As part of the activities marking his 70th birthday, Dare Babarinsa, veteran journalist, former Executive Director of TELL Magazine, Editor-in-Chief of the Westerner and current chairman/ Managing Director of Gaskiya Media Limited held a media breakfast interaction with some journalists at the Lagos State Public Service Club, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos. Associate Editor, ABIODUN AWOLAJA, brings some of the excerpts:
LOOKING back over the years, what do you consider to be the biggest missed opportunity for Nigeria and do you believe it can still be recovered? Is the bold, fearless journalism of your era still possible today? Given the battles you and your colleagues fought to defend press freedom, are you comfortable with the way journalism is being practiced today?
Let me just talk briefly about myself. I left the University of Lagos in 1981. After that, I went for my NYSC. I did my NYSC with the NYSC in Abeokuta. I worked with the NYSC secretariat as the PRO. So, I would say that from that point, I had become properly a journalist. But before that time, as a student of the University of Lagos, I was privileged to have been given the opportunity to start a column in the Daily Times. I was writing what was called Campus News. The Features Editor at that time was Mr Dele Giwa. He was introduced to me by one of my roommates in UNILAG, Waheed Olagunju, who later became a staff correspondent for the NTA and later on the Managing Director of the Bank of Industry. So, I would say that my journalism career started in Abeokuta. I was editor of the NYSC newspaper, I was also editor of the NYSC magazine.
After my NYSC, I got a job with a magazine called Drum. I left in September 1982 to work with the Concord. So, my real reporting life started with the Concord where, originally, I was assigned to what we call General Beats, and we were to cover “unserious” news. But my first proper reporting was around November 1982 when Alhaji Aminu Kano was looking for somebody from the Concord to come and interview him and myself and my friend, the late Wale Oladepo were in the office. All the big journalists had gone out on their beats and we were left in the newsroom. So when the emissaries of Alhaji Aminu Kano came, there was no serious journalist to send to go and meet him, so myself and Wale were dispatched to go and meet him in Surulere. And when we got to him—he was expecting senior people but he just saw young men, so Aminu Kano said: “They have sent me my children.” When we were going to meet him, myself and Wale had said: “We don’t know how to handle this man o. We have never interviewed any big man in our lives.” But when we got there, Alhaji Aminu Kano relaxed us. He said what he had been advocating throughout his life was for opportunity to be given to young people to be educated and he had done a lot of that in Kano where he was governor. So, he decided to make tea for us and we were relaxed and able to ask him questions. And from that point on, we interviewed him extensively and for the first time in our lives, myself and Wale, our story came out of the Concord. After that, I reported from the National Assembly and after that I was dispatched to Akure as Chief Correspondent. After that I became pioneer reporter for Newswatch. I was with Newswatch for some three years, then I and my colleagues started TELL Magazine in 1991, though we had started preparing for it since 1990. My longest stretch of employment was with TELL, where I was Executive Director for 15 years. After that, I worked briefly for Western Publishing Company where I was editor-in-chief and Managing Director of the Westerner Magazine. Then we started Gaskiya Media Limited, where I am still presently employed as one of their top journalists.
Every generation must face its own challenges. During our own time, the challenge we faced was the issue of military rule. We didn’t create it but there was nowhere to run to, so we had to confront it and I think we did very well. It was our colleagues who nicknamed us guerilla journalists because there were guerilla fighters fighting with guns but we were fighting with pens. So, the challenge of that time was very serious: many of our colleagues were arrested, molested, and in one instance, somebody was killed at The News, Bagauda Kaltho, and we believed that he was killed by the agents of the military government Many of our colleagues suffered serious imprisonment. Chinua Achebe said: “Aneke the bird has learnt to fly without perching because man has learnt to shoot without missing.” So, we learnt to move from one location to another. It is interesting now but at that time, it was not a good experience. But what we are facing now is worse, because Africa, not just Nigeria, is bringing up a new generation which does not believe in the liberating theory of knowledge. So we have a generation which is embracing ignorance with enthusiasm and if we have people who are ignorant, they cannot maintain what they are preparing for, not to talk of improving on it. So the greatest threat to press freedom is not the military and it is not any other section of power; it is the increasing epidemic of ignorance that many of our young people find dangerously attractive. That is what is affecting the reading, not just of newspapers and magazines, but consuming serious things on any media. You will be surprised that you ask an undergraduate, “What is the name of your vice chancellor?” and he will not be able to tell you. In our day, vice chancellors were almost demigods, so it would be almost unthinkable that you did not know them.
Now you have undergraduates who are comfortable with being extremely ignorant, and that is a greater danger to Africa, because Africa cannot be isolated from the rest of the world either by the ocean or any other means. People will come from other locations, from India, from China, from everywhere, to come and take what belongs to us if our children and other descendants do not have enough knowledge to preserve and protect what belongs to them.
