When my friend, colleague and brother, Yakubu Mohammed died some weeks ago I wrote a column that was published in The Nation and The Sun newspapers. I said that when he was hospitalised “I called him on the day that he was to be discharged. “Yakky, have you been discharged?” I asked. “No, I don’t know why I have not been discharged,” he answered. The next day I decided to call his daughter who is a medical doctor in that hospital. I asked her “Is your father’s condition stable? She said “yes.” “Can I speak to him please,” I asked. “He will call you later,” she answered. I decided to call his number. His wife answered. I asked the wife the same question that I asked the daughter. “Is your husband’s condition stable?” She said “yes.” With those two yesses I was calm, believing that he will be discharged soon. Then the next day the story suddenly shifted. Yakubu is dead. That is what is called The Chisholm Effect. The Chisholm Effect is that “when things are going well, something will go wrong.” Yakubu was not someone who was frequently sick. At his age he was still driving himself. So the sudden-ness of his death is stunning. He has been buried. The 8th day and 40th day prayer sessions have been held. But we, his colleagues, thought that it would be a good idea to celebrate this journalism icon with a tribute session. That is the reason for this meeting.
Yakubu, Dan Agbese and I are alumni of the Department of Mass Communication of the University of Lagos. While Dan and I graduated from there in 1973 Yakubu got his degree from there in 1975. Eventhough Dan and I were not his classmates, we knew him then because he was very active in amateur journalism on campus. On graduation, he pitched his tent with the New Nigerian newspaper becoming at various times its Associate Editor, Managing Editor and Acting Editor. Then Chief MKO Abiola, publisher of the National Concord head-hunted him and made him Deputy Editor of the National Concord. And in 1982 he ascended the editorial throne of the Concord Group as the Editor of National Concord. That appointment was a robust evidence that he had earned his wings. When I was Editor of the Sunday Times I contested for the Presidency of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) in 1982. Yakubu and Dele Giwa, Editor of the Sunday Concord, were my campaign managers. The venue of the election was Shiroro Hotel, Minna, Niger State. Umaru Dikko, a kingpin of the NPN wanted to sponsor my candidacy. I rejected the offer because I didn’t think it was the business of any politician or political party to get involved in the affairs of a professional group such as the NGE. I was not ready to mortgage the independence of the NGE. The NPN and Dikko brought tons of money to Minna and bribed some journalists who were willing to be bribed, The election was a fiasco. Yakubu and Dele stood their ground as journalists of integrity. The Guild died and was buried in a shallow grave for a decade before it was resurrected in 1992. But that is a story for another day.
That same year 1982 I had a problem with the management of the Daily Times group. I was removed as Editor of the Sunday Times eventhough I had received three letters of commendation from the Managing Director and General Manager within two years. At the Business Times where I was posted to I had editorial disagreements with the Managing Director, Mr Emmanuel Dagogo Jaja so I decided to resign. The next day I went to the The Guardian to look for a job but Yakubu, Dele and Dr Doyin Abiola persuaded me to come to the Concord instead. I agreed. The three officials convinced Abiola to create the position of Chairman of the Editorial Board for me. He did. I assumed duty there immediately. Dele asked me to write a column for his Sunday Concord. I agreed. Yakubu asked me to write a column for his National Concord on Thursdays. I agreed. Two columns a week plus my regular duties as Chairman of the Editorial Board did not bother a thirty something year old man who loved what he was doing. On Editorial writing Yakubu gave me a long latitude. I would discuss the editorials with my team, get them written and sent to the production department and would only send a copy to the Editor in Chief and Editor of any of the three papers, National Concord, Sunday Concord and Business Concord. Yakubu gave me no problems whatsoever. During my tenure I only had a problem with one editorial which Dr Abiola, Editor in Chief objected to. Chief Olu Aboderin, publisher of the Punch had delivered a lecture somewhere in which he prescribed confederation for Nigeria. I met with my editorial board members and the overwhelming view was that while Nigeria needed true federalism it did not need confederation. When Dr Abiola saw the editorial she called me to her office and told me that the editorial could not be published because Chief Abiola believed in confederation. I had to write a new editorial on an innocuous subject to replace it. Yakubu did not oppose the position taken by our Editorial Board but he accepted that since an editorial is the property of the publisher it was proper to drop the earlier editorial that we wrote. Also, I had approved for publication a letter to the editor from someone who said that Concord should not be publishing adverts on alcohol because Abiola was a muslim. Abiola invited Yakubu and Dele to a meeting in which he complained about the letter. The two men asked me to go and see the Chief on the matter but I refused because I thought that if the Chief wanted to hear from me he would have sent for me. Yakubu did not scold me on it and we did not stop publishing such adverts because we knew that a newspaper is a free market place of ideas.
