In Part Two of his conversation with GBENRO ADESINA, AMB.(Dr.) YEMI FAROUNBI examines the changing face of broadcasting and journalism in Nigeria, speaking on professionalism, ethics, training, press freedom, and the influence of ownership on the media. He also gives a revealing account of the controversial privatisation of the Daily Times and why, in his view, the process resulted in the death of one of Nigeria’s most iconic media institutions. The Excerpt:
Q: When you look back, what were the defining moments that prepared you for leadership?
A: I was a lucky person. I went to primary school in what was then called Class One, and after six months, they said I should move to Class Two. The system then was Class One and Class Two, followed by Standard One, Standard Two, Standard Three, Standard Four, Standard Five, and Standard Six. Then Chief Obafemi Awolowo came and changed the system to primary education. The original system was designed to take eight years to complete primary school, but Chief Awolowo changed it to six years. I was in Standard Five when Awolowo came. I had leapfrogged twice. By the time I was in Standard Five, I was supposed to have spent seven years in primary school, but I had spent only five. When I was in Standard Five, Awolowo asked Standard Five and Six pupils to sit for the Western Regional Primary School Examination. I passed. I was younger than everybody in my class. I considered myself fortunate. God gave me some brains, but God also gave me a succession of teachers who recognised what I could do. They would say, “Don’t spend one year in this class; jump into the next class.” So, they treated me as a specially brilliant child. Does the Nigerian education system today recognise that? No. By the time I was 10, I had finished primary school. In today’s system, they will say you can’t finish primary school at that age; you should finish at 12. You should finish secondary school at 16, and if you are 14 or 15, you can’t go to the university. That means we don’t have a system that recognises special students. Nor do we have a system that recognises students who need special attention. I have never forgotten those great teachers. One of them became a bishop, and another became a professor of Economics at the University of Maiduguri. That affected me all my life. So, I look out for special people. When I had the opportunity to become a manager, I had all kinds of schemes for the accelerated development of people whom I believed were unusual. I would send them for special training abroad: Reuters training, Topson Foundation, and BBC School. I found out later that the Army had such a system. They would send people to Teshie in Ghana for training and Mons in the UK. The special ones would be sent to Sandhurst. They may all come out with the same certificate, but the environment and level of training are different. I have come to learn that, in dealing with people, you must assist them to grow at their own pace. Don’t equalise them. Don’t drag them down. Don’t force them up. Let them grow. I learnt that from primary school. When I was in secondary school, I was the timekeeper. I decided when you would go to sleep, when you would have your siesta, when you would wake up, and when you would change classes. That imposed a sense of time on me. I realised that time is important and that, really, time is money. What differentiates Mr A from Mr B is the way they use their time. I attended the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Then the war came, and I moved to the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU). They resisted us. They said we had come from American-style colleges where they only marked attendance, registered students, and gave them certificates. That was what they understood by continuous assessment. But there was a Professor Wood, a white man, who asked them, “What is your problem?” They said, “They are second-year students where they are coming from.” He said, “Put them in second year.” They said, “They are third-year students where they are coming from.” He said, “Put them in third year.” He told them, “When they do your examination and fail, then it is because they failed that you will put them where they should be. You can’t prejudge them and say that because you think that place is inferior, they must come a step down.” Because of that man, those of us in second year were put in second year, and those in the final year were allowed to go into the final year. We then did the examinations, just as the man had said. We found out that the first three people who ever made First Class at the University of Ife were students who had migrated from Nsukka. The man said, “You see now? They beat your students.” So, don’t prejudge a book by its cover. Look at the content. I have learnt that. So, when I sat on interview panels to recruit people, whether as a manager or a consultant, I didn’t just look at your certificate and say, “Oh, you went to Harvard; therefore, you must be better than a man from Ekiti State University.” It doesn’t follow. Each person is an embodiment of a special endowment that cannot be replicated in another person. So, I have learnt to give people opportunities based on their abilities, not based on which university or secondary school they attended. I have seen some schools in Ekiti that you would think were nothing, yet their students came out with eight distinctions. I had a classmate at Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti. We took the Form Three-to-Four examination, which we used to call Junior Cambridge. We liked big names. They said he didn’t do well, so he must repeat. I loved him a lot. I was close to his father. I told his father, “Don’t allow him to repeat.” The man looked at me and asked why I would object when the authorities had said his son should repeat. I said, “I don’t think he should repeat. He is very good.” Somehow, he listened. He went to Christ’s School and said, “I don’t think he should repeat. Promote him, and if he fails in the first term, then you can bring him down.” From that point on, he never came second in the class. He had the best result in our School Certificate Examination. He went on to do the Higher School Certificate (HSC) and obtained straight As. He went to the University of Ibadan and made a First Class. He went abroad to do his PhD and finished in two years. That was a man whose life they would have frustrated. I apply those lessons when I interact with people. That is why I respect everybody. I believe that what I have, you may not have, but I don’t have what you have.
