Celebrating Nduka Obaigbena, Media Colossus at 65

Obinna Chima

Tomorrow, the Chairman/Editor-in-Chief of THISDAY Media Group/ARISE News Channel, Prince Nduka Obaigbena, will mark his 65th birthday.

Prince Obaigbena has led a remarkable life that has seen him becoming a media colossus, as he continues to expand the THISDAY/ARISE MEDIA brands to every part of the world, preaching the gospel of Africa’s renaissance.

The one I fondly call ‘my leader’ is on a mission to herald a globally respected African media company that would present Africa to the world, in a manner that will reshape the continent’s narrative and end the era that Africa and Africans depend on what the western world thinks about them or the perspectives they prefer to share about their achievements and opportunities.

The Creative Artist with combined honours in Fine Art and English Language, from the University of Benin, has always been at the forefront of most of the bold innovations that shaped Nigeria’s media landscape over the past 40 years, making THISDAY the number one newspaper of choice amongst the political, business, diplomatic and culture establishment.

The newspaper, which hit newsstands on January 22, 1995, quickly carved a niche for itself in business and political reporting and for breaking big news stories. It soon became Nigeria’s newspaper of record. In its early years of publication, THISDAY won the Newspaper of the Year Award for three consecutive years.

In line with its avowed commitment to democracy, THISDAY was at the forefront of the battle against dictatorial military rule for which its reporters were invariably detained and harassed. The Chairman and Editor-in-Chief was detained in 1997 at the Department of Military Intelligence (DMI) for seven days under Abacha. The Chairman later went into self-exile. For many Nigerians, if the news is not in THISDAY, then it is not credible.

THISDAY is an agent of change and innovation within the media industry and many of its ‘firsts’ are serially copied by others, such as the back page sports with advertising and back page opinions, an all-gloss Sunday magazine and wraparounds.

Also, in pursuit of his determination to give Africa a global voice, the relentless Prince Obaigbena launched ARISE NEWS Channel in 2012. Few weeks ago, the THISDAY sister broadcast station expanded to South Africa and nine other Southern African countries. The 24-hour news and entertainment channel is now live in 54 African countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Cameroon, Sudan, Ghana, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, amongst others. Today, ARISE News Channel has broadcast hubs in London, New York and every major cities of the world as it strives to tell the African story and project the immense opportunities in the continent.

The media guru was not born with a silver spoon, as he had to make his way through thick and thin.

Obaigbena started his journalism career at the Nigerian Observer in 1978 as a satirist, writer and cartoonist. He worked briefly with Newsweek Magazine in 1984 as a Special Section Representative before moving over, in the same year, to TIME Magazine, New York and London where he helped develop Special Surveys and Country Sections and later founded the notable weekly, THISWEEK Magazine in 1986 in Lagos with hubs in London, New York, and Johannesburg, and distributed in Africa, Europe, Middle East and the USA.

He was elected to the Nigerian Constitutional Conference in 1995 – a body that wrote the current Nigerian Constitution and was appointed to the Nigeria Political Reform Conference in 2005 and the Nigerian National Conference in 2014. He has also served on several boards, state and presidential committees for privatisation and governance.

Obaigbena is a former President of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria and the Nigerian Press Organisation – the media umbrella comprising The Nigerian Union Journalist, Nigerian Guild of Editors, and was a member of the Selection Committee of the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum, Davos and founding Chairman of The African Media Leaders Forum, as well as a founding member of the board of the African Media Initiative.

He is one leader that makes it clear that he expects so much from those that work with him and motivates them to meet those expectations. He is an inspirational leader that is always available to lead his team from the front to achieve set objectives.

For him, success, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. And it is like happiness, to be successful in whatever you have chosen to do means you have accomplished your mission.

He strongly believes that hard work is what leads to success and to be successful, you have to be a master of your circumstance.

“It is not what you do at the beginning that determines whether you will succeed, but how you end up. Your end point is at the very end. So, it is how you finish that is more important than how you started. So, it is what you accomplish at the end that matters the most. Like Colin Powell said, it is easy to go to war, but what is your exit strategy?

