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Tag: Yemi Ogunbiyi

  • Are they imploding, are they collapsing, our private universities? – Postscript to a conversation at Ife

    It was Saturday evening, the day after I was conferred with the honorary D.Lit. degree at OAU-Ife. Nearly all the guests, the friends, the former students and the well-wishers had left. Only a few of us, former members of the Ibadan-Ife Group, were left: me, Yemi Ogunbiyi, Femi Osofisan and Odia Ofeimun. Ogaga Ifowodo was also there, but he hadn’t been a member of the group on account of the fact that he had been too young then and was still an undergraduate to have belonged to the group. Kole Omotoso, who had of course been a key member of the group, had left the previous day, the day of the ceremonies. We were at the Pro-Chancellor’s lodge as guests of Yemi, amongst all of us the closest to the enlightened, liberal fraction of the country’s social and political elite. I mention this fact because we often tease him about it, fully aware that he is never short of appropriately sharp and winning responses to our jibes at him. But that night, there were no jibes, no wisecracks, no queries and rebuttals; there was only the most engaged, soul-searching conversation about the crises of higher education in our country. And since Yemi occupies an institutionally influential place in the nation’s educational infrastructure, he became the axis point of the conversation.

    In my recollection, the very serious, almost alarmist dimension to the conversation began when Yemi startled all of us by declaring that private universities were failing and failing fast in the country, so much so, according to him, that we might soon end up where we started – higher education, university education almost entirely or squarely back as the primary responsibility of the state, as a bedrock of public service and social good. I immediately confessed that I was/am completely ignorant of this fact that was being so imperiously declared by Yemi. As a matter of fact, I went on to add an observation to my confession of ignorance of this putative fact of our private universities allegedly failing and failing relentlessly: in the early 1980s, I had done an interview with the late Ulli Beier in which I had predicted that private universities would never take off, let alone survive and last in Nigeria because we have no real venture capitalists who can wait for the decades that it would take for any private university to begin to yield high profit margins from the initial heavy capital investment. But it had seemed that my prediction had been rubbished by the very rapid mushrooming of private universities in our country, many of them seeming to be profitable in little of no time at all. But here was Yemi last Saturday night at Ife, indirectly confirming that early 1980s prediction of mine with his categorical declaration that the private universities were folding up and closing shop one by one by one!

    Is this a “secret” known to all but “hidden” from me because for several decades now I have only lived part of the time in the country, spending most of the months of every year abroad? Perhaps. I leave you, dear reader, to be the judge: how much informed are you personally about this hugely significant fact that private universities are not making it as either an extension and/or replacement of state or public universities? Yemi’s thesis, backed by Odia, Femi and Ogaga, is that no sooner do students flock to new private universities than they quickly discover that the “university” has no lecturers and professors for their courses, no facilities, equipment and services to augment or sustain their instruction and training and no general environment conducive to teaching, learning and research. There is more: salaries of faculty and staff are not be paid regularly; important or even major components of courses for graduation are left out completely; life for all students turn out to be very far from what they expected in their hopes and dreams for a modern university education, the kind their parents or grandparents had. And in the end, they leave, in an ironic version of the well-known electoral or protest tradition of “voting with the feet”.

    At this point in the discussion here, I should perhaps let it be known to the reader that I was and am not a keen supporter of private universities in Nigeria and, indeed, in the developing world. True, I am not as absolutely or irrevocably opposed to the idea as I was about a decade ago. But still, my view has always been and remains that in our country in particular and in the developing world more generally, at this stage of our encounter with modernity – both the one from other lands and the one that we create ourselves – education at all levels and especially at the tertiary level, should be the primary concern and obligation of the state, with private colleges and universities playing only a supplementary role to the primacy of public institutions. For this reason, it has been with great alarm, with even great despair that in the last two decades I have watched as private universities rapidly mushroomed, outnumbered government-funded universities and calamitously depressed the quality of the state or public institutions. If this is the case, do I therefore logically see Yemi’s declaration of the decline of private universities as good tidings?