Q: At what point did you decide to come into journalism? Also, by your assessment, can you say the broadcasters of today are better than the broadcasters of yesterday? Is professionalism on the rise or declining?
A: The broadcasters today are better educated than the broadcasters of our time. In our time, all you needed was a school certificate, a fine face—we called it a photogenic face—and a good voice. We never thought much about the brain. Until 1968, we were not emphasising the intellectual aspect of broadcasting. It was from 1968 that we started the process of the intellectualisation of broadcasting. We then realised: can you inform if you are not informed? Can you educate if you are not educated? And the person who will entertain also has to be well educated. Today, they are better educated. There was a time I had to do something for them at BCOS, and I found out that the institution had 28 people with master’s degrees in its newsroom. I started asking myself, “Is this a university?” If you go to the Tribune newspaper, you will be shocked at the number of journalists who are PhD holders. So, they are better prepared and better educated. The only thing is that they haven’t had the opportunity for the kind of professional training we had. At that time, you would obtain your degree, and they would shake your hand. They would still send you to the BBC Training School, Radio Netherlands, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, or the Thomson Foundation to spend six months or one year so that you could be immersed in the broadcasting culture. There was an argument whether broadcasting was a profession like architecture, engineering, or medicine. The truth is that it is a profession like the other professions I have mentioned. Broadcasting has a body of knowledge. Today, you can go to university and obtain a degree in broadcasting. Beyond that, it has a culture. In broadcasting culture, you don’t start your programme by prostrating; you shake hands. Broadcasting culture is unique to broadcasting. There are broadcasting ethics. There are words you don’t use. There are things you don’t say. There are lines you don’t cross. We need disciplinary measures, which I believe we will have very soon. We have the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), which punishes stations. But we don’t have a body that punishes a broadcaster who commits professional errors. If a lawyer misbehaves in court, he can be disbarred. If a doctor misbehaves in the hospital, his name can be removed from the professional register. Very soon, there will be a Broadcasting Practitioners’ Code. It was passed by the last National Assembly on May 27. It was too late for President Muhammadu Buhari to sign, so it had to go back to the National Assembly. I think they are about to pass it again. When they pass it, then you will know that when your name is struck out, you can’t practise broadcasting in Nigeria. It is even more worrisome because a broadcaster can set this nation ablaze through irresponsible reporting. A lot of people don’t remember that the problem of the 1966 mayhem was caused by a radio station in Cotonou that said that Igbos were already killing Northerners in Enugu when there was nothing like that. When the Northerners heard that, they started killing the Igbos. It led to the May 29, 1966, decapacitation of the East in the North. They will say somebody has died when he has not died. Now, we think fake news is normal. It is the duty of readers to find out whether it is fake news or not. Why should I hear something on a radio station and begin to think, “Is it fake or not?” I am supposed to assume that anything that comes out of the broadcast media must be believable and factual. Facts are sacred. That makes it important for us to be in a position to sanction an individual who breaks the code. Training and retraining alongside high educational standards are very important in broadcast media. We must continue to upgrade skills through training and retraining. A lot of station owners don’t even