Mr Oyebola’s Blah And Other Blahs
“Journalists are not 9-5 men and women. A journalist is perpetually on call. A good one, wherever he is when an important story breaks, will head for his desk and typewriter. An editor, if he’s abroad when something as big as a coup breaks, must fly back home to take charge?”
Courage is the one crucial element lacking in the Nigerian press. And just as Nigerians like to knock Nigeria for everything wrong with them, as though they don’t constitute Nigeria, those Nigerians who call themselves journalists like to knock the press for lack of courage, as though they don’t constitute the press. Sonala Olumhense, the promising young columnist for the Sunday Punch, did a good rundown in his column of November 8 of the criticism rained on the Nigerian press on almost everyday of the week of November 1, when Areoye Oyebola opened the week with salvos against the press. Others who knocked the press that week included Mr. E.A. Jaja, the Managing Director of the Daily Times, Alhaji Alade Odunewu, the publications Controller of the Daily Times, Alhaji Magaji Danbatta, the Chairman of the Daily Times, and Alhaji Lateef Jakande, the Governor of Lagos State. All these men, their titles notwithstanding, would prefer to be called journalists because they once practiced the profession. It was interesting that in a week when they all expressed their unhappiness with the press, the one man who made what could be called constructive criticism of the press was a non-journalist, President Shehu Shagari.
And since all these men and this writer are basically of the same calling no matter what their passing positions are, one considers himself qualified to talk back them with the gloves removed. I guess that Gov. Jakande can talk about courage or lack of it in the press, since at one time or another he showed himself to be a man of some courage. But the others, let’s see Mr. Oyebola’s outbourst against the press is the immediate reason for this column. The man was an editor of the Daily Times during the military era. He was a teacher who also wrote pamphlets on Economics, and these writings must have caught the attention of Alhaji Babatunde Jose, the then chairman of the Daily Times, who gave Mr. Oyebola a job. That Mr. Oyebola came to be a journalist was nothing more than an accident, because today, one cannot recall anything that Mr. Oyebola did as an editor and a columnist that could be called inspiring, not in the same way that one can talk about Peter Enahoro or Alhaji Babatunde Jose. But one would have forgiven Mr. Oyebola if he did not try to lecture practicing journalists on points of good journalism, when he himself was not much of a journalist, when he himself did not have formal training as a journalist, when he himself did not have enough experience before he was made the editor of Africa’s principal daily.
All that was clearly the fault of Alhaji Babatunde Jose who, driven by the zeal to gather literate journalists in the Times, “discovered” Oyebola. But one must give Alhaji Jose Kudos for courage, for he soon did away with Mr. Oyebola when he found out that the man was never really going to be an outstanding journalist. It was always the practice in the Daily Times for a man to be promoted out of sensitive job once the company decided that the man for any reason was no longer wanted in the position. Alhaji Jose decided to promoted Mr. Oyebola out of the editorship of the Daily Times, when, in Alhaji Jose’s view, Mr. Oyebola failed a singular test of journalism courage. Journalists are not 9-5 men and women. A journalist is perpetually on call. A good one, wherever he is when an important story breaks, will head for his desk and his typewriter. An editor, if he’s abroad when something as big as a coup breaks, must fly back home to take charge.Mr. Oyebola was the editor of the Daily Times in 1975 when the Yakubu Gown government was toppled in a bloodless coup. Mr. Oyebola was nowhere to be found, and Alhaji Jose and Segun Osoba and a few other men and women of courage found their way to work and put out the Daily Times. That was when Alhaji Jose realized that he needed a new editor and decided to promote Mr. Oyebola out of the way.
Of course, Mr. Oyebola was unhappy with that decision, and months later he joined others in plotting the removal of Alhaji Jose from the Daily Times. Not only was Alhaji Jose forced out of the company, the tide planted by Mr. Oyebola and his group also washed him and the others out of the company. But that was not all. The worst thing that the plot did to the Daily Times was that it made it possible for the company to be taken over by the military government. All those who talk about the spinelessness of the press must be looking at the Daily Times as their point of reference. If something goes wrong with the New York Times as an institution, then the whole of American press will of necessity suffer. Therefore, if something goes wrong with the Daily Times as an institution, then the whole of the Nigerian press will suffer. All is not well with the Daily Times if for no other reason than that the newspaper, which was supposed to symbolized the independence of the Nigeria press, is now owned by the government. The truth is that government ownership of a newspaper is a plague that makes its independentness ill. The Daily Times cannot claim any freedom if it owned by the government which generates as much as 75 percent of the news it reports. That was why I wanted to laugh when Vice-President Alex Ekwueme pointed a finger at the Nigerian press. I am sure that the vice-president realized that the failure of the federal government to relinquish its controlling interest in the Daily Times contributed in no small measure to whatever he saw as the failing of the press today.
President Shagari has already challenged the press to advise him on how to hands off the Times in such a way that the paper would not land in one man’s hand who may decide to use the paper to the detriment of the society at large. Good thinking. But the federal government, with all its officials competent enough to diagnose the ills of the press, ought to be able to find a formula that the president would find fool-proof. Meanwhile, people like Alhaji Danbatta, Mr. Jaja and Alhaji Odunewu, all of whom are responsible for the affairs of the Daily Times, would do Nigerian journalism a world of good if they would limit their disenchantment with the press to circulars sent out to their staff. Charity should begin at home, and the paper most evidently failing in courage in Nigeria today is the Daily Times. Why would any paper kill a column as courageous as the “Grapevine?” Why? If the management of that paper found anything wrong with the column, the worst it could possibly do was to correct it, but not to kill it. The killing of the “Grapevine” column was anything but courageous, and those responsible for killing such a popular column should not be talking about lack of courage of good journalism. It is for the Daily Times to blaze the trail and for the rest of us to follow.
Sunday Concord, November 22, 1981
