Mr. Eric Teniola started out in the Ministry of Works as a civil servant but changed career to journalism when he joined the Nigerian Tribune in 1972. He tells SAM NWAOKO his media story in this interview.
How did you begin your journalism career sir?
I was working in the Ministry of Works as a Senior Technical Assistant but I have this flair for writing. One day, it occurred to me that I should take to journalism. That was in 1972. So, I went to the Nigerian Tribune, they were then at Agbadagbudu, the place they now call Old Adeoyo. There I met with Mr. Fola Oredoyin who happened to be the News Editor and I told him that I wanted to be a journalist. He said I should come the following Saturday. I got there and the Editor then was Mr. Ikhan Yakubu from Mid Western State then. They interviewed me and said I should resume. The salary offered me was lower than what I was being paid at the Ministry of Works. I thought of it and many other things – I was 22 or 23 years of age then, and decided to take the journalism job. I left secondary school in 1967, Olofin Grammar School in Idanre, Ondo State, and as a young man, I thought of a career that would excite me, and I found journalism exciting. That was how I enlisted. Our Managing Director then was Alhaji Lateef Jakande while our Editor-in-Chief was Kayode Bakare. So, that was how I became a reporter.
At that time, it was customary to start at the courts. Court reporting was the first assignment anybody would get at that time. I don’t know about now. Bode Oyewole was my mate; Kayode Osifeso was our Sports Editor and so many other names.
In the early 1970s, the newspaper business was completely different from what we have now. What was it like when you saw your byline or you wrote a cover story?
There was no byline at that time in the Tribune. This is because Tribune was afraid of losing their star reporters. There was also no Sunday Tribune, we only produced from Monday to Friday. There was also Sporting Tribune which came out on Saturdays and it was tailored for the pools. There was no byline at that time.
You covered the Constituent Assembly of 1975, wouldn’t the reports from there show that you were reporting for the Nigerian Tribune?
My voyage is that I left tne Nigerian Tribune for the Nigerian Herald and from The Herald, I joined The Punch. It was while I was at The Punch that I covered the Constitution Drafting Committee and later the Constituent Assembly at that time. After I left Nigerian Tribune, Folu Olamiti joined later. I was the pioneer journalist for The Herald in Ibadan and I was the pioneer state editor for The Punch in Ibadan. That was 1974/75. I left the Nigerian Tribune in 1973 for The Herald.
Your journey in the Nigerian Tribune was short.
It was over one and half years. At that time, there was no byline and we were competing with the Daily Times and the Daily Sketch. These were the powerful newspapers of that time. I remember Mr. Oredoyin assigned me to cover Government House. The major story at that time was the Alaafin of Oyo chieftaincy tussle and that of the Alake of Egba chieftaincy tussle. Dr Lateef Adegbite, who was the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs in the Western State, was giving me exclusive stories at that time. General Oluwole Rotimi was the governor. I covered a little bit of the time of General Adeyinka Adebayo. Admiral Akin Aduwo came afterwards and I had a good relationship with his press secretary then, I can’t remember his name but he was a very hardworking and friendly Ibadan man.
During the Constituent Assembly you must have made your mark. What are some of the stories that stood out then?
Let me start with the Constitution Drafting Committee. All the meetings were led by Chief Rotimi Williams. General Murtala Muhammed announced a 50-member committee including Chief Obafemi Awolowo. This was shortly after Murtala Muhammed toppled the government of General Yakubu Gowon. Chief Awolowo opted out of the Constituent Assembly. The 49 members that stayed were led by Chief Rotimi Williams. That was where I came in contact with the big guns like Ben Nwabueze, Kanmi Ishola-Osobu, Alhaji Abdulrasak and many others. All the sessions at that time were held in the home of Chief Rotimi Williams. After the Constitution Drafting Committee submitted its report, General Olusegun Obasanjo had come to power because General Murtala Muhammed had been assassinated. Obasanjo continued with the political programme of the Supreme Military Council. So, it was General Obasanjo that constituted the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly just decided on the work of the report of the Constitution Drafting Committee. General Obasanjo decided that there would be elected members and there would be appointed members and the Constituent Assembly was headed by Justice Udoh Udoma of the Supreme Court.
