Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi is the Chairman, Governing Council, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State. The former Managing Director of the Daily Times Newspaper who also worked as a Director at The Guardian Newspaper celebrated his 70th birthday recently. Together with Professors such as the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Kole Omotoso, Biodun Jeyifo, Ogunbiyi was part of the drama and literature department of Ife.
He currently serves as the Chairman of Tanus Communications, a company he founded after he was sacked at the Daily Times by the same friend who gave him the job earlier following his sack at The Guardian by another friend.
In this interview with Dare Odufowokan, Assistant Editor, the Chairman of University of Ife Governing Council, talks about his life as a business man in the private sector as well as his relationship with erudite scholars like Soyinka, Jeyifo Omotoso.
You turned 70 recently, how does it feel?
I don’t feel any better than the way I felt last month or last week. For me, I will say 70 is a number, it is just the way you feel in yourself that determines what you make of it. I feel good and I am quite happy to be 70 in a country where it is actually not very easy to live in. The feeling is that of being grateful and happy.
Looking back, I asked myself, how have you fared? And I give myself a pass mark. I say to myself, you have fared well. This is because I never dreamt the way my life turned out. I just set out to make the best out of life and here I am today. I feel blessed in many ways. In fact, I am really blessed in many ways. So, I feel good and happy to be 70 years old.
Your stint as a University don is one of the things we know about you. Back in Ife when you joined the likes of Professor Wole Soyinka, what was it like in the Humanities then?
I don’t think there was really much to life back then other than the leadership as provided that time by Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, who was the Vice Chancellor. He was a very liberal mind. His type of leadership made it easy for us in the humanities back then to dabble into all kinds of things. There were robust debates about the future of humanities in this country and we saw so many of us the younger ones gravitating towards the leftist ideology and picking us do so many things along the way.
But it was easy to do that in Ife because under Aboyade, Ife encouraged all kinds of things. As a matter of fact, he provided the platform for us to thrive. I recall an incident when the military administration under the then Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo wanted Aboyade to round up some leftist ideologists in Ife and hand them over for no reason, Aboyade said no. He insisted that it was not in his place to do that. Such leadership made us see the sky as our limit and we thrived in the humanities. It was good for the system, the students and the scholars.
I am not so sure if that was the situation at that time in other universities. And of course, so many young brains went to Ife then, people like Prof. Kole Omotoso, Dr. Chidi Amuta, myself and many others, Ife was a place to try and reach our potentials.
Back then, twice monthly, we held brainstorming sessions and a lot of intellectual debates happened. And this was very good and nice. That was the scenario in Ife back then.
Your leaving the University came as a surprise to many of your colleagues and students back then. What informed that decision?
That is not controversial in any way. I was asked to come and help at The Guardian at the beginning in 1982. Dr. Stanley Macebuh invited me. Incidentally, I was due for a sabbatical leave which I initially wanted to spend abroad.
He suggested I spend the leave trying my hand on something new at The Guardian. And I liked it after one year. But I was going to go back to Ife. I didn’t plan to stay put. But Mr. Ibru, the Publisher said I should stay on. He wondered who will continue the things I’ve just started then. I had started the Literary Series then. I had started the interviews with world leaders then. We had done Gandhi, Nyerere, Sankara, and a lot of them. He said I should ask for an extension of my leave. But when I asked for an extension, the university turned it down. So the choice before me then was to either go back to Ife or resign. So, I resigned and Ibru paid back a year salary to the University on my behalf. That was the practice then. If you resign, you refund a year salary to the University. I think he paid N14, 000 a year. It was a lot of money then. So, that was how I stayed put in the newspaper business at The Guardian.
You’ve been in the classroom and the board room. What are the similarities and differences?
There are so many similarities and so many differences. But the bottom-line for me is that wherever you find yourself, be it classroom or boardroom, do whatever you have to do very well. Avoid cutting corners and put in your best at all times. Most importantly, be ready to learn.
When I joined The Guardian, I had no training in newspaper business. I didn’t go to Journalism School. But I was willing to learn and I learnt a great deal. I said to myself, how am I going to learn as soon as possible. I was made Magazine Director soon after I joined and I decided to spend a night in the production room for me to see how the process of magazine production runs. When I was doing that I wasn’t thinking that someday I will be the Managing Director of Daily Times; I just wanted to learn and I did.
There is a joke about me while I was new at The Guardian. In those days, whenever I was given an editorial to write, I usually spend a lot of time getting it down. Then they will tell me that the problem with me is that I was yet to transit from the University to the newsroom. They said I was writing the editorial as if it was a paper. They will say write this thing let us publish it. There was no time for footnotes and crosschecking again and again. But that wasn’t the style where I was coming from.
It was a most difficult transition for me. Gong from an academic to writing for a newspaper. It was tough and I had to learn to adjust to the new realities of a newsroom which was pretty different from the classroom. But again, like I said, because I was willing to learn, I was able to surmount whatever difficulties I encountered in that transition.
Eventually, yourself and Macebuh lost your plum jobs at The Guardian. What happened?
