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| Mike Awoyinfa and Dimigba Igwe |
Respected journalism masters, Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe, Publisher and Associate Publisher of Entertainment Express and Sunday Express, are set to unveil to the reading public their new book, a biography entitled Osoba: The Newspaper Years. In this interview, the dynamic duo talks about the essence of their new book and the art of book writing. They also highlighted plans afoot to launch the book on March 22, at the Muson Centre.
Excerpts.
There are so many great journalists in Nigeria, why did you choose to write about Osoba in your new book-Osoba, the newspaper years?
Dimgba Igwe:
Let’s take it that we have always been interested in journalism as a profession and career. We have been into it and we have written books on it. I used to mention that any where I and Mike travel, we used to pass through UK and the only thing that used to take us there most times could be books. When you get to the book shops you find different sessions with whole lots of books. The only session that used to interest us the most was the media session and there you would basically find fewer books.
Now your question on why we picked on Osoba, it’s from our natural flow of interest in journalism that we picked him because going through the history of Nigeria media over the last 60 years, there are people that have played a very significant role through the art of great reporting. Going back through the early papers, it all began with Zik’s group of newspapers, after Zik’s group of newspapers you then have the Daily Times group. In the Daily Times group you have a man called Jose and Jose was considered as one of the finest journalists and the man that stepped into Jose’s big shoes was Segun Osoba. When you talk of Jose and Osoba, one common thing is that they were great reporters. So when we really picked on Osoba we were searching for a great reporter and a great newspaper man and Osoba happens to be one. I don’t think anybody can beat his track records.
He moved from Daily Times to Herald. In 1976 there was a major crisis in Daily Times and as a result of the crises Osoba who was then the editor had to leave to go to Herald to prove himself. What was actually the crisis in Daily Times all about? There was a coup that brought in Murtala Muhammed to power and the editor of the paper, one Mr. Areoye Oyebola was not in the office for safety reasons, while Osoba went to work and got an exclusive. Do you know what he did? When he got to the news room and discovered that the editor had asked everybody to go home, instead of relenting and giving up he went directly to the chairman’s house in the person of Alhaji Babatunde Jose at Ikoyi.
He used the van of the company, carrying past editions of the paper and was giving out copies to soldiers whenever he got to roadblocks and was shouting Daily Times! Daily Times! That was how he was able to pass through and drove to the Chairman’s house to seek clearance to produce a new edition. Jose followed him to the office and that was how a new edition was produced with exclusives. So after that great display of journalistic instinct, Jose decided that the editor who was afraid of curfew and refused to remain in the office was not worth being the editor. So that was how the editor was removed and made something else probably the managing editor while Osoba took over the paper as its editor. There were some other people that were on the cue for the same position of the editor, so they protested and petitioned against him that he was too strong, that he was an emperor, that one man cannot wield such powers.
That was how they called on the military government to nationalize the company; that was the history of the nationalization of Daily Times. So the government took over the paper. Osoba later went to Herald, a regional paper, and through great reporting he turned the place to a profit-making venture. Herald began to compete with New Nigerian and other big papers of then. From Herald he moved to Sketch, by the time he was through with Sketch, the paper stopped getting subventions from the government because profits started coming in. From there he returned to Daily Times, this time around as the Managing Director and also made the place efficient and profitable before he left to join politics. So when you go through all these you will find out that the man achieved success through the art of great reporting, and through his turnaround managerial skills. Those were the things we were looking for. He had the great distinction of being the man that turned government newspapers into profitable ventures. It’s the stories of his great exploits in Journalism.
Mike Awoyinfa:
Dimgba has said everything. We love challenges and we love books-one of our ambitions as journalists is to end up as authors of books, great books. Book writing is a true progression of every great journalist. A true and successful journalist is the one who has written a book. You don’t just end up your life with ‘he said, and he added’. The training of journalism is to prepare you for the ultimate, and the ultimate is to write books, writing biographies of people. It’s not easy writing a book or a biography, it takes a whole lot of zeal, determination and everything your journalism training has trained you to be. You bring it to bear in the writing of books. It was books that brought Dimgba and I together. The first book we wrote –The Art of Features Writing has become the bible for journalism training in Nigeria Universities. I don’t know whether you people read it. Having written that book, it propelled the challenge to write another journalism classic and we looked around and Osoba cropped up; in this business and in any other business in life you have to choose a hero. If you want to be great it starts by having a hero. If you don’t have a hero then forget it, you have no ambition.
We chose Dele Giwa as our hero. After him we saw Osoba as a quintessential journalist, as a hero, somebody who has paid the price, somebody who has a story to tell to today’s generation of journalists, somebody whose study can inspire us to aspire to greater heights, a dogged reporter, somebody who has reporting in his blood, somebody who break stories. By the time you read this book, you will see all the qualities and all the praises that have been given to Osoba, he had all it takes to be a great reporter, because reporting is what this business is all about.
We are in a news business, and without reporters there can be no news, without news there can be no newspaper. This man has certain qualities and he has achieved, so we want to take the reporters of this day back to the good old days when journalism was journalism to see what the heroes and journalists of the past were able to achieve even without internet facilities, without all these gadgets that you have today, yet they were going the extra miles to break stories. So the book is to take you back to the old school journalism, for you to know the history of this profession, the big players of this profession and what they did to become heroes, so that you can wake up, and see the need to improve. We are not doing journalism as it used to be done, people are not breaking news, people are so complacent, and people are not ready to die to tell the story. Journalism is a very great profession.
There are heroes in this business that have to tell their stories. But their stories are not being told. In Osoba’s days there was so much passion and determination to die to get the news. That was what made the difference in their time, but this days I don’t know who to blame whether it is the educational standard that has fallen, in those days you had people who did not even go to universities and they wrote better than today’s graduates. That is just by the way.
Who are your target readers for this book?
Dimgba Igwe
Put it this way, the best way to educate people about a profession aside the formal academic training is by experiential knowledge. There are things in the book that are of historical values to publishers, and there are things in the book that editors would read and say “wow! So editors did this in the past”. There are also things in the book that would surprise new reporters and make them say “so that was how reporting was done”. Basically, it’s not a kind of book that has a regimented target group; it has a broad target group.
Because the individuals that narrated their memoirs has something to share. Jose for instance joined Daily Times as a trainee printer and ended up becoming the Managing Director. So this kind of story from Jose will definitely appeal to someone who is frustrated. Jose was an apprentice printer because his father probably could not afford to send him to school. Also, when it comes to the things he did as an editor, it will still appeal to someone in that position. Even his managerial initiatives, Jose started what we call graduate policy in Nigeria journalism. Before Jose, it was not graduates that go into journalism, he didn’t finish secondary school himself yet he was sending people to universities to go and learn this or that. When you read it you get to know how this man who didn’t go to school come to know that training is critical.
The book launch comes up at MUSON Centre on Thursday, March 22, 2012, by 11 a.m.
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