Meet John Elliot Hagan: The cleaner turned journalist with master’s degree from Westminster

The road to greatness can sometimes be lonely and daunting but will surely lead to success if one is determined and stays true to the course.

One person who has made this a reality is John Elliot Hagan who started his career in journalism as a cleaner with The Finder Newspaper in Accra.

John was admitted to St Thomas Aquinas Senior High School but had to drop out in his second year due to financial constraints in June 2002.

His father had died, and his mother was struggling to barely take care of the family. Family members had given some hope, but it was a hopeless hope. John, the eldest, says he decided to sacrifice his education for his siblings.

In 2004, he got a job with a cleaning company and was assigned to the Graphic Communications Group. At Graphic, John went beyond the cleaning. His hard work endeared him to the reporters, old and young. He would stay on after work and run errands for them. They sent him to buy food and anything he could do.

In 2007, a woman who worked in Graphic (now a judge who wants to remain anonymous) struck up a conversation with John after he had cleaned her office for some time. She asked him what he wanted to do with his life and John narrated how his hopes had been truncated. This kind woman, according to John, said she saw great potential in him and wanted him to go back to school.

John was now 22 years old. Going back to the mainstream senior high school was a bit problematic so he enrolled at the Accra Technical Training Centre (ATTC) to study electrical engineering, between 2007 and 2011. For the first three years, it was a part-time job so he was working alongside the school. The benevolent woman paid his fees.

In 2011, one of John’s friends at Graphic, Maurice Quansah, hinted to him about a vacancy at The Finder newspaper. The newspaper was looking for an office assistant and the key quality was someone the company could trust. When John went to see Kwadwo Larbi, the first editor of The Finder, he was told that Maurice Quansah had spoken so well of him that he didn’t have anything to prove.

With time, he took on additional responsibility for cleaning when the cleaner stopped work without any notice.

His transition from being a cleaner/office assistant to a reporter began in 2013 when, on his way to work one morning, John saw a dead body in Asylum Down. That dead body resurrected John’s hope and he dreamed beyond office cleaning and assisting the editorial team.

When he got to the office, he decided to write the report himself. He had spent his spare time at the Daily Graphic and The Finder reading so many reports that filing one came effortlessly. The editor at the time, the late George Koomson, was so impressed with his report that he encouraged him to write more. The editor thought the cleaner reports in a way some reporters could not. With time, whenever there was an assignment and the reporters were too busy, he would be asked to go and cover. His output impressed his editors and he was assigned to cover weekend assignments.

In 2015, Elvis Darko, the editor of the paper to whom John says he owes a lot of gratitude, said he was too good to be a substitute. That was when he was made a full-time reporter. And he played in the newsroom’s first eleven with ease and excellence.

It is one thing to learn on the job, and another thing to understand the theories and the academic intricacies that come with the job. John wanted to study journalism. Fortunately, GIJ had introduced a diploma programme for mature students so John took the advantage.

The publisher of The Finder, now Minister of State for Business Development, Mohammed Ibrahim Awal, sponsored him to go to school. After two years, John decided to enrol for a top-up degree programme.

He worked for the Finder for a while before securing  a Chevening Scholarship to study

Hagan subsequently obtained a master’s degree in Media and Development from the University of Westminster, one of the UK’s top five Universities for Media and Communications studies.

Speaking on the Road to Greatness Segment on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Thursday( 27 June) Hagan urged the youth to be determined and true to themselves.

“You just have to be true to yourself… you can start very little and not let people down .Just show a sense of determination, and show to people they can trust you,”

Listen to excerpts of the interview in the attached audio clip below:

Reporting by Fred Dzakpata in Accra with additional files from Manassaehazure.com

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