We were fired. Mr. Ibru, who at the time was a very good friend of mine, sacked us. It went that I was sacked, myself and Macebuh, for selling sugar. Somebody wanted to sell sugar to Cadbury and asked for our assistance. And myself and Stanley went to see Dr. Chris Kolade who was the Managing Director of Cadbury and told him a Lebanese friend of ours wanted to sell sugar and had promised to give us some money if we helped him. We didn’t have money. In fact, both of us had no house of our own at the time and we felt it was a good thing to make some money. The Guardian was not selling sugar, so we saw no conflict in what we were about to do then.
So, the sugar was sold and Mr. Ibru got to know about it. Surprisingly, he said we were guilty of some form of conflict of interests. It was on the basis of this we were taken to the Board and fired. When I was sacked, I was in Pakistan interviewing Benazir Bhutto for the paper. And I was sacked just like that. I felt bad but I was fired.
Meanwhile, this was the same Ibru who did so much for me. When Stanley (Macebuh) first approached me to join The Guardian and I couldn’t come, he also waded in and urged me to come.
He spoke to people to convince me to come over. But obviously when he asked us to leave, he had a good reason for that. I didn’t really feel I deserved the treatment back then because I saw no conflict in my selling sugar and getting sacked. I was not given a right to defend myself too. The decision was taken in my absence. I don’t know why he did that but then; we got over it and became good friends again before he died.
From there you moved on to Daily Times…
Yes, I was fired by The Guardian on Friday and I resumed at the Daily Times on Monday when President Ibrahim Babangida appointed me the Managing Director. When I woke up Monday morning, I was thinking of where to pack to because I had to vacate the house I was living in which was owned by Ibru. I had no house of my own at the time.
But Babangida asked me to resume at the Daily Times on Monday. Chief Segun Osoba, who was the man at the helm had already shown interest in politics and we knew he was going to leave to go and do politics. So, on Monday, Babangida said “Yemi, when you finish selling sugar send me your CV.” I thought he was just making jest of me. But he gave me that appointment and that was it.
At Daily Times, you initiated radical changes. How easy was that to achieve?
Let me say the changes at Daily Times was not just about me. I must say categorically that I had the pleasure of working with very cooperative staff back then. The then Editor, Onyeama Ugochukwu was a wonderful partner in the quest to turn around the place.
The workers supported the initiatives and that made it very easy. The different unions were carried along at all the stages.
It was something we did as a team but it wasn’t easy. I found out that a whole lot of things in the system were outdated. We sought to change all these and of course there were some resistance. Anywhere you attempt to introduce change, there will be resistance. People don’t take to change easily.
But because we carried the unions and everybody along, we were able to get things done.
I wasted no time in telling them I wanted to computerize the place for two reasons. One, we needed to be more efficient in our production and secondly, we needed to reduce our staff strength. Daily Times at that time was over staffed with so many people loafing around doing nothing.
So, bringing in the computers will help us streamline the place and make the system more efficient. I had a staff strength of about 2,000 when we took over and we had to trim it down to a thousand.
We needed to cut cost but getting that done was tough. I told the unions I wanted to double staff salary. But I added that to do that we needed to lay off a thousand staff. They initially said it was impossible but eventually, when we started turning out the paper in a matter of time, they liked it and cooperated with me.
Note also that we didn’t buy new machines but cleaned up the old ones and equipped Times Press better for greater performance and efficiency. The morale, when I came, was low, so we needed to do something about that. We worked on the attitude of the workers and that led to a more efficient workforce which helped us in the turnaround effort a great deal.
And why did you leave Daily Times again?
Again, I was fired by my friend, President Babangida. Up till today, we never discussed why he fired me. But I think I know why he did. I suspected the President was not ready to leave office at the time he had promised he would leave. And he suspected that the Daily Times might not support him. These are just conjectures. I am not sure because we never discussed it. I had jokingly told him at a reception before that time that it is better he keeps his word on the transition.
But in fairness to Babangida, it wasn’t just about him not wanting to leave but more about the people around him willing to spend some more time in power. And at that time, Daily Times had bounced back and people were already respecting its opinion as a medium. So, no government would play with such a medium. That is why I say these are conjectures.
You set up your private firm after that. How has the journey been?
Ironically, Tuesday May 2, 2017 was the 25th anniversary of TANUS Communications, the company I established after leaving Daily Times. That’s amazing. May 2, 1992, that was when we set up the company. I was jobless. I had been fired and I had no job and I needed money. So I had to do something. Going back to the University, I thought of that and even got a chance to go to Harvard on Fellowship. But at the end, I wanted to do something on my own and I started with TANUS.
We produced very lovely calendars when we started and we still do. At Daily Times, I’ve learnt that printing calendars was big business. And we did books for people and organizations. Our first big break was when Prof. Jubril Aminu gave us a book to do for NNPC. We made a lot of money back then and bought cars and all that for our workers. We continued to wax stronger by the day and 25 years after, we are here now.