know what broadcasting is all about. They think it is simply a business. For a television station to break even, it will take magic. The number of stations is growing faster than our ability to train people. Again, the economy is collapsing. The stations can’t get adverts. In a city like Ibadan, when there is little industry, you know what it takes to put up a studio like this. But technology has made it possible for you. I am not sweating in your studio. You will sweat in our studio. Look at your camera. During our time, you needed a ladder to operate a camera. The cable would be as big as this. Things have changed, and that has made broadcasting more mobile and therefore more accessible and realistic. As to professionalism, there are aspects I look at. I look at objectivity, impartiality, fairness, balance, and timeliness. I still find radio stations using what newspapers published yesterday. Timeliness is lost. I hear them say, “Ajabale, this is fresh.” That is not exactly right. I still find them sounding like one another. There is a colouration of news which will naturally lead to distortion. They reduce the seriousness of news to jokes today. This devalues the news. News is supposed to be hard.
Q: Is Nigerian journalism becoming freer and more vulnerable to political and commercial interests?
A: At all times, journalism in Nigeria has reflected the plurality of the society, but it has not forgotten the influence of ownership. Take the Daily Times and Morning Post, Tribune and West African Pilot, or OSRC Akure and Radio Nigeria Akure in 1983, during the contest between Ajasin and Omoboriowo. Both sides threw professionalism to the wind. Radio Nigeria was talking about peace while supporting Omoboriowo, who had been alleged to have won. Ajasin was being supported by OSRC. I remember that their favourite music then was Peter Tosh. We had the same situation in Enugu at the same time. So, there have been occasions when there was excessive ownership influence. We once had it at WNTV between 1962 and 1965. It became so bad that nobody listened to WNTV in the Western Region. It became a mouthpiece of a government that was not popular. Those are deviations. The norm, the average, was professional because, when you look at that period, you remember people like Sam Amuka, Ebenezer Williams, Peter Pan, and Alade. We still have such journalists today. I still think of a lot of the columnists in the Tribune, as well as the Punch and Daily Trust. Sometimes, they protect regional interests, but they still try to be factual, believable, and truthful. The greatest problem we have in journalism today is particularly with the print media. We have almost lost it. The economy and technology have changed the print media. There is now a convergence. In fact, most print media organisations have their own radio stations too. They try to be truthful because the audience and readers we have now are much more sophisticated than the readers and viewers of the past. They will simply ignore and abandon you. So, you have to try to be professional. We are not where we used to be. I still believe we have the freest press in Africa, not because the government wants it, but because the journalists want it. I believe Nigerian journalists and broadcasters are great fighters. They are willing to take risks, even at the risk of their lives. Dele Giwa did. There are journalists who got lost during General Sani Abacha’s regime, and to this day, we never know where they were. I still remember Tayo Awotunsi and his experience in Liberia. I think we have better media in Africa. People say they are not as good as they used to be, but I say it is not true. They write better. They speak better. There are a few who may appear to be influenced by money, but in the past, there were also a few who were influenced by brown envelopes. There will always be a minority. But when you look at the majority, I think we are doing well.
Q: Could you lead us into the process of privatising the Daily Times, as the Chairman of the Board of Directors?