It was the Constituent Assembly that gave me the most challenging task because we resumed by 8:30 – 9 O’clock. Those were very dedicated people. 8 O’clock, they would start proceedings and they would not end until about 3 or 4pm. They were very dedicated people. We had Mrs. Toyin Olakunrin, Alhaji Aminu Kano, Alhaji Dantata, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Alhaji Abdulrasak (the father of the present governor of Kwara State) and many others in the Constituent Assembly that time. It was from the Constituent Assembly that major political parties were formed because that was the avenue where friendships were formed and they started talking to each other on what the government should be like. So I will say that I enjoyed covering both the Constitution Drafting Committee and the constituent assembly.
When you compare the job the Constitution Drafting Committee and the Constituent Assembly did with what happened in 1998 where you served as a member of Justice Niki Tobi’s Coordinating Committee, what differences did you notice?
That committee of Justice Niki Tobi was different because in his wisdom, General Abdusalami Abubakar should have constituted a Constituent Assembly but he did not do that. What he did was just to give a task to Justice Niki Tobi’s Constitution Coordinating Committee and said go and produce the constitution. I think General Abdusalami wanted to go on time otherwise how can you ask the committee of Justice Niki Tobi to produce a constitution all within 60 days. It is unheard of. I was working in the Presidency in the office of the secretary to the government of the federation and that was where Niki Tobi’s committee used as its office. He insisted that he didn’t want to work with the Ministry of Justice, that he would prefer to work directly with the secretary to the government of the federation, Alhaji Gidado Idris. They were assembling a team and I was a director there. So, Alhaji Gidado Idris said I should go and be the publicity agent of the coordination committee. I tell you, it was a different thing. What Justice Niki Tobi did was just to look at the 1979 constitution, added one or two things and just gave us the 1999 constitution. I don’t think that constitution was tidily done. It was a bad job. It was a very very bad job.
Perhaps that could be the reason a lot of eminent and discerning Nigerians have been complaining about what they refer to as loopholes in the 1999 constitution. Could this be the reason?
I tell you that we are lucky that there is not a revolution over that constitution. Go and look at it from the first page to the end, it is full of contradictions. I tell you this again, in 1999 – I mean May 29, 1999 only a few states had a copy of that constitution because it was not ready at all. It was printed by the Heritage Press. Copies were not even available for the inauguration of the new government at that time. I was in the Heritage Press for some nights before the May 29 inauguration to make sure that at least a few copies were produced. In some states, they just administered oath to the governors with the Quran or the Bible because the constitution was not available. I also think that that constitution was not properly circulated until, I think, August 1999 because it was shabbily done. Instead of them to give it to the government press to print, they had to contract it out because the government press in Apapa was underfunded and had no machine. They had to contract it to Heritage Press to produce copies for the country.
Sometimes when you look at the military and what has become of the country, especially when what you just said is considered as an example, people who blame the military for Nigeria’s current woes might not be completely out of place. Do you also see it that way sir?
The military guys were not trained to be good administrators. Military government is a misnomer; soldiers are not trained to be administrators or to run civilian governments. They are not trained to govern. If you look at the past constitutions that we had – like the Clifford and Macpherson constitutions, these were produced by politicians. The 1979 and 1999 constitutions were produced by the military. They just put anything there and moved on. We are lucky that we are a very, very patient people otherwise this constitution is enough to cause a revolution. It is a very bad paper.
In terms of profession and the jobs you have done, you are torn between being in the civil service and being a journalist. How do you marry the two completely differing professions?
I covered the Constitutional Drafting Committee and the Constituent Assembly as a journalist. But in 1998, I took part as a civil servant. That is the difference.
You started as a civil servant, came to become a journalist, practised journalism for years and you went back to the civil service and retired from there. Is that it sir?
Exactly, that is what it is.