Reading you in years past, with people like Dele Omotunde, Kolawole Ilori, Onome Osifo-Whiskey and others, it looked like you wrote under a lot of pressure, and yet you wrote as if you were not under pressure given the quality of what you were able to produce at that time. You were running for dear life yet you wrote with so much quality, until someone said that no one who did not have a postgraduate degree could understand anything in TELL. How were you able to achieve that, and how did you survive the Sani Abacha years?
Well, I am happy that one of our colleagues in TELL is here, Yemi Olowolabi. In TELL in those days, we tried to recruit the brightest and the best and therefore we had a lot to learn from those who agreed to work with us. We learnt from the younger people who were pushing us. So if the younger people who were brilliant were pushing you, you did not have a choice but to meet their standards or do something better than they were doing. Let me just say that we were able to survive because Nigerians were ready to support us. Let me give you an example: the printing of TELL magazine. We were printing most of the time at Academy Press and the Chairman of Academy Press, Chief Animasaun, was seriously interested in the success of the magazine; to ensure that the military people who were running after us did not succeed. So, he created a different section in Academy Press, Security Section, for the printing. So, when the State Security Services (SSS) boys came, they would show them round the printing press but most of the time, they would not know that there was another section that they (SSS) were not shown. So we had support from so many people and we also had support from patriotic Nigerians who were members of the security agencies, and who were interested in our not getting caught.
I used to have a Volkswagen car and I used to drive it about this Lagos. Then one of my old friends, an officer with the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) who is late now, sent a message to my wife, saying: “That Volkswagen, they (government people) know it o, you had better tell your husband to go and to change it.” I had to get another car from my cousin, a Toyota car that I was riding about. So he sent a message and said: “That is very good. Though some of my boys know the Toyota Camry, they will not report it to the office, so my friend can continue to use the car.” So we had a lot of support from members of the public and that also affected the quality of our reporting. I remember when we were trying to do a story on Sani Abacha’s illness. It was people in Aso Rock that gave us a lot of insights into that story, and one of the Abacha people also supplied us with relevant photographs that were used for the story. Nigerians supported our stand and the quality of TELL magazine, so it was not just as if those who were working in TELL were magicians, but let me just say our colleagues in TELL, particularly our junior people, were extremely courageous, and their courage affected those of us who were in the front, so occasionally when we were about to lose heart, we looked at these young people and that energized us to move forward. So I use this opportunity to thank all of them. Many of them are still in journalism and they are doing exploits.
So how did you survived the Abacha years?
We survived day by day. We didn’t know whether we were going to survive but by the grace of God we did. Let me tell you a story. In 1998, I was invited, through the American Embassy in Lagos here, by the Ethiopian Journalists Association that was celebrating its 50th anniversary. I was asked to come and deliver the anniversary lecture in Addis Ababa. And you know that I could not travel through the airport, so I had to go through the NADECO route to Ghana to go and collect Ethiopian visa and also catch a flight of Ethiopia Airlines from Accra to Addis Ababa. In Addis Ababa, I got in touch with our Embassy (Nigerian Embassy) there. One of my classmates was a very senior officer of the embassy, so I was well treated by the Embassy, although the Ambassador did not see me, so that he would not be accused of working with a NADECO man. Then on my return home, the Ethiopian Airlines that was bringing me landed in Lagos, and you know I could not come out of the plane. I didn’t come out of the plane in Lagos. Then the same plane now landed in Lome, Togo. I decided, “Let me come down in Lome. After all, Lome is closer to Lagos than Accra.” So I came down at the airport in Lome. Lo and behold, they stopped me in Lome and the security guys found that I was carrying two passports. The ECOWAS passport bore a different name from the international passport, so I was arrested and they started speaking French, then I said: “I don’t understand French o. Go and bring somebody who can speak either English and Yoruba.”
So they brought somebody who was speaking Yoruba aladire (poor Yoruba). So I told them: “This is my situation. I am going to Nigeria.” They said “Addis Ababa is a drug route” but I said “I went to Addis Ababa to do so and so.” So they said they would take me to their office. Lome Airport at that time was not a very busy airport and by the time they were doing all this, the place was virtually deserted. I said: “I know people in this city. I have been a guest of your president before.” Which was true. I had been invited by President Eyadema twice. I had also been the guest of their Ambassador in Lagos. So I told them: “I am well known in your city, you can’t take me to your office; you can only take me to your Minister of Information who is my friend.” They got confused and said “Maybe you can go,” then I said: “I cannot go, get me a taxi, I don’t know anywhere here.”