A: It is a story. When civilian government came in 1999, President Olusegun Obasanjo came with the concept of privatisation. It was a trend worldwide. British Railways had been privatised. British Airways had been privatised. The thinking was that government had no business being in business. It is not that government has no business in business. It is just that, in Africa, we have a way of putting our own special character into it. For example, if a Nigerian Airways plane was about to fly and a minister wanted to get on that plane, the minister would telephone, and they would hold the plane until the minister was ready. With that kind of situation, you know that government ownership was not right. The Nigerian Railway had a special coach for the Prime Minister, so they had to wait for him. You don’t run a business like that. A lot of people began to think that government should simply provide the environment and privatise its commercial enterprises. In the course of that, it was decided to set up the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE). Then the Daily Times became one of the organisations to be privatised. I had a problem with that. I recalled that Dr Adeyemo Alakija, an Ile-Ife-born prince, started the Daily Times in 1922. I also recalled that the eminence that the Daily Times acquired was largely courtesy of the effort, managerial ability, and foresight of the Ikare-born Babatunde Jose. I also knew that when the military under Murtala/Obasanjo took over the Daily Times, they were misadvised and completely misled. They were made to believe that Jose owned the Daily Times, whereas it was privately owned. Jose didn’t have five per cent of the shares. He was a minority shareholder. But when the military took over from Gowon, they saw the problem the Daily Times had caused Gowon. The Daily Times was doing 450,000 copies every day. On Sundays, it did 250,000 copies. Lagos Weekend did 150,000, while Headlines did 100,000. It was a single media force, the strongest in Africa. There was no government that would not respect it. An editorial in the Daily Times could shake a government. Murtala and Obasanjo didn’t want that, particularly when they thought it was owned by one man. They asked themselves: How can we be running helter-skelter because of one man? They decided to take it over. They took 60 per cent of the shares and gave it to NICON, leaving the remaining 40 per cent to the public. At the same time, they took over the New Nigerian Newspaper. The New Nigerian Newspaper had also created a lot of problems in the 1960s. It started on January 1, 1966. It was a vital force in the events that led to the 1966 succession of government. They decided to take over the two organisations.
When they started the privatisation process, they returned the New Nigerian Newspaper to the Northern governors. I said No. You can’t do that. If you return the New Nigerian Newspaper to the 19 state governments in the North because the New Nigerian Newspaper used to be owned by the Northern Regional Government, then you must return the Daily Times to those 60 per cent who were shareholders. Their names were on the register. We could identify them through their addresses. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. That was rejected. To me, fairness meant returning it to the original owners. They didn’t do that. They said they wanted to make money from the Daily Times. Then we proposed that we knew the bulk of the owners. If we wouldn’t return the organisation to the original owners, let us return it to the region that owned it. They said no, it was the Federal Government that owned it. We said no, the Federal Government didn’t own it. It was owned by private people who were largely Westerners. Let us return it to them. They said no. Then we asked them to sell it to the local governments and let them become the shareholders. They said no. We were giving them options because we wanted the Daily Times to live forever. I eventually concluded that since the government said it wanted to privatise it, it would advertise it, and the highest bidder would get it. We had a series of board meetings. I said the best thing we could do was to sell the Daily Times to the management. At that time, Dr Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo had just left. Edwin Baiye became the Managing Director/Executive Director. The Daily Times was a mini-Nigeria. The management we wanted to sell it to didn’t have the money. So, I said, let us use our own leverage to find people who would bankroll them. I thought of foreign investors. I knew that one or two people from South Africa were interested in putting money down to bankroll the management. I thought that was the fairest thing we could do. We spoke to great names. We spoke to Aremo Olusegun Osoba and General Theophilus Danjuma. They were willing. The idea was that the management would bid for it and these people would help them pay for it. We were so excited as a board because we believed we were ensuring the survival of the Daily Times for life. This was one thing that made Nigeria tower over all other African countries. So, the BPE went ahead to do what it was supposed to do. They opened the bidding. The management bid N250 