Interestingly, you never retire as a journalist…
In our profession as a journalist, you do not retire. Journalism is in you till you die. Look at people like Uncle Sam – Sam Amuka Pemu; Uncle Segun Osoba and even Mohammed Haruna who is working in INEC now, their being reporters is still in them. You cannot divorce it from them. And I remember that Alhaji Lateef Jakande was a reporter till he died. People like Lade Bonuola (Ladbo), Kabiyesi Femi Ogunleye, Toye Akiojo and others like them are still journalists. The journalism is in them. The journalism spirit is still in people like Dele Alake and Bayo Onanuga who are in government now. Once you are a journalist, you are a journalist because you will always see it from the angle of a journalist. And I tell you, journalism is a very good profession. It is a good profession like law, engineering and so on. Journalism is making a lot of positive contributions to the society like every other profession.
Does it bother you that online journalism and blogging as we see it in Nigeria today seem to have watered down the kind of journalism you practised back in the days?
The social media is just a natural development in terms of journalism. There is nothing anybody can do about it. The journalism we practised years ago is different from what we have today and that does not mean that modern day journalists are bad. No, I disagree and I tell you, years ago, how many journalists had phones? We never really had telephones. We wrote with our long hands and the papers were printed in different ways. There are new developments now and the social media is one of the new developments. This is not saying that social media is bad or something, but it is a natural development to advance human beings.
The way we worked years ago is different from the way things are done now. The way they are working now is quite different and I can say that the modern-day journalists are even more enlightened. They have access to more information. They have access to the internet, they have access to many other things we never had access to in our years. They are more enlightened than those of us from way back. They could Google, go to Wikipedia and use many other platforms to enrich themselves and these are at their fingertips. We never had such access; at that time we had only the library to go to and most of those libraries at that time were not well kept.
Because of the modern development, you may not need to go to any library, you can stay in your house, use the internet and you come out with credible facts with which you can enrich your story.
So, I wouldn’t condemn the present day journalist. I think it is a natural development and everybody is developing. The vehicles we drove 30 years ago are different from the vehicles we are using today. 30 years ago, you would not have been interviewing me from Ibadan without meeting me. So, technology is a welcome development and I think we can make the best of it. The Opel or Toyota of 40/30 years ago are very different from the same vehicle brands manufactured today. In every human sector, there is development. So, all we are witnessing now in journalism is a welcome development as far as I am concerned. You could drive with your two eyes closed from Ibadan to Lagos when the road was newly built in 1978. Now, it is one of the busiest roads in Africa. Things are changing and we are growing and I cannot condemn modern day journalists.
Well, the social media has its advantages and its disadvantages, it depends on how you look at it and how you want to use it. But I can tell you that the present crop of journalists we have in the world today are more enlightened than the journalists we had in our own time. Now there are 24 hours news stations and you can watch news on the CNN and the BBC and the others all day. You can also use the internet to access information. Back then we had only the WNBS (Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service) or NTA but right now, you can watch more than 10 television stations right there in Ibadan while I can also watch 10 other stations in my location. It is modernity.
YOU SHOULD NOT MISS THESE HEADLINES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
Nigeria has highest cement price in the world — Producers
FOR about 10 years now, Nigeria has remained the country with the highest cement price in the world, national chairman, Cement Producers Association of…
Kogi: INEC to hold fresh elections in 59 polling units Nov 18
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disclosed its intention to conduct fresh elections in…
Twins who graduated First Class in UNILORIN say school separated them during exams
Taiwo Hassanah Subair and Kehinde Aishah Subair are identical twin sisters and First Class graduates of…
FULL LIST: ‘Shanty Town’, ‘Herdsmen’, ‘Underbelly’ top BON Awards nomination
Best of Nollywood Awards has officially released nominations lists and categories for the 2023 Nollywood award ceremony. Stylised as…
Helen Paul and other bastardy stories
Everyone has a history; how you act and tell your story defines you. Ace comedian and celebrity, Helen Paul, trended wildly last…
Nigeria will host befitting African Canoe Sprint Championship — Porbeni
President Nigeria Rowing, Canoeing and Sailing Federation (NRCSF), Rear Admiral Festus Porbeni (rtd) has…
and then