Daily Trust - the online edition

Kabiru A. Yusuf, Chairman/CEO, Media Trust Limited

Q: I understand that at the onset of the establishment of this paper, you were responsible solely for the editorial aspect, what was at the back of your mind in terms of goals?

A: To be honest, I can’t remember what was at the back of my mind then; but you can imagine, we were just trying to start a (news) paper with a very limited budget, which means we could not have too many staff. All of us were doing the work of two or three people. The General Manager (Isiaq Ajibola) was the accountant, he was administrator, he was advert manager, he was marketing manager and naturally I was as the editorial man, the Editor, doing a bit of reporting and whatever else comes in line of editorial duty. I think it is in the nature of a small newspaper to start with a small staff. Our vision was to grow. As we grew, we brought others and gradually, they were taking on some of the duties and they were doing better than we were doing.

Q: You must have been thinking of creating a unique identity for the paper. How did you handle that?

A: It is easy for me now to start claiming creating an identity. The truth is that we were just trying to have a newspaper that would assist, that would be sold within the environment, because we noticed that there were not too many newspapers. There was then the New Nigerian Newspapers and Today. Many of the papers that were started in the early 1990s or earlier on: The Democrat, The Reporter, Citizen, were all rested at that point and we thought that there was room for more newspapers to report what was happening in the environment. We were hampered like many aspiring journalists and publishers, but we thought the situation then was such that if we tried hard to produce a newspaper that captured what was happening within the environment, the leaders would respond and I think, some of that happened.

Q: There were the likes of Mohammed Haruna, Adamu Adamu, Bilkisu Yusuf, why did you not bring them along?

A: I was not sure they wanted to come along. It is an adventure I set out largely with Isiaq Ajibola, at that point. It was a very small adventure, which I don’t think we can convince people to just join. They were doing their own things. At that point, Mohammed Haruna was about or has become the Chief Press Secretary to General Abdulsalami. I mean just because we worked together before does not mean that everything we do, we do together. We still associate and indeed all those people are still writing for the Trust. I don’t think they would have left what they were doing because we were starting a weekly newspaper in Kaduna. It was not automatic.

Q: But for somebody like Mohammed Haruna, he may still have one role to play?

A: It is possible. May be you can ask him. But my sense of it was that he was busy and it was a very, very small venture, but I am sure he was with us in spirit. Indeed, we discussed with all of them, they were aware of what we were doing. I am sure they supported us in many ways without necessarily joining us.

Q: I understand that at the onset, the idea was just to have fresh graduates so that you can achieve a clean break from the typical Nigerian print Media industry, but at a point you started bringing in more experienced hands including those who had retired, what did you find not too pleasing that you had to change?

A: There is nothing unpleasant about fresh graduates. Indeed our dominance here uptil now in the Media Trust is to hire fresh graduates, train them here on the job and give them further training outside. We feel they are likely to grow in a culture that we are setting-up. So, there is nothing wrong with the idea, but of course, no body does anything exclusive. We feel they are more trainable, they have more to prove unlike the old journalists who really, some of them are just going through the rituals. We feel they have something to aspire to, they have an aim to meet. We have a standing policy that we give automatic employment to the best graduating students of all the universities and polytechnics in Northern Nigeria from Mass Communications departments. This is automatic. We have written to the departments, universities, and we have published in our papers that the best graduating student in any of these universities and polytechnics can work in here and get a letter of employment. That policy still exists. If it was not there in the beginning, now it is available. We have the highest regard for these young people who came in here, many of them, two, three years, some of who have even taken editorial positions, proving that the policy is working.

Q: You talk about a culture being entrenched in Media Trust. Can you shed more light?

A: Yes… I think this is the thing. We set out to have a newspaper that strives to focus on the reader. We have been emphasising to ourselves, to our workers, to our colleagues that ‘look if we focus on the reader, if we satisfy the reader, then everything else will follow, the advertiser will follow, the powers-that-be will even follow’.

It is a common mistake in newspaper job to keep your eye on those in power; those who are in position of responsibility: governors, ministers, president, and people like that. These are people who are subject of newspaper reports, often they are not happy with newspaper reports. In fact, what they want is to be portrayed in good light in newspapers, but often, what is happening in reality is not in good light, and when the newspaper doesn’t report that, it doesn’t serve the reader in that way. What happens is that the reader becomes indifferent and the result is that the newspaper does not grow. The newspaper may make the powers-that-be happy, but it does not make happy its readers; and it loses its ground as our experience in the newspaper job has proven. But if you focus on the reader, everything will follow. This is the culture we are trying to build. We call it culture because it is something that we worked out, it is at variance with the prevailing culture in newspaper industry in Nigeria where a lot of the journalists just pamper those in power. Their job is to do PR, to show them in good light. That is not good for the reader, because you are not telling the reader what is happening. We are challenging that. We are building a new culture, and that is why we say, if we are to build that culture, it is better we carry it on with the young journalists, fresh graduates who are coming in without any pre-conceived idea in their minds. And it is possible. It is hard, but it is possible to grow them in this new culture. And this is the culture which we think has brought us this far, because our focus has remained that ‘look, for and go for what the market wants, what the reader wants’. Often, we find ourselves in conflict with people who are in position of power, or in business, or in politics. And there is a price to pay. Always we are excluded from advertising campaigns, sometimes; we are maligned, accused of all sorts of things. But we would say as long as the reader is with us, we can live with that.

