Ajibola Ojesola; Popular television presenter and actor, started acting as a student of the Polytechnic of Ibadan. Ajibola joined a drama society at the University of Ibadan. Then, he would leave my school and join them to act on stage. Before he was admitted into the Polytechnic of Ibadan, he was offered admission into the University of Ibadan to study Theatre Arts but the perception of the society about the course was hard, so it did not work out. Also, his uncle who was sponsoring his education was not in support of him studying theatre arts, so he opted for mass communication.
After school, Ojesola still felt a void within me especially when he watched people acting on television. I served in Lagos, so he joined the theatre group during his National Youth Service Corps programme. The group represented Lagos State at the national competition and came third. One day, he saw the complimentary card of someone that worked with Funman fruit juice, the sponsors of Superstory television series. He sent them an email and they said they would call him anytime there was an audition for Superstory. True to their words, he got calls from them for auditions which he attended but he was never picked even though they normally said he did well. Ojesola shot weekends and sometimes he would shoot overnight and when he came for presentation the following morning, his eyes would be swollen. This he recognized as the sacrifice he had to make. Ojesola had a vice principal when he was in secondary school, Loyola College Ibadan, who had a grey patch hair and he always
admired it whenever he was on the assembly line. After he finished his education, he decided to brand himself similarly.
One day Ojesola was coming from Ibadan and as he was passing through the 7up area of Ikeja, he had an intuition to go visit Wale Adenuga’s studio, which he did. Fortunately they were having auditions, so he went in. He lied to the receptionist that he was from Funman juice, one of their sponsors and that he wanted to see Wale Adenuga and he was allowed in. When he met with Wale Adenuga, the film producer told him that he was informed that I was from Funman. He opened up to him; confessing that he had lied to see him because he was always coming for auditions but was never picked despite the fact that he was always told that he did very well. Adenuga casually told Ojesola to come on the next Sunday and pick his script. That was how Ojesola got a role in an episode of Superstory. Ajibola Ojesola got his break when he was featured in The valley between by Tunji Bamisigbin. He was not an On Air Personality when he went for the audition. Bamisigbin loved the way he talked and he gave him a major role which he acted for about seven years. Liz Benson, Bukky Ajayi, Taiwo Alabi among other stars were featured in the soap opera. Ojesola decided to become an On Air Personality even as an actor when he joined ITV as a reporter. At this time, acting full time was not be able to pay the bills and he was unknown. Since he studied Mass Communication, a few of his colleagues in LTV advised him to give television a try and so he began to jiggle both careers. After The valley in between, Ojesola got other roles in soap operas like Edge of paradise and then Hush in 2016[i].
[i] Punch July 9, 2016