So they got me a taxi that took me to a hotel. Now, anybody who is familiar with the way security boys work will know that they (the Togo airport security operatives) would go back to their office and review the situation, and most likely the taxi they called was one of their operatives. So, after I had settled down in that hotel, I now took my bag and just left the place and looked for another hotel to go and stay in, so that in case they came looking for me in the middle of the night, I would be safely away. The following morning, I who had travelled by Ethiopian Airlines the previous day, I travelled by bus to Mile 2, Lagos, where the security people were just asking all kinds of questions, they were just looking for money. Nobody knew anybody. That was the kind of special experience that you had if you were under the Abacha regime. It is interesting but it was quite a risky period for us and for many of our colleagues, although I believe I was very lucky. Each time they (military, SSS) came to arrest people, I would be luckily away, or hiding.
I remember a day when they came. My friend, Dele Omotunde, was in his office and the way our offices were arranged, you get to Onome and after Onome, you get to me and after me, you get to Nosa and after Nosa, you get to the secretary’s office, then after that you get to Dele’s office. So, I think they had been well briefed—those who came. They had arrested Nosa, Onome and Kolawole Ilori. Dele was seated in his office but when they now got to the secretary’s office, they didn’t believe anybody would be behind the secretary. So while they were searching TELL for about three or four hours, Dele was seated in his office. He knew that something was happening. If they didn’t come for him, why should he surrender himself? They didn’t get to see him and they moved away.
In my own case, it was on a Sunday (we were having a meeting), so as I drove into the premises, I suddenly saw somebody who was not our employee opening the gate, so instead of entering the office, I just entered the next street, then sent somebody there (TELL premises). That’s how I found out that the office had been invaded, and that my colleagues had been taken away. So, (it is a) good experience now, but at that time it was not a very sweet experience.
You spoke about the epidemic of ignorance as a major challenge. What about social media, AI, misinformation and disinformation. Then what informed your book on Nigeria and the paschal question?
The title of the book has been changed to Eat now and pay later, but I will talk about the book. The book is a compilation of some of my public essays, because I have had series of essays. I have my essays in Concord that I am going to publish later, I have the ones in Newswatch, I have the ones in TELL, I have the ones in The Guardian, I have the ones in The Westerner and Compass, and I have what I call public essays. The ones I am publishing now are the public essays, part of them. Some of the essays have been lost. I can’t lay my hands on them; like the one I delivered at the African Hall in Addis Ababa, I have been searching for it and I can’t find it. Thank God for the social media.
Now, African youths use the excuse of social media for their level of ignorance, because there is a kind of contagious laziness that will not allow them to seek out information. If the social media says Calabar is in northern Nigeria, many of our youths in Nigeria will be quoting it that Calabar is in northern Nigeria. They will not ask: “Could Calabar actually be in northern Nigeria?” They have forgotten that everything on social media is not written by machines; they are products of human beings. So what has been affecting social media is what Marshall McLuhan (a Canadian philosopher and theorist) calls the global village; the whole world is now connected.
But why do African youths find ignorance so attractive? Why is it that people in other parts of the world are reading? The Jerusalem Times still circulates 500,000 copies per day and you know that Israel is not as big as Lagos State, and is only about half as populous. So why should a newspaper in that country that is half the size of Lagos circulate 500 copies? And yet with all the newspapers in Nigeria combined, I am not sure we are circulating 500,000. Now, 500,000 copies was what the old Daily Times used to circulate when Nigeria had only six universities. In fact, I think there were five. When I entered the University of Lagos in 1978 there were the University of Benin, ABU, University of Ibadan, University of Ife and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Now we have over 200 universities catering to young people who are not interested in knowledge. Now it is the inability to go and pursue knowledge (that is a problem). If you want to read newspapers online, that is okay. Most American youths read newspapers online. Or if you want to go and buy the physical copy like it is done in India, (it is still okay).
Many Indian newspapers are circulating 10 million, 5 million copies daily. In Japan which is a highly technical country, the leading newspaper circulates 11 million copies per day, so we cannot say “Oh, it is because of social media (that our youths are not reading newspapers).” Something has happened to us and we who are media managers need to find out what has happened to us that our young people don’t read again. If you still read The Guardian, ThisDay, Nigerian Tribune and the Punch, you can see that these are world class newspapers. There is no doubt about it. The media continues to attract highly intelligent and highly educated people but something has gone wrong. Let me lay my hand on one of them. We inherited something from the First Republic and that was that every civil servant on Level 8 and above was entitled to at least one newspaper per day. Every civil servant in Nigeria, before 1984, was entitled to a minimum—the senior ones like the Permanent Secretaries had almost all the newspapers. I think it was when Major-General Muhammadu Buhari became Head of State that that privilege was stopped.
When that privilege was withdrawn, many officers (in the civil service) simply decided not to buy newspapers by themselves, so if you want to change the fortunes of newspapers, I believe that media managers should press for the return of that privilege, because that will affect the fortunes of many media houses. In the South-West here, if you give the privilege, I can imagine what will happen at The Nation and the Tribune. If level 8 officers are allowed to get one newspaper per day, I can assure you that The Nation, The Punch and the Tribune would suddenly have a circulation of more than 1 million copies per day.
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