By Williams Orji
The Managing Director of The AUTHHORITY newspapers, Mr Madu Onuora, has urged practising journalists to consider their future when they stop active journalism; he therefore asked them to set up plans in which they will retire in, as their future is not guaranteed under the current media management style in the country.
Mr Onura who was a chairman during the official unveiling of a magazine, African Leadership Scorecard, published by a former Managing Director of Daily Times Newspaper, Mr Bonaventure Melah, held at the new ultra-modern office of FCT chapter of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), at Utako, said “Nobody cares about journalists. As important as training is, our employers don’t send us on trainings because they don’t want us to be good to ourselves, they don’t want us to acquire expertise and become managers. Most of us don’t have retirement plans for the next five to 10 years.”
He said Mr Melah has thrown a big challenge to journalists to have a second thought on what to do with their lives and career in an industry where majority of the practitioners live in abject poverty, noting that “apart from delay and sometimes, outright none payment of salaries, there are no exit plans by employers for journalists in the country.
He therefore called on all journalists to see the establishment of African Leadership Scorecard by “as a welcome challenge and wake-up call to all of us. As a journalist, please go and train yourself because your employer has no interest in you or your wellbeing.
“We have the need for new platforms, new publications, established and managed by professional journalists themselves. We have to brace up as it is time to take our destinies in our hands,” he said.
Earlier in his address, the Executive Director News, Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr. Suleiman Ahaziah, tasked Veterans and senior practicing journalists with requisite experience and capacity to set up and manage media companies to complement existing platforms and provide employment for thousands of journalists seeking for employment in the industry.
Ahaziah who was Special Guest of Honour at the event, stated that while many newspapers and other media companies in Nigeria are going extinct, new ones are not springing up to close the gap, lamenting that the situation has led to many journalists losing their jobs without finding new opportunities to showcase their skills.
He disclosed that he had a very cordial working relationship with the African Leadership Scorecard publisher when he was at the VON as Special Assistant to a former Director General, and expressed confidence that the new media platform would be professionally managed because of the vast experience the publisher has garnered in the field, over the years.
“If you do a check, you will find out that we have barely 10 surviving national newspapers in the country today. The rest are just managing to keep their heads above the water. Apart from newspapers, there are very few television stations with national spread in Nigeria, when compared with the country’s population.
“For a country with close to 200million people, this is grossly inadequate. On the other hand, there are thousands of practicing journalists and hundreds of thousands of others who have either graduated and searching for jobs in the industry or in the universities studying mass communication or related courses and are potential applicants in the sector.
“There is therefore the urgent need for the establishment of more media outlets in the country to feed the teeming population with necessary news and information to help them contribute to nation building as well as provide the platforms for practitioners in the industry.
“This brief speech is meant to be a wake-up call for professional journalists, especially veterans and those that have acquired experiences on the job, to rise up, defeat their fears and establish more media platforms, because it is the professional journalist that understands the needs of his colleagues in the field, in terms of their welfare and other conditions of service,” Ahaziah stated.
Ahaziah therefore commended Bonaventure Melah for establishing the African Leadership Scorecard magazine, barely one month after leaving his former place of work, describing it as a ‘bold and fearless step in the right direction.”
“With his wealth of experience, having worked with various media organizations in the public and private sectors, from junior level as a reporter, to reach the highest management position as Managing Editor of a national daily, there is no doubt that Bonaventure is coming with something that would be quite refreshing and a positive deviation from the status quo,” Ahaziah stated.
The Chairman of Abuja chapter of NUJ, Comrade Emma Ogbeche, commended Bonaventure Melah for stepping into a very difficult terrain, adding however that he trusts the publisher’s courage and discipline which he said would combine to make the project a success, at the end.
He said it was very clear from the content of the first edition that the magazine has lots of new things to offer readers.
In his own speech, the publisher of African Leadership Scorecard, Bonaventure Melah, said he established the magazine as a humble contribution to the growth and continued development of journalism in Nigeria.
“African Leadership Scorecard is a special communication platform meant for public and private sectors’ performance measurement. The overall objective of the magazine is to provide a strategic media outlet for leaders in the private and public sectors, to showcase their achievements and exploits in quality service delivery. In other words, though a general interest publication, the magazine is a testimonial certificate, as we only publish what is scored by the leader or institution,” he said.
Other top journalists that attended the event include two former NUJ Abuja chapter chairmen, Abdul Jelil Adebayo and Edi Jacob; Abuja chapter chairperson of National Association of Nigerian Women Journalists (NAWOJ), Stella Okoh-Esene; Assistant Director News, VON, Latifat Afegbua; Executive Director and Associate Editor, The Authority Newspaper, Sir Joe Nwankwo and Williams Orji respectively, as well as Deputy Editor, Blueprint Newspaper, Chizoba Ogbeche, among many others.