    How I wish that things were that simple! Dear reader, wait until you read about Yemi’s further comments, further complications of the matter, greatly amplified by Femi, Odia and Ogaga. Here is Yemi’s “complication”: even as private universities are imploding and closing, the need for more universities, public and private, continues to rise exponentially. Yemi could not provide the statistics on the spot that night and neither can I do so now, about a week later, but it seems that far less than half of qualified applicants in our country would get admission if all the existing universities were filled to capacity. Thus, Yemi’s concern is: what happens to those millions of qualified applicants to universities and higher institutions for whom there are no places in the present (declining) number of institutions? Without in the least implying a disdain for the term, Yemi’s solution is “evolutionary” and it is this: the public, state-funded universities must have to become very creative in the matter of IGR – internally generated revenues. This would include fees and tuition increases, but not as the main sources. The main sources would be economic ventures and endowments into which would be built internal mechanisms to protect them those from hydra-headed banes of Nigerian capitalism – looting, waste and squandermania.

    Ogaga in particular, but Odia also, strongly suggested that ventures and enterprises that could or would create substantial IGR’s for public universities must follow the classic capitalist model of shareholder power and control to act as solid bulwarks against looting and waste. At that point, I felt as if I was back at Harvard – especially at the Harvard Business School – and was not in a starry night at the bucolic Pro-Chancellor’s Lodge at OAU-Ife! I even joked and teased Ogaga that ten years ago, I would have denounced him as a “capitalist lackey” for proposing share-market capitalism as the savior of the economic and institutional woes of our public universities. Ogaga laughed but wasn’t sure if my joke was playful or ideologically purist. At the time, I deliberately left him in the dark, but I can now assure him that I was being playful and not being ideologically inquisitorial. All the same, it was Femi that brought the conversation back or down to the level of basic issues of economic and social justice by posing a searing, poignant question: whether or not the universities have enough places for the millions of qualified students, where are the jobs for them, where is the employment for them when they do graduate from a university, any university, whether private or public?

    This question dramatically and precipitately brought the past of our group, the Ibadan-Ife Collective, to our present. But we had not met in more than two decades and a half; for a long time now, we have not had the kind of conversations, the kind of projects, the kinds of activism for which we were known then. This thought might have been behind a series of questions that I then posed in response to Femi’s question: Are the graduates we are producing now and that we will be producing in the future, are they being taught, being trained by academics and professionals who are themselves trained and good enough for a modern, technology and science driven capitalist economy? The private universities came and multiplied, beginning in the early 1980s and reaching a kind of preliminary high point in the first decade of the new century, but wasn’t their net effect on our universities as a whole a colossal deterioration of quality, standards and value? And which market-place of employment, capitalist or post-capitalist, can survive with this degree of devaluation of the quality of both the teacher and the student in higher education, together with the places of teaching and learning?

    I have said that Femi’s remark seemed to have brought our past as a group back into a dialogue with our present. I can now say that this was only momentarily. Femi’s question was too “big” for us and we couldn’t, didn’t take it up that night. And of course, neither did we take up my own expatiations of Femi’s question, leaving a hole, a gap in our conversation. In that lacuna, Yemi pressed ahead with carefully, perhaps even meticulously thought and planned scenarios for how and why our public, state-funded universities should embark on the pursuit of economic and financial solvency through ventures that will, finally, make IGR’s substantial enough for public and private universities to survive, to thrive. Perhaps he will prove his argument beyond any doubt or disputation by the success of his tenure as the Pro-Chancellor of the Governing Council of OAU-Ife. If his successes at other ventures provide us with a portent, then one must say that it is a good portent.

