The “Daily Graphic” Success Story:
AS I was saying, the “Daily Graphic” is a Ghanaian state-owned daily newspaper published in Accra Ghana. The newspaper was established along with the Sunday Mirror in 1950, by Cecil King of the London Mirror Group. With a circulation of more than 150,000 copies daily, the “Daily Graphic” is the most widely read newspaper in Ghana till the present. In 1979, the newspaper was renamed the “People’s Daily Graphic” under Jerry Rawlings for a few years to “remind the people that it belongs to them”. The newspaper also publishes two weekly entertainment newspapers, namely “The Mirror” and “Graphic Showbiz”. “Graphic Sports”, the most read sports newspaper in Ghana, is also a product of the company. The company also publishes the “Junior Graphic”, aimed at a younger audience and the “Graphic Business”, a business and financial newspaper, the “Graphic Advertiser”, a free ads newspaper, and the “Nsɛmpa”, a regional weekly for the Ashanti region.
‘Between Nigeria’s “Daily Times”, and Ghana’s “Daily Graphic”;
When Nnamdi Azikiwe (“Zik”) launched his powerful “West African Pilot” in 1937, dedicated to fighting for independence from British colonial rule, established newspapers such as the “Nigerian Daily Times” (as it then was), lost a large part of their market. The “Daily Times” responded to the Zik’s challenge by raising some foreign capital for restructuring its operations, especially investing in the editorial team. By the end of the World war II in 1945, the ‘Daily Times” was remarkably hostile towards colonial rule.
And so it came to pass that in 1947 the London-based Daily Mirror Group headed by Cecil King bought the “Daily Times”, (from Adeyemo Alakija) the “Gold Coast Daily Graphic”, the “Accra Sunday Mirror”, and the “Sierra Leone Daily Mai”, In other words, both the “Daily Times” and “Daily Graphic” began a journey together in 1947 under a common ownership, Cecil King. But it is a paradox of history today that while one is still thriving in the hand of its current owner, Ghanaian government, the other, “Daily Times”, has been destroyed by its owner, the Nigerian government.
It will interest the young readers to note that the Nigeria’s “Sunday Times”, a weekly title in “Daily Times” (Nigeria Limited “), actually sold close to a million copies when Mr. Gbolabo Ogunsanwo (of blessed memory) was its Editor in this same country.
In the same vein, the “New Nigerian” established in January 1966 by the North’s iconic regional leader, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, was also a very influential and profitable newspaper the federal government that took over the “Daily Times” also compulsorily acquired and ruined. The rubble is there to lament on too in Kaduna and Ijora, Lagos.
The federal military government of Nigeria acquired 60% of the “Daily Times” and its main rival, the “New Nigerian”, on September1, 1975, the year they also compulsorily acquired three regional universities (University of Ife, University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria) without rhyme or reason.
So, as as a crisis of coherence is still fuelling agitation for restructuring in the troubled federation, I would like to advise Nigeria’s Information and Culture Minister Alhaji Mohammed Idris (as I did to his predecessor, Alhaji Lai Mohammed) to lead the charge to restructure the public broadcasters – NTA, FRCN and VON in public interest. After all, the tone for the re-engineering of the three separate organs was thankfully set in 2013 when the Stephen Oronsaye Panel report and White Paper, which recommended rationalisation of numerous government agencies, also suggested a merger of the three organs to be Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) under one national executive management. It is now an idea whose time has come.
As for the national broadcasters, this is a time to restructure with a view to privatising them ultimately. What good do the NTA, FRCN and VON still serve the federal government that underfunds and mismanages them? What did government want to achieve for NTA when it recently appointed the serving National Publicity Secretary of the ruling APC as Chairman of NTA Board of Directors? The optics is quite terrible for the station on this curious appointment. Don’t get it twisted, the not-so-independent broadcasting corporations, still keep some of the brightest and the best broadcasters who have ironically been working in bondage.
On Friday this week, the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike had a live media chat, on almost all the private television stations. The NTA was represented but the station could not follow its live coverage because the Wike’s media chat clashed with a live coverage of the First Lady’s event elsewhere, which NTA had to carry live but others could ignore for commercial reasons. That is how public officers and our First Ladies have been holding the same NTA, FRCN and VON hostage as ‘government stations’.
Behold, the same FRCN, NTA trained and built the John and Sola Momohs, the James Audus, the Yaya Abubakars, the Abike Dabiris, the Eugenia Abus, the Cyril Stobers, etc.
Here is the thing, government has ruined the brand reputation of the public broadcasters as they are inevitably tied to the apron strings of the Information and National Orientation Ministry and the presidency. The DGs of NTA, FCRN and VON and their Executive Directors, News (EDN) are always under undue pressure from above. Some officials from state intelligence services who serve as ‘monitoring spirits’ and some president’s men are always calling the DGs, EDNs any time they (monitors) spot what they tag as radical views and programmes. They have tagged the stations as government stations that should not broadcast dissenting and radical viewpoints, not as public broadcasters as the BBC and SABC, Africa are regarded in the public space.