When the three of us, Yakubu, Dele and I left Concord we decided to establish Newswatch. Yakubu spoke to his friend and businessman in London called Ibrahim Bilyaminu Yusufu who was interested in helping us to publish a newsmagazine like Time. Three of us, Yakubu, Dele and I travelled to London and had a meeting with the man. The man agreed to work with us on the project but he eventually lost interest for some unknown reasons. But the credit goes to Yakubu for initiating the process. When we came back I decided to work on the feasibility study which we took to Dr Ime Ebong, a seasoned banker, for approval. We also signed a pre-incorporation agreement before scouting for investors. Yakubu and I met and decided to give the editorial and business leadership of the company to Dele and Dan Agbese respectively who had been brought into the founding team after his first choice, Mohammed Haruna had declined to participate in the project. We took the decision not out of any sense of inferiority or superiority but simply to (a) restore their self-confidence after the problems they had with their previous employers and (b) to tell their former employers that they made the wrong decisions on the two men.
At Newswatch what kept us together were our friendship, the decision that the affairs of the company and magazine would be run democratically, our relationship building abilities, our joint participation in both editorial and business decisions, and our decision to earn equal salary and allowances. These were the building blocks for the company and magazine’s architecture. These kept us going for 27 years before we retired.
At a certain point Yakubu and I were Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Executive Officer respectively, watching the naira and kobo of the organisation. It was our duty to do the heavy lifting by making all the trains of the Newswatch project to run in time. But we kept our interest in journalism alive as if we were journalism’s uncle so as to ensure that those who were in active journalism practice walked on the straight and narrow road of professionalism and ethical correctness. In doing so we were polite so that the egos of those who were editing the magazine would not be negatively affected.
At some point we bought a colour separation machine to do the colour jobs of Newswatch and Quality, our sister publication. We asked our colour separation staff to canvass for commercial jobs so that the machine does not remain largely idle and underutilised. They kept telling us there were no jobs. Then I got information that the staff usually came on Sundays to do private jobs and put the money in their pockets. So one Sunday I drove to the place, parked my car outside the gate and walked into the compound. At the colour separation unit I saw two men, one a non staff. The staff was doing a private job and when I asked if it was official he said he was just helping his pastor. “Has he paid for it?” I asked. He said “No, I am just helping him.” I collected the materials from him and quickly stepped out of the place. The following day I reported the matter to Yakubu and also asked the Admin Manager to give the culprit a query. Yakubu was opposed to a query because he said if the CEO was the one who caught the culprit the long procedure was unnecessary. Secondly, he said that if he had co-conspirators they would quickly come to beg for pardon. He was right on the second point because some managers came to me saying that if the fellow was sacked the magazine would not come out. But I was also conscious about fair hearing and the fact that some charge-and-bail lawyer may seek to disgrace us in court on procedural and fair hearing grounds. I insisted on a query and when he answered I sacked him. The heavens did not fall. The magazine still came out, looking sparkling bright.
