Mr Lukman Dauda, MD/CEO of Evans Brothers (Nigeria Publishers) Ltd, played host to SULAIMON OLANREWAJU and RUTH OLUROUNBI in his office recently, where he answered questions about the company’s past, present and future. Excerpts.
Evans Brothers is 50 years old. How has the journey been?
The journey has not been too smooth and, at the same time, not too rough. Just like what could happen to any business enterprise; there would be some difficult times and there would be some good times. Evans has equally had its own share of such periods. But the good thing is we are still very much strong and we are waxing stronger.
Evans Nigeria came into being in 1966. Prior to that, Evans, as a publishing company in the United Kingdom (UK) then, was as a result of the initiative of two brothers, the Evans brothers, way back in 1903 but it was not until 1945 that they decided to venture out of the UK into the Nigerian market by sending a consultant. The consultant came, carried out a kind of feasibility study of the Nigerian market and went back with favourable reports and they started with a series in the Nigerian market. Since then, Evans has continued to play a pivotal role in the education system of the country.
In 1966, the company in the UK decided to have a Nigerian entity; it was initially seen as a depot of the UK company. When they discovered how big a market Nigeria was, they decided to have the Nigerian company and Evans Brothers (Nigeria Publishers) Limited was incorporated and certificated on December 6, 1966 with the appointment of Mr Joop Berkhout as the first Managing Director and he was at the helms of affairs till 1977 when the first indigenous managing director, the late Venerable Olayiwola Bolodeoku, was appointed and he head the rest of corporate affairs till 2000. There were other CEOs after him. So far so good, that has been the story and here we are today.
Is Thomas Nelson a subsidiary of Evans?
That was the old name. Thomas Nelson was a UK company that had nothing to do with Evans. Along the line, there were some understandings between the two companies especially when Thomas Nelson started having some challenges, so Evans was licensed to produce some of Thomas Nelson’s titles. The Nigerian arm of Thomas Nelson later equally had its own Nigerian entity as an independent company. It was not until 2004 that the owners of the Nigerian arm decided to sell Nelson Publishers Ltd because of some serious challenges the company was going through. So, Nelson Publishers is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Evans Brothers Nigeria Publishers Limited.
Now, what are the challenges the company has faced over the years?
The challenges are many, from the aspect of piracy, to the environmental challenges and economic challenges. Piracy, up till date is still a serious challenge, not even now that the pirates have gone sophisticated in the sense of the quality – because they import their books – their books most times look more original than the copyrighted books. I mean we are all aware of the marked difference between the quality of things produced locally and that of the foreign. So, to escape suspicion and arrest, they have decided of recent to go abroad to print and when they import and you want to accuse a customer of buying a pirated copy and it then gets to the level of having to present the two side by side, it’s obvious that the original would be seen as pirated because of the quality.
Unfortunately, our laws do not help matters. The Nigeria Copyright Commission that is saddled with the task of combating the crime is not well-funded but even at that, under the umbrella body of the publishing companies, that is the Nigerian Publishers Association (NPA), there has always been this collaboration with the NCC most time fully-financed by the NPA to disrupt the activities of pirates by carrying out raids against them. The Nigerian system appears not to discourage the activities of the pirates and even if you go to prosecute a pirate, the punishment is very inconsequential, about N5,000 penalty. So, there is nothing to encourage one to go as far as prosecuting a pirate and there is equally, at the same time, nothing to discourage the pirate from continuing committing that crime. A prosecution can take the next five to 10 years. I mean, at the end of that time, what do you have to benefit? Nothing! N5,000. So what we do mostly is to disrupt their operations. We gather intelligence about their activities, we inform the NCC and the NCC will mobilise the law enforcement agencies and they raid. Whatever is confiscated is burnt or may be used as exhibit for prosecution. But what is mostly important to the publishing companies is that ability to disrupt and disorganise the operations of the pirates.
Also, the production capacity of the printers at the local level cannot meet the demands of the publishing companies. Also, because of the infrastructural deficiencies, the cost of production is very high. Unfortunately, unlike some other businesses, we cannot transfer additional costs to the end users in the pricing system. If we incur say additional 80 per cent cost, we cannot transfer more than 20 per cent of that to the end users but in some other businesses, it is very easy to factor in all the costs and they don’t have any choice, the customers still buy. So, that on its own is a serious challenge that the publishing companies still face – the quality of production and the high cost of production.
That is why, recently, publishing companies have had to go outside, not out of being unpatriotic, but to complement the efforts of the local printers by going outside to print because one, we run a fairly seasonal business. We only trade relatively for only three months in a year and whatever we want to sell must be available at least two or three weeks to a month before the commencement of that period. But prior to the time we started going outside to print, up to the last month of the three-month period, some of these titles are still with the printer and when these titles come out, they have to wait for another year, whereas, the printer will collect his money for doing the job. So that in a way has had so many effects: it has deprived us of possible income and it has equally deprived the pupils of having the instructional materials at the right time. Definitely this is going to affect their performance in school. But in an attempt to find a solution to that, this opportunity of printing outside presented itself. While we still produce locally, we patronise the foreign printers as well. That in a way would have addressed some of the implications of low capacity of the local printers.
Unfortunately, however, the foreign exchange policy has thrown a serious spanner in the works of that opportunity. When we now patronise and get delivery of the good, we can’t pay. Not because we don’t have the cash equivalent to pay, but because there is no foreign exchange and that’s a very serious challenge that we are facing currently. We’re still in a serious dilemma as what to do with the situation we found ourselves; more so, considering the fact that we don’t have the required capacity within the country. It is our hope that the government will look into the challenge of forex and come up with what I can call local solutions for our problems.
Evans is 50 years old now. Where do you see this company in another 50 years?
With the way Evans has been run over the years and with the quality of management we’ve had over the years up till date and that we believe that will still continue, we’re one of the leading publishing companies in Nigeria and I want to be believe that we will continue to maintain our status as a publishing company to reckon with; while we continue to align with the tide of time especially in this era of technology. A time will come when all operations will be automated and a new lease of life will be breathed into the running of the company. Evans in the next 50 years will continue to be a household name and it’ll continue to maintain its status in the comity of publishing companies.
What has been your strength over the years?
Our strength is primarily our culture of unity and integrity. We’re actually structured to make profit, no doubt but that has never been our primary objective. We have not and cannot compromise our integrity for profit making. We evaluate every business with ethics of the founding founders in mind and see whether it conforms to what we can do or can’t do and at times we may have to jettison some that we believe do not conform. Our strength is the team spirit we enjoy among ourselves because as the name implies, Evan Brothers, maybe I should put sisters now; we’ve always operated as a family. The staff see themselves as stakeholders in the running of the business and everybody is given due recognition and respect for them to know that any additional input is an input for himself or herself. So, that has been our strength and we believe we will continue to enjoy that team spirit and collective responsibility.
and then