By Dele Omojuyigbe
Headlines journal published monthly by the Daily Times was a young reporter’s nightmare. No ambitious journalist wanted to remain there and ‘report’ from archives. A reporter’s job is on the field.
Headlines could come handy as the entry point into the Daily Times company, sometimes. But that was where the arid romance stopped. No more! You enter Headlines today, and by the next morning you are itching for redeployment to Daily Times or any of the weeklies in the Daily Times Group. It’s just logical so to do for young reporters.
I was posted to Headlines and I had wanted to leave immediately. But the hurdles before me were daunting and two-pronged. I must break my editor’s thick wall of reluctance to let me go. Also, Daily Times editor must be assured doubly that my editor wouldn’t take offence if I leave. They told me that on different occasions, and the dilemma stuck to me like araldite. Dr Femi Sonaike as Daily Times editor was emphatic about it. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. God rest his soul.
In the end, I lost the pursuit and stayed in Headlines. I redesigned my schedule and gave myself additional editorial responsibility. I ensured that I wrote opinion articles and feature stories regularly in Daily Times while I maintained my presence in Headlines. I got busier than anticipated and gained in all.
My next employment in a magazine as associate editor was secured on account of those feature stories published in the Daily Times, plus the magazine experience I had in Times International on freelance basis before I was employed by the Daily Times.
Yes, there was a written test before my new magazine employment outside Agidingbi. But my bylines in those Daily Times publications beyond Headlines qualified me for the test. Then I realised that where people are is not what matters but what they do where they are. The key issue is to add value. Headlines provided the platform for me.
Sadly, they sold Daily Times. They sold history and destroyed the roots of many Nigerian journalists. A jealous Federal Military Government took over the company forcibly by buying 51 percent of its shares to own and control it, leaving 49 percent to a perturbed public.
The FG was jealous of the visible power, influence and wealth of the Daily Times, a media organisation richer than four states put together when Nigeria was divided into 12 states. The government bought it without having the capacity to manage it. So, they sold it, and annoyingly, for a pittance, not even to a team of interested former workers there. No past Daily Times employee passes through its Agidingbi office today and feels happy. The one-time bustling little town is as quiet as a graveyard.
Now reflecting, I can tell categorically that selling Daily Times is a grave disservice to Nigeria generally, and to the media industry, in particular. The biggest of its loss is its huge, rich library. I should know that.
Daily Times had 16 publications, all doing well; with many rich subsidiaries. How do you quantify that? How do you feel happy losing such, even if you were just an employee? Daily Times was every employee’s pride and that is the reason its loss still reverberates today on our Daily Times old staff WhatsApp platform.
Anyway, in the “rejected” and detested monthly Headlines journal published by our much-loved Daily Times, I took pearls home. I won the Daily Times Ombudsman’s award twice — in 1994, and 1995 — for two stories: “Nigerian Press: The History of Law and Proscription”, published in the November 1994 edition of the monthly; and “4 Editors Face Tribunal”, published in its January, 1995 edition. The ombudsman then, Chief Abiodun Aloba, gave the recommendations, and were honoured and implemented by the company.
I licked the awards like honey and savoured the naira attached to them like aloe. The naira settled some pressing bills causing me ceaseless insomnia then. I look back today, and thank Daily Times again.
- Dr Omojuyigbe, lectures at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism. He first published this piece on his Facebook Timeline.