When we decided on a policy of clocking in and clocking out for all staff our editorial staff kicked against it. They said that journalists do not clock in and clock out “anywhere in the world.” When Yakubu and I travelled to New York for an assignment that took us to some media there we noticed, at the office of the International Herald Tribune, that the editorial staff were clocking in and clocking out. We took pictures which we showed to Newswatch editorial staff on our return. That was how we convinced them that it was actually in their best interest for the company to know their movements at any time.
One issue that we fought against at Newswatch was discrimination against women in employment. We had a team of managers to conduct tests and interviews and make recommendations to the Executive Directorate for approval. On one occasion, they failed to recommend for employment some girls who did very well in the tests and interviews. Their excuse was that some male managers were complaining that the women were always going to the hospitals or to the market. I told them that an organisation such as ours that was fighting for justice, fairness, and gender equity could not engage in such discriminatory practices which were, in any case, against the Constitution. I reversed their recommendation and also kept a close watch on the employment procedure generally. Yakubu was a staunch supporter of this position. Many men treat women shabbily. In Newswatch we had a staff who died and his wife came with three children to collect his terminal benefits. Our Admin Manager recommended that she be paid his entitlements. I asked him to bring the man’s employment file. What did we find? His brother, not the wife, was listed as his next of kin. The wife broke down in tears. I told her we would help her by convincing her brother in law to let her collect the money. If he failed to cooperate he would not have any evidence to prove that he was listed as the next of kin because I would not provide such information even on the pains of death. But he was a decent man. He said we could pay his brother’s wife the money.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says that “women are one half of the world’s population but receive 1/10 of the world’s income, account for 2/3 of the world’s working hours and own only 1/100th of the world’s property.” It is a global, not just a Nigerian problem. Men use customs, traditions, male chauvinism, cultural and religious prejudice and legal constraints to oppress women. When Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was chosen as President of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) many Nigerians were happy that a Nigerian woman had shattered the glass ceiling that had been jealously guarded by men since the organisation was created on January 1, 1995. She was to become the first woman to sit on that chair wearing her flowery Nigerian attire complete with a headtie that often perches daintily on her forehead. But a jaundiced European newspaper nearly spoiled the fun when in announcing the appointment, it called Okonjo-Iweala a grandmother, conveniently ignoring her Ph.D in Economics from Harvard University and her former position as Managing Director of the World Bank. The world saw the publication as either racist or sexist or both and the paper had to apologise. In some parts of Nigeria women are not allowed to eat gizzard or drink the dregs of wine, or to break kola nut. These are forbidden for they are seen as the province of men only. In some other parts of the country, widows are compelled to drink the dirty water from the dead man’s body or to wear only black clothes for a year or not to participate in any public event for a year or longer. Some families prevent a female child even if she is the eldest in the family from signing funeral papers if any of her parents dies. But in the two places where Yakubu and I worked together, Concord and Newswatch, he showed maximum respect to women.
Yakubu was a moslem but he was not an extremist. He was a decent, civilised and modern moslem not infected by the bug of religious irredentism. I was at a human rights conference in Cairo, Egypt some years ago. The young lady sitting by my side was a lawyer. She wore a miniskirt and no head gear. So I asked her whether she was a moslem. She said “yes, I am a modern moslem.” In a world where fundamental human rights are being emphasized globally women are still being badly treated on the basis of religion. In the early days of Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency he stoutly refused to shake hands with his female ministers until there was a huge outcry against such a discriminatory practice. That was when he changed. One day one of my children, a girl, wanted to accompany me to the office. No problem. She said to me, “I know that Uncle Yakubu is a moslem. When I see him how should I greet him.” I said “Just give him a big hug. He is your uncle.” And when she hugged Yakubu I just sat there smiling with chin-jutting pride. Yakubu saw nothing wrong with a hug from a girl who had no sexual advances in mind. Yakubu too did not harbour any nasty thougths for her. He simply showed that he was a very decent man. That hugging episode fell within the acceptable hugging etiquette.
