By Mohammed Haruna
Alhaji Yakubu Mohammed, a co-founder of Newswatch who died in the early hours of Wednesday January 14 aged 75, and myself were friends and professional colleagues of over 50 years. This goes back to our days of reporting and writing for the defunct New Nigerian as undergraduates, he from the University of Lagos {UNILAG) and I from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria.
Both of us joined the newspaper, once regarded as the most literate, authoritative and independent in the country, as full time staff in 1976 after our National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) year in 1975. He had served with the newspaper as a youth corper at its headquarters in Kaduna on its own request, and I at a Catholic secondary school in Ozuobulu, near Nnewi, in Anambra State.
I had wanted to serve at the newspaper’s Lagos office but the late Malam Turi Muhammadu, then the Editor and mentor to both Yakubu and myself, told me he was sorry he couldn’t oblige me because NYSC gave the newspaper only one slot. And, given the fact that even as an amateur reporter as a student of Mass Communication Yakubu had beaten other national, many of them older, newspapers to big stories like the forged certificates admission racket at UNILAG in 1974, he was the obvious choice.
I couldn’t quarrel with the newspaper’s decision, but belonging to the same Nupe ethnic group and coming from the same Bida town in Niger State with Malam Turi, I had thought he would made a case for me with the NYSC to be posted to the newspaper’s Lagos office. Instead, he urged me to accept my posting.
Malam Turi’s decision spoke volumes about the New Nigerian as a newspaper which put great store on merit and professionalism, values that reflected in the quality of its journalism and the rigour and pungency of its editorials and articles in those good old days.
Apart from Yakubu and myself, three other graduates joined its editorial department in the same year, namely, Mvendaga Jibo, currently a professor of Journalism at Benue State University, Sule Iyaji and Rufa’i Ibrahim, both of them late. Actually, Mvendaga who, along with Rufa’i, had graduated in Political Science from the University of Ibadan in 1974, had joined the newspaper the year before us. But then shortly after his appointment he left to pursue a Masters in the UK on a Commonwealth Scholarship before returning in 1976 to rejoin the newspaper.
Before Mvendaga, Sully Abu had been recruited in late 1972 after his Higher School Certificate from Federal Government College, Sokoto, where he was editor-in-chief of its Press Club. He then rejoined as full time staff in 1978 after his graduation from the University of Ibadan and youth service.
A year or so later, we were joined by Clem Baiye (who, like me, had also reported and written for the newspaper as a student in ABU) and Musa Shafi’i. Musa came in from Bayero University, Kano.
As Yakubu said in his recollection of his days at the New Nigerian in his memoir, Beyond Expectations, Malam Turi fondly labelled the eight of us “Young Turks” on account of the rigorous way we always engaged him, and the management in general, on the content of the newspaper in and out of editorial meetings.
Together the eight of us got on very well with each other like a house on fire, as the English would say. Sadly, this happy relationship did not last for long. First, Jibo who had been appointed Political Editor on his return from the UK, disagreed on policy with the management over an issue and was asked to resign, which he did. Rufa’i joined him in solidarity and both left to join the Daily Times. Next, Sully left to become the spokesman of the late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, the radical civilian governor of Kano State under the leftish Peoples Redemption Party (PRP).
After that, Iyaji left to work for Peugeot Automobile Company of Nigeria in Kaduna as its spokesman. That left Yakubu, Clem, Musa and myself out of the eight “Young Turks”, with Yakubu as the first among equals in the team, as the newspaper’s second Associate Editor in Lagos. The first was the late Chief Mike Pearse.
We remained a happy and cohesive bunch until the return of civilian rule in October 1979 which came with a change in the leadership of the newspaper when Malam Turi, who had succeeded Malam Mamman Daura as Managing Director, was replaced by the late Alhaji Tukur Othman, himself a veteran of the newspaper.
Sadly, matters started to take a turn for the worse under Alhaji Tukur. When the new civilian authorities in Lagos started meddling in the running of the newspaper, he, unlike his predecessors, did little to pushback. On the contrary, he aided and abetted their meddlesomeness.
Yakubu became the first victim of this interference. His story of how he was almost literally pushed out in 1980 from a newspaper he had grown to love so much, is one of the highlights of his memoire which he presented to the public in Lagos – his second home after his hometown of Ologba in Dekina Local Government of Kogi State – barely two months ago on November 4.
