Sir Steve Omojafor, the doyen of advertising in Nigeria clocked 80 years on Tuesday, January 6. Everything about his physical appearance belies his age. He walks smartly,speaks vivaciously and still relates without boundaries. In this interview with INNOCENT DURU, he spoke on why he left journalism for advertising and how he quit paid job and took the risk, together with his friends to start an agency. EXCERPTS
You don’t look 80, what do you do to keep yourself the way you are?
Number one is the grace of God. It is the biggest of anything that can happen to you which means you recognize the existence of God, walk in His path, and pray. I was brought up in the Catholic Church and I have remained there. Secondly, there is a time for everything. When we were growing up, particularly at the university level, when we go to the bottery, we would drink and drink and you will be unable to find your way back to your room to sleep. There’s time for all that. From your 20s to even your 50s, your body can take a lot. On those days, when you get tired with beer, you ask for whisky or brandy and jam all of them together. At some level, your body will start reacting and we must listen to our bodies and start bringing it down. The same thing with food. It gets to a level your body can’t take too much and you can’t force it in.
But even when you see the body looking good at 80, internally, you have your arthritis and all kinds of issues. But be close to your medical people. Anytime you have a serious problem, get them to know and take your medications.
Tell us about your career path
I started my career as a reporter at the Daily Times, and also became a sub-editor after a while. I didn’t leave because the pay was not good.
Money wasn’t too much of a problem in those days. Our requirements were very few.
After my second or third year, I was going to be moved as assistant editor in one of our publications and I discovered that there was some politics being played. Murtala takeover of government was something that affected us all because some members of the senior staff were contacted to see how we could remove Alhaji Jose. I mean, that was the doyen of journalism in Nigeria. He was our chairman in the Daily Times. The government, when it took over, thought he was so powerful, he was like a mini Nigeria.
They wanted to remove him. Some of us didn’t quite like it. The thing drew up into two camps that became so problematic for us.
Things weren’t going the way they ought to. So I just said to myself, I am too early to be plugged down by these political shenanigans. So I walked across to Lintax Advertising, which was almost on the same street.
A couple of my friends from Akoka were working there. So the interview process took so long but eventually, I got a job.
What’s your biggest experience in journalism?
My biggest experiences in journalism were some good stories I did.
As a sub-editor, you had the free will to write features stories a lot. Sam Amuka was the editor of Sunday Times in those days. He always wanted some exclusives. I was part of a team that reported the 1976 declaration by Gowon that 1976 was not realistic for them to drop power. I had to be on the field, confirm the story, and at the same time interview Nigerians as to what it felt. The military had stayed there for so long. That was a big story for me.
There was a Nigerian who came from Iceland. You know, Iceland is a very cold, arctic part of the world. And it was a big story which I wrote for Sunday Times, and Sam Amuka was extremely grateful. I also wrote stories about a burial ground.
When they did the burial stuff, and heavy rain fell, the coffins were floating on the water and that was a big story for me.
I also interviewed a guy we called Sunny Gbokugboku
Sunny was the one that would pick up a dead body and treat it, get it washed up, put it in a coffin and and would roll it straight to the burial ground. People thought Sunny Gbokugboku was an oku (dead person) himself.
Those are the kind of stories I did. They were usually human angle stories that affect people. There wasn’t computer then or AI to get stories. You physically have to be there and write beautiful stories.
At 80, what are some of your greatest accomplishments?
Well, quite a lot.For me, working in the Daily Times in those days was probably one of the biggest things. I didn’t even have to apply, because I was just writing stories for various of the publications. When I walked in there and I said, ah, I had just left university, I want to work in the Daily Times.
I didn’t know anybody. But before then, the Public Service Commission had come to the university to interview us. They wanted to give me a job, whether as an external affairs officer or to work in the Ministry of Information. I had those two choices, but those two ideas didn’t quite strike me.
But first, I went into the Ministry of Information. We had an office on Broad Street, and for three months, I found myself sitting down there, no action.
I said, no, I wasn’t going to start off my life like this. I walked back into the Daily Times, and I think it was Segun Osoba who was deputy editor then.
I said, ah, egbon (brother), here I am, I want to work here. Just like a joke, and he remembered he’d seen a bit of my bylines here and there. He said, fine, what are you doing now? I said, they put me at the Ministry of Information, and no show. He said, when can you start? Let me talk to the editors of the smaller newspapers so you can take it up from there. It took me one week. I just told my oga at the ministry, one Mr. Coker, that I’m leaving. Leaving for where? He said no, we’re just trying to find one ministry to post you to so you can be in charge. I said, no, sir, I’m not too excited about that.