Q: Is the Nigerian press really free in the true sense of press freedom?

A: They are sometime; it is they who imprison themselves with this relationship I described (above). Going into improper relationship with people in power, so they tie themselves up.

Q: This in-house culture you are talking about, is it really new in the Nigerian media industry?

A: It is not new in the sense that we are not the one creating it. This is how it should be. This is how journalism should be everywhere. We know it is not like that in Nigeria. Overtime as corruption became such a prevalent thing in the country, it permeated every facet including the media, because the media is the inter-face between the public and those in the position of power. Corruption couldn’t have succeeded without the media turning the other eye. If we condone corruption by not associating with it, by exposing it, then the public would have been made much more aware and respond to it, because in a way we also became part of it, that is what we are trying to change. But what we are trying to do is to bring journalism back to what it should be. The ethics are there, the NUJ will tell the ethic, the issue is do we all abide by it?

Q: Since ten years ago, the paper has undergone several changes in terms of page planning and layout design, yet there is no full-fledged sub-desk in the house?

A: Those are details which the Editor and the Editor-In-Chief, can tell you. Every newspaper has its own way of organising production. I am not the Editor-In-Chief, so, I would not go, into those details. We used to have sub-desk, we used to have other desks, we changed them. We want the best. We want to try new ideas.

Q: Is that why some sections are done away with. For example, Agric section?

A: No, no, what I am saying is, these things are determined by how the editors and Editor-In-Chief would decide based on the need of the reader. If you of agric page, I think I see agric page every once in a while in the paper. May be, it is the decision of the papers that not too many farmers read our papers yet. If we draw in more farmers, we will ask for more agriculture stories.

Q: I understand that some of your staff, the good ones when they come, they don’t stay long. Don’t you think it is affecting this culture you are trying to build in the company?

A: I don’t know which good staff you are talking about. Well, I would say that there is a normal rate of attrition. There is a normal rate of people leaving and people coming in. You can’t stop that, you can’t say that everybody in this company cannot leave, that is an ideal situation, because you don’t want to be losing staff, but at the same time you can’t worry if you are losing a few staff. We don’t worry that we are losing such a number of staff that would affect the operation of the company. We think the rate of people leaving is, indeed, lower than the rate at which people are coming in. The important thing is that we have established an institution, we have a culture. We’ll always get good people. We train them, if they see some better opportunity elsewhere, we would not stop them. We would continue to bring in more people and train them. It is a continuous thing. That’s life.

Q: But don’t you also think this will slow down the process of this culture you are trying to build?

A: No, no, the culture is not static, it is continuous. That is why it is a culture. Once you have a culture in place, whoever comes in behaves in that way. That is the point I am making. It is a testimony to the kind of culture we have, that people can even leave and go to other places. There are certain places that if you say, he is coming from this place, they would look at him, and say yes, this man is coming from a big organisation. I can tell you, as a company we do have once in a while people who move on. We, ourselves, who started the company, we hope we can move on.

Q: There are some policies now in place which were not there before. For example, the surcharge of staff who commit one blunder or the other. Why now and not then?

A: Why, because policies evolve. When you are starting a new newspaper like we did ten years ago, you worry about the immediate issues. The paper was weekly in Kaduna and staff was small, it was 24 pages, it was all the while read in Kaduna and beyond a few places, but now it is based in Abuja and it is a national newspaper, it is on the internet and read internationally; you have to worry about quality.

So, I think it is natural. The first thing you want to do is to survive, the second thing you want to do is to improve quality, if you want to improve quality, you have to start applying sanctions and rewards. So, it is entirely a normal process of growth. I don’t think anybody will expect that from our first edition to have all the policies we ought to have in our tenth year.

Q: How about a no-thank you-policy, a direct rejection of the culture of collecting gratification, in the industry?

A: We are not detaching them. We are saying that we know these things happen, and that all of us, the journalists and the public know that it is wrong. The public often accuses journalists of distorting the truth because they are paid to do so by interested parties. That is common accusation where every journalist works. We as professionals have a code of conduct that frowns on that. The question now is how do you ensure that the journalist lives by these ethics so that this code can be made more relevant? Well, we said one, instead of just writing it and say don’t do this don’t do that, what you do is call upon the public to assist, because it is members of the public who give journalists money. So we now said, okay, one immediate step is to call on the public not to take part in this crime, in this wrong doing by giving journalists money. It is the policy of the company that our journalists should not receive gift during the course of their work. We will do our job on our own part; we make sure that our journalists are paid. They are paid their entitlements whatever, is due to them. A lot of the time, a journalist will tell you there are papers that don’t even pay salaries. We are not one of those papers. We can make a demand of our journalists that ‘since we pay your entitlements, that you carry the identity of this company, try and live above board. Do your job’.