    1978, not 1984: an ironic erratum

    In last week’s column, I erroneously stated that Chinua Achebe was given the degree of D. Lit (Honoris Causa) at Ife and gave his famous Convocation Lecture, “The Truth of Fiction” in 1984 when, as a matter of fact, the events took place six years earlier, in 1978. Ah, the inscrutable ways of irony and negation! In the same column, I had drawn attention to the late Akin Isola “mistaken facts” in saying that he had come to Ife in 1974 to join his friends who, in fact and actuality, came to Ife after him. In other words, in the same article in which I was showing how Honestman misconstrued facts in the cause of larger truths, I was myself unknowingly doing exactly the same thing! 1978, not 1984! How did this error, this solecism come about? There is a small circumstantial explanation and it is this: before coming to Ife for the ceremonies, I had been told that I would not be speaking at all, that someone else would be giving the Convocation Lecture this year. This surprised me but any Nigerian who is surprised by surprise is not a true Nigerian! But then I arrived in Ife on Thursday and was then told that I would speaking after all – as I had previously expected. To make matters more fraught, I did not get the chance to begin thinking about and writing my acceptance speech until well past midnight on Thursday, finally going to bed around 4 a.m., all the while thinking of Femi (Osofisan) who was sleeping blissfully in the next bedroom! That, dear readers, is the context, the circumstance for the mistaken insertion of 1984 in place of 1978. If that satisfies you, I am pleased. But I must honestly admit that it doesn’t satisfy me. Why? Memory lapses have recently joined the list of my octogenarian ailments. Even if I had had a week to write that acceptance speech, I would probably still have written 1984, heavens help us!

    • Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • A Christian and People’s Memo to the Chairman: for Yemi Ogunbiyi @70

    A Christian and People’s Memo to the Chairman: for Yemi Ogunbiyi @70

    Earlier this week on Thursday, April 13, Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, former Head of the Theatre Arts Department at the University of Ife and former MD and CEO of Daily Times of Nigeria, turned 70. He is quite possibly the biggest producer and distributor of textbooks in Nigeria. He not only has knowledge of that trade as much as any other person in the country does, he is the profession’s best example of conscientious, indefatigable and sophisticated practice. Since he left academia more than two decades ago, he has succeeded superlatively in everything he has done. For a man who is neither a politician nor a self-promoting socialite, he is widely known and admired by the public for his professional abilities, and for his uncanny ways of bringing people of all stations in life and of diverse social, ethnic and religious backgrounds together. When, some months ago, he was appointed the new Chairman of the governing council of the University of Ife, the acclaim that the announcement generated was near universal. More on this point later in this tribute. Thus, Dr. Ogunbiyi is a man of great accomplishments and in all likelihood, a man of still greater things to come.  He is also, of course, Yemi, one of my three closest friends. This is the vantage point from which I am writing this tribute because, quite literally, much of what life and the world have meant for me has come mostly from my very close friends among whom Yemi is quite distinctive.

    It was in secondary school thatYemi and I first met and became, instantly and forever, friends who are very much like brothers. In the long period of more than a half century since then, Yemi has remained the same in the things that make him so uniquethat all who know him seem agreed that he is truly one of a kind. These things include a generosity so unstinting, so limitless that it has become the stuff of legend to all who know him; a gregariousness that is so capacious, so elemental that he is always the centre of interest, the heart and soul of any gathering in which you find him; and a kindness that is so unlimited that it makes no distinction between family members, friends and complete strangers.On this last point, I often tell our mutual friend and acquaintances that unlike most people we know who became “generous” when they became rich, Yemi was the essence of generosity long before all of us became who we are today in our late adulthood. For instance, in our boarding house in high school, Yemi was the only student in the entire school who shared his provisions liberally with everybody, to the point where half-way through nearly every term, he would have become “provision-less”! As anyone who has ever been a resident of a boarding house knows, this is nothing short of disastrous. But to Yemi, it was nothing at all. I was personally greatly impressed by this otherworldly generosity of my friend, so much so that I tried to follow his example. Well, l had better keep silent about my failure in the effort lest some mischievous people retroactively use this confession to query the genuineness of my socialism!

