DR. ANTHONY OBI OGBO I HAVE ENJOYED MY LIFE; NO REGRETS

He started his career in journalism with a bang, when, as a 20-year-old undergraduate, he was employed by the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), the owner of the weekly Trumpet Newspaper as a Chief Cartoonist. His creativity later pushed him to the Guardian Newspaper, where he ran a cartoon column under a pseudo ‘Baba Toyin.’ Dr. Anthony Obi Ogbo has since conquered his career world, acquiring two master’s degrees and capped it with a PhD all in the United States. Talented, vibrant, and daring, Dr. Ogbo is currently a publisher of International Guardian, a publication based in Houston, Texas, and a journalism professor at Texas Southern University. Funke Olaode shares her encounter with him.

He is an artistic genius. He is talented, vibrant, and daring, which summons up his traits. His creativity pushed him into journalism at the age of 20 in 1981 while he was a student at the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT) in Enugu, studying Fine and Applied Arts. But Dr Ogbo’s craft went beyond the four walls of his classroom as the political authority summoned him. Ogbo hadn’t flouted any political law, mind you. But the power that be wanted him to use his artistic genius through cartoons to subdue the opposition party. It was the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and Nigeria People’s Party (NPP) era. By that time, consciously or unconsciously, his career path was paved. Dr. Ogbo is conversant with history, witnessing the Nigerian civil war that broke out in 1966 when he was barely five years old. His innocent mind witnessed the destruction and disruption of humanity and society in general.

“I am a civil war generation. I was born in 1961, the civil war broke out in 1966/1967, and that three years I was in the middle of the war with my grandparents. So the trauma, sleeplessness, anytime you hear a big sound, you come out to see if there is something coming up. I witnessed bombs being thrown, household was bombarded at a point before we ran back to the village. I witnessed all that, and eventually, the war ended. The post-civil war era was when I had to go to school learning under the tree because the buildings were all messed up. And the funny thing about it is that at the end of the day they will bring you to take examinations.

“I witnessed hardship. I see my fellow students because they could not afford school fees they were driven out. And then sometimes we will be going back to school and see some of them selling peanuts. So all those kinds of experiences shaped my life, and sometimes when they talk about going to war or when they flex muscles, people like us will speak differently. And then we tell them that you can’t achieve anything fighting, nobody has, you can win a war without carrying a gun. We are even lucky that that war ended; Syria is still on,” he recalled.

As a young man searching for purpose, Dr Ogbo toed the career path trod by an ordinary man. But his case was different. His career found him early, and he dabbled into journalism.
“I was very young when I got into journalism. My first school was Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu, where I studied fine and applied art. The same year I was actually appointed the chief cartoonist at the Weekly Trumpet, which was serious political paper owned by NPN, National Party of Nigeria. And our job in that paper is to lampoon the opposition, which is the NPP (Nigerian People’s Party). The Nigerian People’s Party is the main opposition party. This is the deal. They won the three eastern states because if you remember the two-thirds majority controversy, they said NPN won 12 states that are not two-third. So the next election, their intention was to get two states from the east at least. So our job at that newspaper is to make sure that we tear down the NPP so that the NPN can get at least between Anambra, Imo, and Plateau states. They could get one or two states from there.

“They saw my cartoon and invited me and asked if I was the one that did that. They were expecting to see a big man, but when they saw the little thing, they said, ‘Can we take you to a room so that you can give us a sketch.’ They were trying to see if I was the person that actually did the cartoon. So they took me to a room, and I came out within five minutes with a cartoon that they actually used that day. That was how I got the job. That was the thing about the Trumpet,” he recounted.

He was born in Kaduna to parents who hailed from the East. His father was working with the then Postal and Telegraph (P&T). His father’s influence, he admits, draws him into the newspaper.

“My father was politically inclined. Every morning they would bring all the newspapers to my house. And being young and I cannot read at that time, I have to always look at flip through those papers and look at the pictures. So at the time when I started reading, that was how I actually got involved in the news. So his influence got me into everything about the news and everything about the newspaper,” he explained.

While he was fiddling with newspapers as a toddler, his artistic in him was germinating.
“I started drawing when I was little. They have to actually keep me away from the walls. And at a certain point, my dad said, ‘leave him alone.’ And then there is something he does every time he comes back from work. He brings me blank sheet of papers. Sometimes he brings like a bundle, and I draw the whole thing out. And then during the war, when we moved back to the village, there was no paper and pen, I will use in drawing, so I will draw on the sand. And when I draw on the sand, I don’t like anybody to play around there. Again, I got it from my father’s side because I know that I have an uncle who is a reverend father and also an artist. So right from childhood, my career path had been paved. And then multitasking, then I followed journalism then flew away with it,” he disclosed.
Dr Ogbo as an undergraduate was a rich student.

“I had a car as a student because as an OND student I was on level six,” he said. “I was earning salary, allowance and they also gave us stuffs because I was young and didn’t want my parents to know, I will be giving it to other people. They gave us things like bags of rice and so many other things. So I was thinking that if I take those stuffs to my house, they will ask, ‘You are still going to that newspaper?’ They will want me to stay away from the place. Honestly, that era opened my eyes about Nigeria, the (broad or fraud), the gains, the conspiracy theories.”