Three months after I started working at Daily Times, they then called me from the ministry to say my salary is running. I said, salary? No, I didn’t work. What salary are you talking about? He said right from the day you were put here, your salary has been running. You’ve done three months. I said, I’m sorry, I won’t be able to collect that. I’m already working elsewhere. Anyway, I didn’t pick the money and that was how I freed myself from the government. Back to your question, Daily Times was a very good start for me, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I had the opportunity to travel around when stories are breaking. Daily Times was a big break for me, and from there to advertising. Advertising was, for me, like an extension of your job in the newspaper house. You still write stories, but shorter stories, more commercial than just entertainment.
So we wrote commercial scripts, and then worked with artists and creative people. And just as in the morning, you want to see your byline in those days, I discovered that any time our ads came out of the newspapers, it would just be a thing of joy.
I was sent to England for a six-month program to catch the feel of advertising as it was done in those days.
While I was in England doing this six-month program, the idea just struck me that I like the way advertising is practiced in England. I picked up so many things, and the idea struck me that a time will come when I would want to set up an agency.
But something told me you are still too young. When I discussed it with my mom, she said you must be joking. She said you’d better stay there and train yourself up.
Anyway, me and two colleagues of mine bite the bullet and set up Rosabel Advertising Limited, I think that was in 1978.
That was another major milestone for me. It was pretty tough.No banks were going to give me a kobo.
My mother said, no way, no way, no way. Go back. Because they considered Lintas as part of UAC. And as far as they were concerned, UAC virtually owned Nigeria. So how can you leave UAC and say you want to set up some yeye (silly) business.
Lintas told me when I was leaving… in fact, the word that the chairman used was, if you find it too cold out there, please come back. Your desk will be waiting for you. But my prayer was that I didn’t want to come back to put hands by the back and say sorry, sir, it didn’t work out. But thank God, Rosabel grew.
It was like the second generation agencies after the one owned by expatriates. Setting up that company, again, was another major thing for me. Pretty tough, but the three of us were classmates at Lagos University.The two of them, Akin Odusin and Tunde Adelaja…Akin left for the United States. Tunde went to England to do some diploma courses.
Akin went to do another course. But I stayed back. I was enjoying my job. When they came back and they all fixed themselves, Tunde met me at Lintas. Akin went to Admark.
And we usually would meet at the end of the working day at the Apapa Club, have some beer and socialize. When I came back from this program in England with the idea that we could set up our own agency, I contacted the two of them. And they said, why not? But give us time to sort out where we are at the moment.
In 1978, we set up Rosabel and it was quite a big success. While still at Rosabel, another milestone came. We decided to set up a second agency called STB McCann. S was for Steve, T for Tunde and, B was Babalola.
And they decided, Steve, our ideas man, you are going to run this your new company. So both of them remained in Rosabel and I moved in to start up at first, the company called STB. Along the line, we had an affiliation with McCann and Erickson in England.That was the story as it blew up. I ran STB McCann for plenty of years. Finally, it was time to retire and I picked up one of our good staff. You know, because at that time, they always said, ah, these agency owners, they never give way to other people to grow. I said, no, it’s going to start from here. So I picked up Rufai Ladipo,who now runs an agency of his. I said to the board, I have a successor. They called him in, interviewed him and he took over.
Another major thing, I got married somewhere along the line.
I think I got married in 1975. I was still in Lintas. We have three children.
When I retired, I didn’t go into businesses all over, because I always grew up with this philosophy that there’s a limit to how much a man needs in his life.
When you left Lintas to form Rosabel, you said your boss said you could come back if it’s too cold out there. Did you ever feel like returning?
At the point that three of us were leaving, we knew it wasn’t going to be a jolly ride. When we were starting, we asked each person to go and look for N15,000 because we needed about N45,000 to rent a three-bedroom apartment and put a few equipment in place. It wasn’t easy getting that sum for each one of us. One of the things we did was to call our wives individually and told them we are going into this business and there is no money and you are going to be feeding us for the next six months. Fortunately three of them were working. For six months nobody got anything. Our wives sustained us.