Much as I had wanted to, I could not attend the presentation because of an exigency of work at INEC. But we kept in touch during and after the preparations for the presentation. On one occasion shortly after the presentation, he suggested that the two of us sit down to write the full story of New Nigerian as soon as my second tenure as a National Commissioner at INEC ended in February next year. Our common mentor, Malam Turi, had written an authoritative story of its first twenty years.
If, as I said above, Yakubu was the first victim of the Federal authorities’ meddlesomeness in the management of the New Nigerian, I almost became the second – but, in part, for one fortuitous encounter in the early eighties Yakubu had with then military President Ibrahim Babangida at the Victoria Island, Lagos, residence of a friend they shared.
Before that fateful encounter, I had acted as the Editor of the newspaper for eleven months following the suspension of the substantive Editor, Malam Ibrahim Suleiman, as a result of a hot verbal altercation he had on the premises of the company with the late former Governor of the old North-West State, retired Commissioner of Police Usman Farouk. The altercation was over the Police commissioner’s campaign for the creation of Gombe State out of the old Bauchi State. While Malam Ibrahim was from Bauchi, Alhaji Usman was from Gombe.
Whereas Malam Ibrahim was not reinstated, I was never confirmed. Instead, the late Dan Agbese, who was then acting as the Secretary to the Government of Benue State and who was already a highly respected veteran journalist and had indeed worked for New Nigerian before pursuing a first degree in Journalism at UNILAG, was appointed as the Editor and I was made his Deputy. It was as Deputy Editor that, for some inexplicable reason, the management suddenly deployed me to the Marketing Department.
Before my deployment, I had been admitted by the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University, New York, for a Master’s degree and the company had accepted to sponsor me for the course. Again, for some inexplicable reason, it suddenly withdrew its sponsorship. Worse, it said if I insisted on going ahead, I would have to resign, as the course had no relevance to my new job.
Eventually the company relented on this insistence. Even then it was clear for all to see that something mischievous and malicious was afoot.
It seems President Babangida had an inkling of my travails because, according to Yakubu, he asked after me during their said encounter. As he told it in his memoire, Babangida had jokingly asked him how he could tell between Yakubu and myself, both of us being rather smallish in stature and having a similarity of sorts in our names.
My most distinguishing feature, Yakubu said he replied Babangida, was that I wore a “trendy” eyeglass and he did not wear any at that time. Babangida then asked him if he knew what was happening to me at the New Nigerian. It was then that he gave him details of my travails and Babangida told him to ask me to call him.
Of course, I called him shortly after that. Consequently, I was able to pursue my Masters programme in comfort. And less than two years after the end of the programme in May 1984 and following my resumption of work, the man appointed me as the Managing Director of the newspaper. Needless to say, I can never forget Yakubu’s hand in this fulfilment of the dream of my career.
As the Hausas would say, “Hassada ga mairabo taki”, roughly meaning “Envy is the fertilizer of another man’s success.” Either those apparently envious of Yakubu’s progress at the New Nigerian never heard of this proverb or they never believed in it. Either way, his unhappy departure from the newspaper landed him on a more personally and professionally rewarding job as the Deputy Editor of the since defunct National Concord at the personal invitation of its publisher, the late Chief MKO Abiola. At that time the late Dr. Doyin Abiola (nee Aboaba) had joined Concord from Daily Times where she was Features Editor, to become the first woman to edit a national newspaper. In time Doyin moved up to become the newspaper’s Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief and Yakubu became the Editor.
Towards the end of his four years with Concord, it and its Sunday stablemate then edited by Dele Giwa, who, like Doyin, had already made a name for himself as an editor and columnist at Daily Times, overtook Daily Times as the widest circulating newspaper in the country, with over 410,000 copies sold per edition. Not only that, the stable was doing so well financially that it became the cash cow of the publisher’s group of companies.
Not surprisingly, envy eventually reared its ugly head again, but this time not just against Yakubu, but also against Dele and Ray Ekpu who had also joined the Concord stable from Daily Times as Chairman of its editorial board. Soon enough the publisher succumbed to the gossips from those who regarded the three top stars of his stable as “stranger elements” because they, unlike the Chief, were not Yorubas and were therefore presumably not sufficiently loyal.
Eventually he queried all three over an unsigned allegation that they were stealing his money and generally living it up at the company’s expense. The allegation seemed to have been based on an IOU of five thousand Naira the three had taken to check into an hotel to jointly transcribe the exclusive first interview General Muhammadu Buhari gave any newspaper following his coup against the Second Republic under President Shehu Shagari on the last day of December 1983.
