By Louis Odion
The easy business plan will assume that cash – tones of it –
performs all the magic. But not in all cases. As anyone familiar with the
difficult beginnings of THISDAY will attest, guts and sheer improvisation
sometimes prove far more invaluable resource.
If the earth
indeed shook a quarter century ago when THISDAY emerged, it was largely because
it started by shattering a few ancient media myths: the indispensability of
sub-desk, running daily newspaper without owning a printing press, big office
and deep pocket.
Yours sincerely
was among the founding staff assembled in the heat of June 12 struggle when the
national space was choking under the stranglehold of Sani Abacha – arguably the
most brutal military dictator in the nation’s history.
Where we started
in Lagos was indeed only a little more than a room-and-parlor on the last floor
of a three-floor building. Furniture was, for instance, scarcely enough to sit
everyone at peak hours. But for this youthful army, a passion for the written
word and faith in its power to engage the then fledgling military despotism
were comforting enough.
Sometimes, folks had to literally squat on the plush brown rug to
scribble reports on sheets torn off stubs of newsprint reels scavenged from
distant printing press. Others didn’t mind standing in the balcony with only a
limited view of the Ikoyi skyline.
THISDAY was
aspiring to fill a vacuum. Raw talent was seizing a historic opportunity.
Existing media giants like Concord, The Guardian, Punch and Sketch had been
proscribed by the military over their critical reportage. So, that meant a glut
of seasoned but “jobless” journalists available to drive THISDAY from the
outset.
I got signed on
immediately I was introduced to The Duke (Mr. Nduka Obaigbena) in the corridor
by the News Editor, ebullient Victor Ifijeh (who had been my senior colleague
at the politics desk of Concord Press).
Soon afterwards,
folks like us found we had to adapt to a newsroom culture starkly different
from where we migrated. The existing orthodoxy would designate the sub-desk as
the filter, the ultimate gatekeeper in the newspaper process. Now, the THISDAY
template more or less abridged the sub-desk, thus making the production chain
compact and swifter to deliver, but imposing greater responsibility on the
reporter in terms of the margin of error. The weight of that burden is better
appreciated considering that it was not yet the age of internet or google when
information could be sourced seamlessly to background a story while writing.
Even more energising was the direct involvement of The Duke
himself in news-gathering and production. The physical toll that later exacted
was enough to knock him down one day such that he had to be evacuated to the
hospital and put on drip. But against doctor’s advice, a tenacious Obaigbena
would drag himself up soon after regaining consciousness, conceal the
half-empty drip under a flowing Agbada and sneak back to the office, obviously
to be sure his absence would not hamper the production of the next day!
Overall, The
Duke’s vast network of powerful sources meant THISDAY reports were mostly
in-depth and authoritative. The credit for stampeding Nigeria’s print media at
the start of this millennium into the notion of “one edition nationwide”
undoubtedly belongs to THISDAY.
I was privileged to be the pioneer Abuja editor in 2002 during
that momentous transition. Amid sleepless nights for days on end, the takeoff
of THISDAY’s Abuja plant was owed more to sheer human improvisations and
adaption than the benevolence of technology. Whenever the affliction of
technical glitch struck in the middle of the night (and that was fairly
regularly), we literally had to cart desktop computers to Obaigena’s hotel
suite for internet connectivity. Even after the teething problems had abated,
for several months, I never closed formally from the Jabi office earlier than
around 3 or 4a.m daily and then drove to faraway Asokoro to the home “donated”
by compassionate Mr. Nduka Irabor (having moved to Apo Legislative Quarters as
Reps member).
More, as against
the old tradition of reserving the back page for sports exclusively, the daily
newspaper opted from the outset in 1995 to devote that space to critical
analysis of political issues and trend, handled by the politics desk anchored
by Eziuche Ubani (ex-Guardian) and yours sincerely. Our boundless energy to
sustain that grueling routine daily, spiced with the biting “missile” section,
led us into being nick-named “The Unbreakable” in-house. And from there evolved
the concept of back-page column that THISDAY patented and inspired others to
follow in Nigeria’s media sector. Years later, those considered “popular”
writers were shortlisted by the publisher to write back-page columns.
For all the
relatively big impact THISDAY made across the nation within a record short
time, the big irony is that The Duke never started with a deep pocket. Insiders
would squeal that, almost regularly, the limit of financial wizardry was
stretched in trying to meet ever mounting invoices of suppliers of newsprint
and consumables with the poor returns from dodgy newspaper distributors and
buccaneering advert executives. Indeed, what The Duke actually had more was
personal charm which he constantly summoned to access high places, open
seemingly impossible doors and bewitch the tribe of creditors not to refuse him
one more time.
–Odion is the senior technical assistant on Media to the
President.
Curtesy,
LEADERSHIP,
Nigeria’s most influential Newspaper
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