After his sojourn at IMT, Dr Ogbo moved to Lagos for the mandatory one-year youth service. But prior to that, there was a coup led by then Gen. Buhari, and Weekly Trumpet was frozen. “They moved us from Weekly Trumpet to Daily Star, a government paper. So I became the chief cartoonist for Daily Star. So basically, I spent more time as a student in Daily Star more than Trumpet. So when I graduated, Daily Star said, okay, since you are serving in Lagos, we are going to move you to Lagos. So they actually moved me to Lagos. There was a cartoon piece in the Guardian called Baba Toyin, it was very popular, I am the Baba Toyin. And I was in the creative section as the supervisor.”

As Dr Ogbo was moving up the ladder, his ingenuity was opening doors, and he became sought after. He had spent two or three years in Guardian when he was called to Prime People to revive the moribund paper. He used his magic wand to bring the paper back to the street, and within few days, it became a household name. He stayed in Prime People till 1989.
By the late 80s, the pen profession was becoming too dangerous as journalists were being prosecuted while media houses were being proscribed. Having seen the handwriting on the wall, his uncle advised him to move abroad. This was in 1989. He moved to the United States of America in 1989 and kept his flame of journalism going.

“I became a foreign correspondent for Prime People in Michigan, but I moved to Texas because Michigan was too cold. I later resigned from Prime People when I got a job with the Houston Chronicle. And from Houston Chronicle, I got into the Houston Sun, from Houston to the international Guardian till today.”

A visionary and industrious individual, the emergence of the internet fired up Dr Ogbo to seek more knowledge, having realized that the boom on the internet was going to affect publishing. He had an option. Whether to sit down or move with the trend. Again, he just got married. Dr Ogbo decided to go back to school.

“I knew that the publishing industry was going to be affected. I went back to school. I was making babies at the same time. I did two masters in the University Of Phoenix, Arizona. I have one master’s in Human Resources and Human Resources Management and another master’s in Business Administration (MBA). So I was living in Texas, shuttling between Arizona, which is the state. I immediately went into my PhD in Management, specialising in organizational leadership. And that was when I set up an educational outfit called American Journal of Transformational Leadership. American Journal of Transformational Leadership is a non-profit academic outfit in the United States that trains transformational leaders.

“We diagnose organisations to strategize, strategies on how to fix their problems and how to fix challenges. And we also help young people who are interested in leadership and also help them source funding opportunities to study leadership. Because we found out that most of the problems that we have in Africa are tied down to leadership. And most of the time, also people have the wrong impression of what leadership is all about especially distinguishing between leadership and management. And most of my books are actually centred on leadership and management. I am so passionate about transformation and based on the fact that the society where we are facing a lot of challenges. I am currently a professor of Journalism in Texas Southern University.”

That Dr Ogbo breathes, eats and sleeps with journalism is an understatement. He gives tips on how to be a successful journalist. “Journalism is about passion. If you don’t have passion, if your aim is to be rich, you will not make it in journalism. Because it is not structured to make people rich, it is to empower the community. A community journalist goes to a certain community because something is going on there. You want to report that thing even when nobody sends you. You are part of that community. You report out of passion. Why are people treated this way? But commercial journalists, it doesn’t matter who is hurt. He or she just goes there and makes his money and get out. So what keeps me and what keeps any good journalist is the passion for journalism. You must have inner love, and it is about helping people.”

That Nigerian media is struggling, is saying the least. He noted, “When the internet came out, what media companies did was to go into research about how to monetise the media beyond the street presence. And most media in the West have taken advantage of it, except some of our media, they are still relying on the street. My Guardian cut its circulation from 50,000 because we were in Houston to 25,000. And then, we channel all our resources into the internet. There is still a lot of money in the internet. When I came to America, I went to Houston Chronicle, USA Today, to see what they are doing before I set up my paper. I worked with the State Chronicle, and I was moving from section to section. I went to community college to study commercial art because I found out that their computer programmes were different from Nigeria. I studied commercial art, that is where I got acquainted with Photoshop and all production software, and that is what helped.

“Let me tell you something about Nigerian journalists. I am talking about the traditional journalist. I can tell you that with or without the internet, they are good. As far as their competence is concerned, they are good. I have classes that have one or two Africans, but Nigerian journalists, they are on fire. Maybe it is because of the way we train in our schools, the way we train people in English language and some other things. And again, when you read the internet, I read the internet, I have a strong social media presence. I see them, they are good.”

His last six decades have been on a roller-coaster mix with career fulfilment. Looking back, were there things he would have loved to do differently?
“I have enjoyed my life and have no regrets. And what I would have done differently? One thing is not to wait for opportunities. When the internet came out, we were staring. I was here when they started Yahoo, Google. So that is some of the things that I teach students now. I tell them that any time you see people rushing up or something comes out, go for it don’t wait. Because the idea is that by that time it is a risk, but take it. Because by the time you wake up to start going up people have already gone. Don’t allow opportunities to pass you by.”