How did you get your own N15,000
In my own case, my mum didn’t want to encourage me. She was a textile trader at Balogun. I knew she had some money . She didn’t want to let me know she was going to give me N15,000. She sent me to one of my uncles who told me to go back to my mum and ask her to sell one of her lands. When I reported to my mum, she was very angry because this was one of the people she helped in the past. She sent me to another person and asked me to tell the person that I need N15,000 to start a business. What my mum did was to pay N15,000 into the person’s account and said, I don’t want Steve to know it’s from me because he might end up being complacent. When I went to the man, he pulled out N15,000 and gave it to me as a loan. We agreed that I will be paying back N500 every month whether I make money or not. After six months of paying back N500, my mum was happy that I was keeping to the agreement and told the man that when Steve brings the next payment, just say no, your mum is the owner of the money. I ran back to my mum and said, “Is it that you don’t trust me?” She said no, I just wanted to teach you what it means to make money. I felt bad about it.
Is the advertising business dying considering that there are no more big names like Lintas, Rosabel etc we used to know?
When we got into advertising, there were just about five foreign-owned, not until 1973 when the indigenisation decree came, that Nigerians ventured. They were all owned by foreigners. Oglivy Benson, Lintas, Graham and Gillies, about five.
They came with foreign businesses, and then they just believed, if we go to Nigeria, let us bring our agencies along, then the little group here will be working with the bigger group in England or in America, so that’s how these agencies were surviving. Some of us were lucky to get employed.
We competed amongst each other. Because the agencies were few, businesses were plenty, everybody had enough. There wasn’t a battle, hustling amongst us.
Come 70s, or late 70s, the indigenization began, more agencies came out to the scene, owned by Nigerians like ours, Insight, SO&U. We started to lose what I would call the principles of engagement.
We started to lose the rules and regulations. We formed the AAPN in those days to regulate the practice. You had to undergo certain tutelage before you could set up an agency.
You’ve got to have had enough experience. By the time we were setting up Rosabel, each one of us had done five, seven years working out there. But because an agency was easy to set up, we didn’t need the capital, and at some point, clients were even ready to help agencies to set up, we started losing our bearing. People were just doing whatever they wanted to do. But new strong agencies were also coming out.
And so, Lintas in Europe had its own problem. The competition was extremely stiff, and you either met some regulations or you couldn’t survive. And the fact that they couldn’t survive affected the local agencies.
For some reasons, business was no longer as it was in Oglivy’s world over there. It affected us here.
Nigerians are taking over, and like I said, we were no longer following the rules and clients also became set-ups where they wanted to influence everything you were doing. Now, competition became so fierce. , the rules said if A wanted to pick an agency, you talk to the agency that you want to go to. You talk to the agency that you want to exit, find out what the issues are, if you’re owing them, you pay. If you’re not owing them, agree to separate as friends.
But they will owe you and you go away. They owe you so much. I mean, remember during the time when there was so much problem keeping your agency accounts and all you needed is pay a marketing manager some money, he takes your business away.
The rules of engagement went flat. And there were older agencies who could not join in these games. Oglivy left, Lintas packed up, Grant packed up Graham and Gillies packed up. That’s how those ones left. During my time Insight, SO &U blah, blah, blah, , we also went into what you call affiliations with the bigger agencies in Europe and in the US.
It went well for quite a while. But then, from one agency, you just wake up, three agencies have been formed out of your own agency.
Because the guys were pretty smart, and they knew how to walk up to the clients and say, there’s so much problem in this agency, I want to set up my own. And I will make sure, they don’t charge you this much. They give promises, which of course they ain’t going to keep.
And so, we got cut into pieces. If you look at how many agencies have come out of Insight, how many agencies have come out of Rosabel …., I mean, how did Rosabel die? We just lost some major businesses. And as a board we sat down and I said, you see, we can’t win this fight with these younger guys. Their own attitude to business, to money, to wealth was quite different from our own attitude. Rosabel closed down.
And I said, look, STB McCann, no matter what happens, it is not going to close down.
What was the secret?
Well, I think it was self-belief. I believed in myself and believed in my team.
Maybe, you were billing 10 million hypothetically, and suddenly it started dropping, and you are now billing 5 million. What do you do? There was a year I called for a general meeting. And I said, see, these are the situations.
We either let 25 people go, and retain what we were earning or we keep them and cut down all the pecks and what we were earning, so we can keep ourselves together. Fortunately, people voted for reducing our pay and all that so that the very good ones will not be fired. And that kept the agency alive.