What is more, technology has disrupted the dubious national security fear the military authorities used to hold on to the organs. First, the authorities can muster some robust political will to sell their major shares (of NTA, FRCN & VON) to the members of staff and some interested Nigerian investors. Yes, I mean resourceful investors who can rebrand the broadcasters into a truly African Voice that can also project the culture of the black race in global context.
As I was saying in 2023 here, that radical move will be a reassuring signal that indeed the federal government is irrevocably committed to restructuring of the troubled federation. This certainly is a time for the federal government to free the long-suffering NTA, FRCN and VON and let them go and prosper in the field where Aljazeera too, owned by Qatar (through a public trust), is serving the interest of the Middle East.
The amiable Minister of Information and Nation Orintation should begin restructuring with one thing needful today: restructuring of the internal governance system that will take away the public broadcasters from the obnoxious civil service structure, civil service salary scale and civil service rules and regulation/financial instructions. This has been the blight that has robbed the public broadcasters of experienced personnel and institutional memories. Most of the broadcast journalists who should have been building and rebuilding the brand reputation have retired into obscurity. Not many of the broadcasters, specifically newscasters and anchors can compete with the private ones that have the latitude to hire brilliant experts they also train to learn, unlearn and relearn rudiments of digital journalism that is shaping journalism into just digital conversations that have empowered even citizen and solution journalists.
The Nigeria’s retrogressive civil service structure that is shaping a mediocre public sector in Nigeria cannot therefore restructure its public broadcasters to serve the public interest that viewers will always respect. The Minister is lucky at this time for one reason: most of the powerful people in Abuja have interests in private radio and television stations. They will show interest in an executive bill that will restructure the public broadcasters into a world-class brand that can serve at least the black people of the world that they are expecting Nigeria to lead. Remember that the iconic Nelson Mandela’s word on marble on this and its implication for the present leadership in Nigeria: Read Madiba again as he told a Nigerian diplomat before he flew away in December 2013: The world will not respect Africa until Nigeria earns that respect. The black people of the world need Nigeria to be great as a source of pride and confidence…’
So, we should move from rhetoric to action on how Nigeria can lead the black race and Africa. Restructuring of the public broadcasters should be the starting point. This is what an ancient word from a Middle East leader of all time says about this: “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind”. The implication of this quote is that you can’t transform and innovate until you are ready to renew your mind(set) and adapt to the current reality. The media ecosystem now favours radical revamping of Nigeria’s public broadcasters into a global brand that can be competitive and respectable like the BBC and SABC, Africa that South Africans too respect even during elections. Meanwhile, to save the FRCN’s moribund FM stations nationwide, they should be privatised immediately. They are all over the country but they aren’t viable anymore. The authorities may not know this inescapable reality.
As for “Daily Times” recovery, it is a time for it. It is a national monument that should not be allowed to die like Nigeria Airways, Nigeria’s National Shipping Lines, Nigeria’s National Fertilizer Company, Onne, Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s Newsprint Manufacturing Company, Oku Iboku, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria’s Alluminium Smelter Company, Akwa Ibom, even Ondo State’s Glass Manufacturing Company, Igbokoda. There are clauses of recovery from the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) documents to the winners of the bids for the privatised companies then. The Tinubu administration should revisit the privatisation policy that has made Nigeria to be the world’s most notorious graveyards of privatised companies, yes companies that could have enhanced Nigeria’s exceptionalism.
Specifically, let’s use the “Daily Times” as a starting point. The “Daily Graphic” (Ghana) that shares some fate with the “Daily Times”, (Nigeria) is still thriving. Let’s inquire into why the company could not be run and what happened to all the multi-billion tangible assets of the great Daily Times’ that Adeyemo Alakija, et al, would have been proud of in the great beyond!
Let’s ask: what happened to the incredibly rich library resource of the “Daily Times” in Agidingbi, Ikeja, Lagos?
Here is the thing, we should not allow those who have mismanaged their backgrounds and enterprises to continue to deceive us into believing that print media editions of newspapers and magazines aren’t selling anymore as anybody can say about ‘Daily Times’. Let’s not get it twisted, though the political economy of a free press has been devastating in Nigeria, that doesn’t mean that we should allow poor and dubious managers of enterprises to be telling us that Nigeria wouldn’t have been a good print media environment if the Newsprint Manufacturing Company in Oku Iboku, Akwa Ibom State had been made to survive till the present. So what or who killed the newsprint company in Oku Iboku? For now, let’s keep our eyes on viability of NTA, FRCN, and VON as public broadcasters that can serve the public goods game through purposeful restructuring.
- Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sundays. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.