“If you don’t plan your exit, you cannot start an entry. So, I cannot say I am successful yet until I get to the finish point. You cannot determine it; you take the punches as they come.

“Some people start very well, blaze the trail, but end up very poorly. It is a combination of circumstances – circumstances within your control and some beyond your control. It includes luck, it includes getting to a place at the right time, divine intervention and also many other things. So, to be successful, you have to be a master of your circumstance,” he said in an interview with Mr. Ayo Arowolo and myself on the eve of his 60th birthday.

Recounting the story of how he started THISWEEK, Prince Obaigbena pointed out that then, there was only one printing press in the whole of Nigeria that could print magazines and it was the Academy Press.

“Academy Press was already printing for THISWEEK’s competitor which was Newswatch and the market day for magazines was Monday, because you define the week ahead.

“So, if we went to Academy Press to say deliver for us on Tuesday or Wednesday, they would print for you, but by then it would have been us getting to the market mid-week. So, it meant that we had to find other ways of printing if we were to be in the magazine business.

“So, we decided to be printing in London. What it meant was that we wrote the magazines, Thursdays was our deadline, we used to fly out to London on same Thursday, landed on Friday, which was the day we used to take the pictures and artworks to the press for it to be printed on Saturday and you take it to Heathrow, parcel it and plan for shipping Saturday night, for it to arrive on Sunday.

“Those days there was something called perishable clearing, so we could clear on the tarmac. So, it was possible to clear the newspapers at the tarmac because magazines have a life span and they were treated like eggs or day old chicks.

“So, we cleared the magazines either on Sunday morning, as it were, and they would be ready to be distributed everywhere in the country. So, by Monday morning the magazines would be everywhere in the country and that was how we were able to challenge Newswatch and that got the late Dele Giwa infuriated and then the competition started. So, those were the circumstances then,” he explained.

Furthermore, he pointed out that the introduction of computers in those days was a game changer in terms of the magazine business.

As someone who is always ahead of the competition, he looked at the scenario then and knew that the future of magazines in Nigeria was going to be numbered. That was why he registered Leaders and Company in 1992, and appointed Dele Momodu as the editor and some other persons to start Leaders and Company, which was how THISDAY, a daily newspaper was founded.

“As at today, all the magazines that existed as at that time are no longer in existence, but we are still here. We transited from THISWEEK to THISDAY,” he stressed.

For those who desire to go into media business, he advises them to, “understand the business before going into it.

“Presentation is a key factor in journalism. If you do not present it well it cannot work. We were the only newspaper in the history of Nigeria to start without a printing press.

“The idea of the newspaper was to change the vision about Nigeria. My niche has always been politics, business and back of the book. Business drives everything and Politics leads.”

As someone who is passionate about talent development, he says “Journalism is about people. There is a book I read which made me to understand that to succeed in journalism, you have to grow your own editors. We are growing younger people today across all our platforms.”

As a student of Government College Ughelli, which was during the time of the black consciousness, the young Obaigbena formed a group called the Black Cultural Movement and led campaigns for South Africa’s independence.

The admirer of the likes of Malcom X and other black icons, later started a school magazine called Chindava, which he used to awaken black consciousness in secondary schools.

“I remember in 1976, the Principal then looked at our first publication and said it was not very good, and then we did another publication and he said ‘better, but not good.’

“That was in 1976. So, I left Ughelli College in 1977 and started cartooning for the Nigerian Observer. I had a cartoon column called Lekeleke for the Nigerian Observer, which made me a rich student. “This was because the Nigerian Observer was paying me N10 per cartoon, and I was doing it every day, at this time I was already at the University of Benin.

“I would leave the university, go and draw the cartoon and submit it and by the end of the month, they would pay and that enabled me to buy my first car as a student at UNIBEN,” he added.

For those who are down and had been struggling with failure, the media entrepreneur advises them not to give up, saying “failure is part of life, we fail all the time, but how you react when you fail is very important. THISWEEK failed. But when you fail you get back on your feet and try harder, it is not a big deal. You just keep moving regardless of the challenges.”

Happy birthday to Chairman. I celebrate your ingenuity and diligence.