strength and calm.
David attributes 90% of who he is as a man to the influence of his father. Embracing his worldview, subjective morality, and even being named after him. A re-engineered version of his father’s name.
David Hundeyin’s father has had a profound impact on his life. Molding him into the investigative journalist and person he is today. His father’s calm temperament, combined with his own determination, has propelled him to confront powerful individuals and institutions fearlessly.
David Hundeyin’s Breakthrough Story in Investigative Journalism?
In September 2019 was when David’s big break as an investigative journalist finally came, and it came almost by accident. He didn’t intentionally set out to be an investigative journalist.
A lady called Mercy Abang, founder of NewsWireNGR reached out to David to work on her story about the Abuja raids. Young women were getting abducted off the streets of Abuja by the police and thugs working for the Abuja Environmental Protection Bureau for not covering their hair.
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The story went so far that months later one of the victims in the story had a court case against the AEPB . The FCT ministry in court where Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako ruled in her favour. The judgement referenced his story.
Contract signed with NewsWireNGR
That’s when the light bulb first went off above his head. Then, David knew that he was pretty good at it. I should probably continue doing this. So, 2019 ended and he signed a contract with NewsWireNGR to produce five stories a month. He wasn’t doing it for the money because the money was laughable, N20,000 for a story, and in a month, 5 stories it’s just like N100,000.
Remember David was still doing other regular copywriting work. But he felt like wow, for the first time, something I did matters. The purpose of doing this isn’t just to submit an invoice to a client. It had real value to humanity and he just couldn’t stop and that’s when his stay at NewsWireNGR really took off. For the next year and a half he was there writing for them.
Like every othe thing that has a beginning must have an end. David did his last work for NewsWireNGR in May 2021. A piece called “Murder in Uyo: Who Killed Hiny Umoren?“. A story that got nominated for the Sigma Award for Data Journalism. In his opinion, that was supposed to be the finest work he did for NewsWireNGR. That’s if you use the term investigative.
After he did, “Murder in Uyo: Who Killed Hiny Umoren?”, NewsWireNGR got cyber attacks, kind of a hack.
Click here to read about my interview with David Hundeyin where he talked more about his Breakthrough Story
David Hundeyin on Tinubu
“From Drug Lord to Presidential Candidate” generated a lot of attention and discussions around it. And the main character was somebody who potentially had a chance of becoming Nigeria’s President and has that kind of history.
This is something that people who are going to vote should know. So it shouldn’t be a repeat of 2015. Where the most unsuitable candidate on the ballot won the election and then the people claimed that they didn’t know.
So, David felt that this time around that excuse needs to be taken away. Then if Nigerians decide to elect the worst candidate on the ballot, at least there’s no excuse. They won’t blame journalists or the media this time around. They won’t say journalists didn’t do their job and won’t say those things because they were informed.
For him, that was what it was about. Take away that excuse and fully immerse Nigeria with all the information that they need to have about this person. Because this person is the candidate of the incumbent party which placed him in a good position to have a chance of winning the election, which he did.
David Hundeyin on Flutterwave
According to David, he encountered people who claimed that a large number of tech businesses were bogus. But hearing them is one thing; putting them into action is quite another.
He was under the impression that everyone knew that he and the founder of Flutterwave didn’t get along when he first started getting the information, David was afraid that if he did any kind of story about Flutterwave, it would appear that he had some kind of personal vendetta against him, so he didn’t want to do it.
David immediately mistook the narrative for one about sexual harassment or bullying. Those things are horrible, but if one tells a tale about a company that does them, people may not think it’s such a huge deal.
He decided to act after receiving information about the company’s involvement in fraud. Because this is really helpful information from the standpoint of both investment and the Nigerian economy as a whole.
Click here to read about my interview with David Hundeyin where he talked more about the Flutterwave Story
West Africa Weekly
Everything David Hundeyin does as an investigative journalist tends to revolve around punching up. Presenting stuff with documented evidence and facts so that they are not assumptions, claims, allegations, or unsubstantiated postulations.
He also wants it to have a very specific kind of voice. A very punchy voice. A very millennial voice. He described it in its descriptions on LinkedIn. On the website itself is described as – Storified investigative journalism for Africans, not just millennial groups.
It’s geared toward the younger audience. It has a specific feel and a specific voice. David uses a few storytelling elements and devices that not everybody is familiar with. Some of his stories include memes, for example, but not everybody is familiar with them.
David kind of blurred the lines between what people think of as journalism and actual literary writing. The fellowship that he was awarded at Cambridge University was literary, even though it was awarded regarding his work as a journalist.
But simply because in the opinion of those who are awarded the fellowship, you and I know David’s work is always such a good read.
He was awarded a literary fellowship. And according to him, that’s also one of the goals of West Africa Weekly to blur the creative minds between different genres of writing.
One of the goals of creativity is always to break the rules. In the process of breaking rules and doing something new. You create a new genre. A new category altogether. That’s how you expand creative space.
David Hundeyin Exposed The Fraud ‘Nigeria Air’
On 26th May 2023, a ‘Nigeria Air’ clad Boeing 737-800 aircraft landed on the tarmac of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja.
For a moment, it seemed like the naysayers had been silenced. APC members erupted with joy but instead of celebrating this ‘huge achievement’.
In the orthodox or conventional style, they resorted to be spiteful towards the opposition who had called the project a scam. They flooded the social media space with attacks on those who had criticized the government on the project.
They trolled & taunted the opposition as though they had actually achieved something extraordinary. However, their joy would be short lived as a huge scandal was about to be unearthed.
Whilst they (APC) made merry and taunted opposition. David Hundeyin went to work when he discovered certain irregularities which aroused his suspicion and it didn’t take long to lift the lid on this mystery and call out the huge fraud for what it was.
Inasmuch as many Nigerians were convinced that this project was a scam. There was no proof to back it up, it took the investigative genius of Hundeyin to unravel the dirt. Rot and corruption that had played out in the grand scheme of things of this project.
David Hundeyin Twitter
David Hundeyin announced via his Twitter page that the aircraft which had landed in the Abuja airport actually belongs to Africa air giants, Ethiopian Airlines.
In fact had an active route which it plied until a few days prior when it was removed from operations to be repainted in Tel-aviv, Israel to reflect the fake ownership status of the plane as Nigeria Air’s.
The Boeing 737 with registration number ET-APL flew the Addis Ababa – Mogadishu route and had been in operation for 11 years with Ethiopian Air, briefly with Malawian Air (Ethiopia Air owns 49% stake in Malawian Air).
This unraveling did not sit well with the APC members as they thronged out in their numbers to attack Mr Hundeyin despite the overwhelming evidence that he had put forward.
To add further salt to injury, 5 hours after the charade launch in Abuja. David posted proof of the Airplane en route Ethiopia from Flight Radar24, a global air traffic aggregator company that tracks airplanes movements.
As if that wasn’t enough, on 31st May 2023, he announced that the same airplane was back in service for Ethiopian Air after the ‘hurried wrap job’ for Nigeria Air was removed.
To back up his claim, he posted proof of flights available on the aircraft for it’s Addis Ababa – Mogadishu route. The travel history of the plane also showed that it had been to and fro Abuja from Ethiopia a few days prior.
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