million. The next person bid N100 million. We all had a proper valuation of the Daily Times, which was about N1.2 billion. Before the privatisation began, some of the Daily Times’ properties abroad had been sold. That happened during the days of Peter Pan. That was in 2001, when the Nigerian currency was still strong. Under the privatisation process, when you opened the first bid, the top two bidders would then be invited to make the final bid. In the final bid, the management offered N1.2 billion, which was the actual value of the Daily Times. A man who had initially bid N100 million then offered N1.25 billion. There was insider abuse. Somebody was sitting on the board who had agreed with us that the best way to guarantee the survival of the Daily Times was to sell it to the management. We didn’t say sell it to us. We didn’t say sell it to anybody else. We said sell it to the management. This person, who was representing some interests on that board, was linked to the second bidder. We had assumed that the management would take over. They would sit with us, and we knew all their strategies. We knew they would make a final bid of N1.2 billion. This person, who was working for another interest, knew this because she was part of the board. So, she told those people. Those people then made a final bid of N1.25 billion — just N50 million more. They said that was the highest bid. I spoke to Baba Alayande, who was chairman of the Yoruba Council of Elders. I told him, “Your patrimony is being sold.” We thought it was best for the management, but really, we thought the best option was to return it to the former owners. I briefed him. He went to meet President Obasanjo. Obasanjo said, “Sorry, highest bidder.” But they were hoping that when they took over, they would be able to do something with the assets. They didn’t have the money, but they got a bank to lend them the money for one month to buy it. The management, on the other hand, had the money from investors available. If they had given it to the management, the Daily Times would have become a mega organisation. The management at the time was good. But the person who got it was hoping they would strip the assets of the Daily Times conglomerate to repay the loan. They never knew they were dealing with people who could outwit them. 357 Kakawa Street, which used to be our headquarters, had been leased out for 50 years. There was an estate in Ikeja where we had about 30 buildings. We had leased that out. There was also the 579 warehouse in Apapa. We had leased that out. So, when they came, there was nothing to strip. They had to wait for the leases to expire. As a result, they couldn’t repay the bank. The bank ran under. It was the end of a dream. We probably would have succeeded, but then they removed El-Rufai from the BPE. When I met El-Rufai to discuss the concept of a management buyout, he agreed that there was no need to do an open bidding. They promoted him to become a minister and brought somebody else. Then the new man said we had to do public bidding. And that was the end.
Q: So, Obasanjo didn’t see the Daily Times as a legacy that should be preserved?
A: He didn’t see any place as a legacy. It hurts. Every time I think about it, it hurts. I remember when Babatunde Jose got to Agidingbi, took that land and acquired the extra land, which he gave to Cadbury. We did what we thought was best. The government wanted money. Yes, that is good, but it must also think about survival. The Daily Times has not survived. That is a pity because it is something that stood out in Nigerian journalism all over the world.
Q: Have you had any opportunity to discuss it with him after the privatisation?
A: No, I haven’t. I have met him several times, but it didn’t occur to me. OBJ is an interesting Nigerian. He always thinks everybody is a rogue. He didn’t think that about me. As far as he was concerned, it was about money. Really, if it had ever occurred to me that there was a leaking pipe within the board, it wouldn’t have happened.
Q: Do you think the privatisation achieved its objective?
A: They got the money, but they didn’t get the Daily Times. They got the money; they killed the Daily Times. The objective of privatisation is that you get the money and the business still survives. Can you imagine the number of workers who lost their jobs because the Daily Times was privatised? I’m not talking only about job losses from the Daily Times, but from the Sunday Times, Lagos Weekend, Headlines, Times Supplements, Nigerian Year Book, and even the packaging operations, Niger Pack, among others. Rather than creating jobs and developing the business, the privatisation killed it. That was sad. It happened to everything. Look at the privatisation of iron and steel, machine tools, Odogbo, and NITEL. They just died. We don’t think right in Nigeria. There was no reason to privatise some of those things. It would have paid Nigeria to leave the Daily Times with the government. If the Daily Times had been given to the management, it would have survived. The DTN staff were fanatically committed. We even brought Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye to come and pray for the survival of the Daily Times when we were marking its 75th anniversary.