    I do not wish to mythologize my friend in this tribute. He is not entirely who he was in our teenage years going to the period of our young adulthood. Who among us is? For instance, there is one quite remarkable change in Yemi that strikes me as nothing short ofa sea change. What is this change? Well, he now has a very sharp and deflationary sense of humor that we his schoolmates, did not associate with him in secondary school. Yemi did not exactly have a saintly, altar boy personality, but it was very rare indeed to find him corrosively, if also good-naturedly teasing anybody. But now, he is the Balogun of playful, teasing apara dida! I think this serves him as a sort of tonicor tactic for negotiating those unexpected turns to negativity and unpleasantness that suddenly spring up in human interactions and affairs. The world is a hard, hard place and as Sigmund Freud demonstrated in his classic monograph, Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious, humor, sharp-edged humor, often helps to negotiate moments of tension and or unpleasantness. In drawing attention to this factor, I am, I hope, rendering my friend a service because from now on, anyone who gets a sample of Yemi’scaustic, teasing “awada” or “apara” will be obliged to go and read Freud in order to appreciate the usefulness of the sting in his mischievous his jokes!

    Beyond this basically blameless and harmless teasing habit, there are two big things in which, over the years, Yemi has changed significantly. Because he will probably be surprised by my identifying and even making much of these two changes, I wish to make them the pivot around which I will weave my thoughts, my wishes for my friend on this occasion of his 70th birthday anniversary.

    The first of these two changes pertains to attitude and predisposition toward religion in general and Christianity in particular.I could express this simply by saying that Yemi has become more religious, more of a practicing Christian than he was in the long period that spans our teenage years in high school, through our undergraduate years at UI, to the time of our young adulthood as graduate students at New York University and young lecturers at the University of Ife (OAU). But this does not adequately express precisely what I have in mind. After all, these days, people in all stations of life in our country are turning to religion in mighty wavesof new converts every day. In such a context, to say, simply, that someone has become more religious is to say something quite banal. What I find in Yemi is different from this phenomenon. I can think of no better way of expressing it than to say that he has become a real true believer, a practicing man of faith fired by the moral and philosophical tenets of Christianity, without however clothing his Christian activism in the cheap and showy garb of thereligiosity that is the defining mark of Christianity in our country today.No, Yemi is a man who serves God with genuine but unostentatious rectitude.

    Here, I must make a “confession” of sorts. Many times, as I have watched Yemi unfailinglygo to church every Sunday and on special occasions, and as I have observed him spend huge chunks of his time, his energies and his material resources in furtherance of good deeds promoted by his church, it has crossed my mind to ask him exactly what religion, what his Christian faith means to him. But we have not had that discussion because I have not posed the question to him. Perhaps in this tribute lies the beginnings of that conversation? I do not know. What I do know is that his birthday immediately precedes Easter which, as we know, is the central cycle of symbolic ceremonies in Christianity. The cycle starts with the Lenten period of fasting and deep soul searching and ends with Easter Monday that is laden with the symbolism of renewal and regeneration attached to the resurrection of Christ. Since my friend has become a faithful and committed Christian, that is one of the two major things that I wish to reflect upon in this tribute.

    Concerning the second big change, I am not exactly sure what kind of a change it is, even as I am certain that it is a big, big change. To put it briefly, here is what it is. Believe it or not, at one time, Yemi was an avowed socialist like many of us who still remain socialists whilst he has “moved on”, so to speak. Yes, he was not one of the so-called “hard” Left. But he was a member of the editorial board of our journal, Positive Review, a journal that was unapologetically socialist and Marxist. He was one of the socialists whom our elder and mentor, Wole Soyinka, savagely attacked and derided as “Leftocrats”. The term “Leftocrat”, in Soyinka’s bitingly sarcastic coinage, conjoins “Left” and “autocrat”. Thus, by the term, Soyinka meant a hard and dogmatic Left. For this reason, the fact that Yemi was one of the principal targets of Soyinka’s ire in that attack against us meant that the Nobel laureate not only saw Yemi as one of us, he saw him as an essential member of our group. But gradually, from that location in the storm centre of the maelstrom of Leftist ideology and politics, Yemi “moved on”, so to speak. But then, it is at precisely this juncture that I locate Yemi’s movement to Christian social activism. Is there a link between the two? Is there a connection between moving on from socialism and moving to Christian activism? Does one “moving on” reflect the other, no matter how obscure or incommensurable this might seem?