One day in the office Yakubu addressed Dan as sir and he got very angry. “What is this your sir about, Yakubu?” I was a bit surprised at the way Dan reacted to it. Yakubu sometimes says to me “okay sir, thank you sir, good morning sir.” I see nothing wrong with that because I think he is just being respectful. It is not a mockery or a condescending remark. It is just a mark of his decency because I am only two years older than him and Dan was only six years older than him. I never got angry. I just swallowed the sir joyfully from a man I respected borderlessly. That incident between him and Dan proved that the two men were very decent human beings. Yakubu saw nothing wrong in calling his business partner who was six years older than him sir. Dan saw something wrong in being called sir by a man who was kind enough to bring him into the business he never knew about. I admire both of them for their decency and civility.
I was a bit surprised when Yakubu decided to sink his feet into the murky waters of partisan politics. I thought he knew that as a very straight forward person he would not fit properly into the game knowing that many Nigerian politicians do not mind promising to build a bridge even where there is no water. But perhaps Yakubu thought as Charles de Gaulle said that “politics is too serious to be left to the politicians.” Twice he attempted to get to the Kogi State Governorship throne and twice he failed to get there not because he was not qualified but because Nigerian politics is an algorithym with multiple complexities. It seems that most Nigerian politicians behave and look alike like Chinese. Yakubu doesn’t look like them. That is why he didn’t get there, but he must have found that partisan politics is not a bed of roses. It is, instead, a school of hard knocks.
But Yakubu did very well at another university of life, the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he was the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council. He took journalism’s fairness doctrine as well as transparency and excellence to the University and he got a roar of approval for his exertions.
As I said in my column on him Yakubu was a reporter’s reporter, a careful, thorough and methodical story teller. He went for facts, truth, he never bent the facts, he never bent the truth. He told the story faithfully, truthfully in a simple but alluring language. He never went for grandiloquence or intellectual exhibitionism or writing gymnastics. He just wanted to tell a story in a way that anyone who read it understood it. He went for clarity. And even in his column writing, something he had done for decades, his style was the same. And when he got elected as the Vice President of the League of Nigerian Columnists which is headed by the journalism legend, Chief Tola Adeniyi. I knew that he deserved the honour. And he capped his writing career by bringing out an autobiography titled “Beyond Expectations” before he died. By writing a book about his life and legacy he added muscle to his career as a journalist and public intellectual.
Today, we are in a new age where the new communication eco-system is posing a challenge to credible journalism. Something has emerged called Citizen Journalism which in my opinion should be properly called Citizen Communication. I say so because journalism is not a one-man show but a multi-person orchestra with professional canons of practice and code of ethics. Ordinary citizens not trained in journalism are writing reports, comments and taking photographs of happenings and sending them to the world. They have become megaphones that have contributed in making the world a global village. But it comes with its own problems, a combination sometimes of truth and lies because of the abundance of voices, trained and untrained, abundance of motives, fair and foul, knowledgeable and not so knowledgeable, well informed and not so well informed. Some send rubbish and say “forwarded as received.” some say “breaking news” when in fact no news is breaking. Some kill people who are still living. However, they have come to stay so we must live with them. There is merit in numbers. How do we cope with the situation? My prescription is that there must be a wedding, a marriage of convenience, of opportunism between credible journalism and citizen journalism. That wedding must produce two children. The first child will be called Credibility while the second child will be called Speed. That way we will get the best of both worlds.
As we were building that architecture of credible journalism at Newswatch God gave us the wisdom to bring one of our loyal and dedicated staff from the newsroom to the boardroom. His name is: Soji Akinrinade. Today, he remains one of the pillars of the Newswatch edifice.
It is as if Yakubu knew that his time to go had come. So he wrote his epitaph in an interview with The Niche. Here is it: “I have no regrets picking journalism. If I have to come back to this world again, I will be a journalist.” His faith in God was firm. So was his faith in journalism, credible journalism.
Yakky, goodbye.
Ray Ekpu