Indeed, we have had a case of a journalist who we discovered, had collected a car from a state government. That journalist no longer works in our company.

Q: At the onset, some pioneer staff bidded to obtain the company’s shares but were unable to do so, why were they denied that?

A: You ask them. I don’t know what attempts they made. The only way you obtain share is when a company is being set up, you buy share. I don’t know who are the pioneer staff. I don’t know if they had any money. The truth is that staff of Media Trust, including you, who is not a pioneer staff have shares.

Q: Supposing I want to leave the company, is it possible to go with my shares?

A: I don’t know, you ask the administration people how it is done. What I am saying is that staff of Media Trust have shares in the company. Of course, how those shares are allocated depends on how long you have been here, your seniority and other things which you can check, but I don’t know of any so-called pioneer staff who tried to obtain shares. All I know is that the pioneer staff you are talking about at a point want a job so that we can pay them salaries. May be with hindsight, now they are thinking they should have had shares.

Q: For the ten years of its existence, how would you describe the contribution of Media Trust to the Nigerian media industry?

A: I think we have done our best. That is the only way I can describe it. We have shown that newspapers can survive outside Lagos. It used to be the case that it was very hard to sustain newspapers outside Lagos, not in the north, even in the east, even in Ibadan.

Q: Why did you leave Kaduna to come to Abuja?

A: Just because this is the federal capital of Nigeria.

Q: Is it that apart from the federal capital, there is no part of the north where newspapers can survive?

A: We don’t know, people can try. But what I am saying is, we started in Kaduna and then later decided to do a daily paper and found that the best location for a daily is the federal capital of Nigeria.

And at a great expense, we moved here, because in this country and even papers based in Lagos, older newspapers, rely on government policies. We are not yet an entrepreneurial country. Everybody is trying to hear what government is doing? what is government spending? who is in what position? what is the policy coming out of the National Assembly? what is being debated? why are those things happening? So the immediacy, the closeness to Abuja if you are doing a daily paper is obvious. It is just a rational decision. Even newspapers based in Lagos maintain a huge staff in Abuja. If you look at it, a huge percentage of their news is from Abuja. I think we made the right decision. And it has helped the daily to grow.

Q: What would you like to see the Media Trust look like in the next ten years?

A: I like it to become a better newspaper, more varieties, covering more issues as you said some issues we are not covering now, covering them very well, professionally. I will like us to perhaps go into specialised publications. So, there is a lot of room for publishing. I like to see more training; we hope to have a training school, because, again, the kind of culture we want to create, training is very important. We have to retrain the journalists, because the last 10 years of Nigerian journalism is not much to write home about, so the journalist has to be retrained, so that we really take our duties more seriously.

Journalism is not about you throwing your opinion around, or quoting somebody even sitting somewhere, whom the public doesn’t care about. Journalism is about the real issues that affect the life of the people. A lot of the time, we ignore that, we want that kind of journalism, we know it is hard, but with the effort and the direction we are going, the training we want to do with the new people we are bringing in, we think we can achieve that and the paper will become bigger, richer in quality and quantity and become one of the top newspapers in the country, in the next ten years. We will also move to diversify into other communication businesses. These are all ideas, if they are worth looking at, radio, and television, whatever that the company is in a position to look beyond itself to do.

All I can say is that we want to build a company that lasts. A lot of newspapers come and go. Another first objective is to make sure this company stays, it is not about individuals, pioneer staff, or somebody coming and leaving, everybody is dispensable. Let the company stay, so that in the next ten years I will be a stranger here, so that when I walk in here, 90 percent of the staff would be asking ‘who is that old man?’ they would say ‘ahh!, this man was the one who set up this place.’ It will happen. They are here working for a company with conditions of service, with code of conduct, people come and go. Small people worry about personalities, that is the saying. This one is coming, this one wants this, and everybody can have his own idea and aspirations. We are building an institution above every individual. Even in our short history, we have people who have walked out of here and they want to come back.

Q: What’s the true situation among members of the company’s board of directors? I have it on good authority that your case with some directors, is still not resolved as we were made to understand sometime late last year?

A: In the last meeting of the board and the Annual General Meeting, there were changes made in the company. Those changes were carried by a majority of the people on the board, and if you go through the records you will see that, two people went to court challenging these changes. One of them on his own withdrew, and just two weeks ago, the court case was thrown out for lack of merit. This is where we are (as at Wednesday 13/02/2008). Those changes have been made, indeed, they have taken effect, and if there is any other issue that you hear it is news to me. Maybe some people are still not happy that these changes have been made, but they have been made, legally made and they have taken effect.

Q: By March 20 (today) or so when Media Trust would be celebrating a decade of its existence, what is the good news for the staff?

A: The good news for the staff is that they have a good company. If they want to stay here, they should know that. I don’t have to tell that.

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