Largely, I made a success of the business because I was focused and determined. I had offers from banks and other places to come work for them but I would rather do what my heart dictates. Although I did consultancies for some organizations, I was more committed to building the company and making a success out of private business. I brought all the experiences I had garnered working at the University,
The Guardian and Daily Times to bear on the company and it paid off. I could have done other things but I didn’t want to. We gave it our best shot and when we now started doing text books, whaoow! our business boomed.
I owe a lot to former Governor Rotimi Amaechi in that regard. He really gave us a lot of opportunities in that area of printing books for Rivers State. Donald Duke too tried for us. He gave us books to print for Cross Rivers State some sixteen years ago. Other states too like Adamawa were also forthcoming and we have done several projects with several of them ever since. School textbooks are our main focus now.
Would you say your stint as a University Don impacted on your life and achievements when you left for the business world?
The impact would be to say working with and socializing with the likes of Jeyifo, Omotoso and the likes in Ife inculcated in me the principle of being very focused. I tell you, BJ is a very focused individual. He was well determined too. In fact, some of the benefits we enjoy today in the University were things that were started by Jeyifo. The autonomy being enjoyed today by Universities was started by Jeyifo’s group in ASUU. Nobody remembers that now. He had a Volkswagen: he would drive himself to distant places, Calabar, Benin etc, to attend meetings and still come back and take his classes.
It was hectic for him but he never wanted to miss his classes or have someone else take them for him. He was also supervising several higher degree students at the time. But because he was focused, he ploughed on. He was taking all these classes and was also the President of ASUU and these were the defining years of ASUU.
So, if I was impacted by BJ and my other colleagues at Ife, it was with being focused and determined against all odds. We never believed in cutting corners back then in Ife. I would say I left Ife with that principle. I say this all the time, even to my children. And I think they have learnt that from me, the four of them.
You are one of the closest associates of Prof. Wole Soyinka, who was your teacher. How did the teacher-student relationship blossom into that of confidants as you have it today?
He was my teacher. He is my elder brother. We are very close. I seek his advice. I give him advice. That is the way it has always been for a long time. We are really into each other. I believe in him and he trusts me. But he was first my teacher before any other thing. We are just close in that regard. I see it that I am just one of his students that he can come for my opinion on issues. There are times Prof would just come and say, ‘Yemi, what do you think I should do here?’ And he wants my honest opinion. And I would oblige him. And he likes that.
I am close to his children and he is close to my family. We are family in many ways than one. I think it has grown stronger and stronger over the years. You know, as you grow older, you go back to your old friends and old ties are made stronger.
Would you say your childhood influenced your life in any way?
Yes. My mum influenced my life a great deal. She was such a hard working woman. Well focussed too. She had no western education but she was an astute business woman who was a distributor in those days while my father was a renowned tailor who built suits for expatriates in Kano back then. They were such a hard working couple.
This influenced me a great deal when I ventured into business later in my life. My mum thought us to respect people and relate with people well. And my father, he was a very friendly person. He makes friends quickly. I took that from him. He had such a wonderful circle of friends. When we were in Kano, people were always gravitating towards our house and a lot of money was spent on feeding and hosting people. And my mum will cook and cook. But it was all done happily.
At 70 now, I am fulfilled with my life. I have a family that showered me with so much love as a child. I have the good luck of having another family that is showering so much love on me.
I am twice lucky and I am enjoying it. When I was in Ibadan studying, I met a lady who was studying English too. We got close and eventually got married. She continued the tradition of showering love on me the way my mother did.
She is now the Iyalode of Remoland. She is actually my best friend because my life would have been different without her. I owe a lot to her and she will forever mean a lot to me. Then 27 years ago, I met another lady. That wasn’t planned at all. But it just happened. Something happened and one thing led to another, we became friends and she has two kids for me. And then she became part of that tradition of love. She spoils me with so much love also. I have a wonderful family and my children are very close even though they are from different mothers.
You remain close to you roots in Ipara and Remoland as a whole. . .
That is an interesting observation on your part. You just said so. Bishop said so too and many people have said that before. Well for me, nothing is as important as giving back to a society that has given me so much. I am very proud of my Remo background and I am always eager to be identified as such.
Initially when I started going back home, both my parents said ‘what is your business with Ipara? You weren’t born there. You didn’t grow up there.” My father, though born in Ipara, didn’t go back there when he returned from the north. He died in Lagos and my mother would keep preaching caution. But I was determined to identify with my roots. The truth is that I found some kind of peaceful base in Ipara. And to cap it all, the town made me the Balogun of Ipara.
Finally Sir, at 70 what are your expectations in the years ahead?
I will just keep working and living my life. I will keep playing golf like I just played this afternoon. I will keep doing all the things I enjoy doing. I travel a lot and I will keep doing that so that I will remain healthy. Above all, I am committing myself to the Yemi Ogunbiyi Anglican School so that I can contribute my quota more to the development of humanity. That is the school named after me in Sagamu by the Anglican Communion.
Obviously; no politics for you?
No, not again. I am well past that. I will keep giving advices where necessary though. I tried politics in the past; it was not just my type of game. I wanted to be Governor of Ogun State but I had to forget about it. Not just my type of endeavour. I think it is too violent, too dirty.