The publisher seemed to have found their replies to his query satisfactory because not only did he not sack them, he apologized to them and acknowledged that they were men of the highest integrity.
However, no sooner had the dust over the false accusation settle, Chief Abiola, for apparently no reason, singled out Dele for a sack. It was a weekend and he gave him until the following Monday to resign or get fired. Yakubu, who was on holidays abroad at the time, advised Dele not to resign over a fortuitous phone call he had made to his colleague. This, he said, was because he didn’t see how any publisher would be able to explain to the world why an editor that was doing so well would be fired.
Dele heeded Yakubu’s advice and called his publisher’s bluff. In the end he was only demoted sideways to serve as a member of the Editorial Board under his friend, Ray.
By now it was obvious to the three that their days in Concord were numbered. Yakubu then decided to revisit the idea that was first sold to him in 1982 by his wealthy Lagos based maternal uncle, Alhaji Ibrahim Bilyaminu Yusufu, to start the first weekly newsmagazine in Nigeria in the mold of the American Time or Newsweek.
All three resigned on the same day in February 1984 and decided to establish Newswatch. In this they were joined by Dan Agbese who had accepted their invitation at a time he too saw that his tenure as Editor of New Nigerian was becoming tenuous. And, typical of Yakubu as someone one of who’s defining virtues was modesty, he took the backseat and allowed the three who were his seniors by age and profession to lead in running the company, even though the initiative was his and he also did much of the running around to get the funding.
The rest, as they say, is now History; for over 27 years after it first hit the streets in 1984, the newsmagazine, as I said in my obituary to it in my syndicated column of September 19, 2012, following its controversial and fatal acquisition by the equally controversial businessman, Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim (now a Senator), became “the reference point of good professional journalism in Nigeria, perhaps even on the continent and beyond.” For, not only did it win many prestigious awards, locally and abroad. It also inspired, and outlasted many other newsmagazines, including my own Citizen.
Yakubu left his big footprints not only in Nigerian Journalism. He did so well beyond the profession. Among other things, he served meritoriously as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Council of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and the Federal University, Birnin Kebbi.
Even more importantly, he had, long before then, leveraged on his personal connections with military President Babangida to help bring about the creation of Kogi State where his Igala ethnic group was the majority. This was in August 1991.
Ironically, the one signal failure he suffered in life was when he tried twice, and failed twice, to contest for the Governorship of his State, first in 2007 and then in 2015.
But anyone who knew the man would not be surprised at his failure in politics. To quote Professor Olatunji Dare’s Forward to his memoire, Yakubu simply “was not cut out for the dirty tricks, the betrayals and the sordid deals that are the elements of the game.”
As you can guess, his death in the early hours of January 14, barely two months after the presentation of his memoire, came to me as a big shock. As soon I arrived Lagos on January 8 for an INEC retreat and workshop, I called him to let him know I would be visiting him over the weekend so that he can take me to Dan Agbese’s home in FESTAC Village to visit his widow, Rose. He didn’t pick or return my call, which was a bit of a surprise. I then followed up with a text.
However, in the morning of January 10, he replied asking me to confirm if my visit to see Rose was still on. I replied in the affirmative but said I wouldn’t need to go with him anymore since I had called Rose for her address. He then called later in the evening but I couldn’t pick because we were in session at the retreat. I texted him accordingly and told him I’ll call back as soon as the session was over. I did call back but again he didn’t pick.
On Sunday morning he sent me a text to say I needed not bother to visit him after seeing Rose because he had been hospitalized and added that “We shall arrange to see later but Alhamdulillah it is not alarming.”
In the evening of that same day, I sent him a text to say I couldn’t visit Rose that day because I was down with malaria over the weekend but would still do so the following Monday. I then asked him if I could still visit him after seeing Rose.
Sadly, his reply at 7:04 pm that Sunday night turned out to be the last contact we would make. “Please,” he said, “take it easy. By the time you cover Festac you will discover there is no time left. But let us keep our fingers crossed. I did not imagine I would spend a fourth night in the clinic.”
Man, as the saying goes, only proposes, but it is only God that disposes as He wills. Yakubu proposed that we kept our figures crossed in the hope that he would recover from his illness. But three days later God decided otherwise.
May Allah grant him Aljanna Firdaus and give the friends and relations alike he has left behind the strength to bear his great loss. Amen.
• Mohammed Haruna is National Commissioner, INEC, Abuja.