    Since the abstract theological, ideological and philosophical dimensions of this question are much too big for the present discussion, I will not deal with them. Instead, I go back to the earlier mentioned symbolism of Lent and Easter: after fasting, after chastening hardship and soul searching comes renewal and regeneration. I see the widespread praise for Yemi’s appointment as the Chairman of the Governing Council of the University of Ife as symbolic of the long and interminable period of Lent in the experience of the University of Ife itself and most of the public, state-financed universities in Nigeria. It is impossible to overstate the depth of hardship, confusion and misdirection in OAU, the depth of a Lenten mortification of spirit, soul and mind that the university has undergone, with particular reference to the students and the faculty. I can testify as his friend that Yemi has been deeply, deeply moved by the outpouring of sentiments of goodwill and expectations of renewal and regeneration that have been expressed to him. No one has expressed this in the specific idiom of Christian symbolism, but the resonance is unmistakable. I cannot imagine that in his moments of reflection and insight meditation, Yemi can fail to see the intimations of this Christian symbolism.

    Christianity has deep, formative theological and cultural roots with socialism. The early Church was the religion of the poor and the oppressed; it was openly and doctrinally socialistic. Organized Christianity became the religion of the wealthy and the powerful when Emperor Constantine made it a state religion. Christ himself was deeply averse to usurious capitalism. And throughout history, some of the most humane and lasting effects of Christian social activism have been directed at the liberation of the poor, the downtrodden, the neglected. Thinking of these buried or forgotten aspects of the history of Christianity, I draw your attention, Yemi, to the fact that just as you were once a socialist, your religion also has an honorable and proud history of socialistic humanism. This is thus both a Christian and People’s Memo to you as the new Chairman of the Governing Council of our beloved OAU. It comes with fervent wishes for long life, health, and great success in the next ofthe many great challenges you have faced and mastered in the course of the last four decades. The rich, the powerful, the well-connected will flock to you in your new assignment. In their memos to you, they will lay emphasis on big, heavy capitalization, with much of the contracts of course going to them. And so of course will the marginalized, the excluded, together with their leaders and representatives, come to you with pleas for cooperation, fairness and accountability. May the Easter of unprecedented renewal and regeneration follow the Lenten tales of hardship and crises that you will no doubt hear daily as you move to start the great work ahead of you.

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Buhari congratulates greets Yemi Ogunbiyi at 70

    President Muhammadu Buhari has joined the academic and media world in congratulating the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, who turns 70 on Thursday.

    Buhari, in a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, felicitated with the professional colleagues, friends and family members of the septuagenarian.

    He noted that Ogunbiyi has left his footprints in dramatic arts, literature, journalism, publishing and the academia, both in Nigeria and abroad.

    As a former Managing Director of the Daily Times and one of the founding members of The Guardian newspapers, the President believed Ogunbiyi played a significant role in shaping Nigeria’s media industry, which has gained a global reputation for its vibrancy, tenacity and fearlessness.

    The President affirmed that the appointment of Ogunbiyi as the current Chairman of the Governing Council of Obafemi Awolowo University was based on his eruditeness, foresight and exceptional managerial skills in starting and building both public and private institutions into success stories.

    He prayed that the almighty God will grant the scholar and administrator more wisdom, strength and longer life to serve his country and humanity.

  • From theatre to the media: Odyssey of Yemi Ogunbiyi at 70

    From theatre to the media: Odyssey of Yemi Ogunbiyi at 70

    A former Personal Assistant to  ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo on Domestic Affairs, Mr Tunde Olusunle, in this piece, examines the contributions of a former Managing Director of Daily Times, Dr Yemi Ogunbiyi, who clocks 70 today, to the media  industry 

    This essay attempts an examination of the variegated professional career of Yemi Ogunbiyi, one of the most prominent shapers of the contemporary media practice in Nigeria and his contributions to Nigerian theatre scholarship; literary criticism and new journalism in Nigeria. It traces his vocational origins as a theatre scholar and practitioner, through his venture into journalism, as an innovator and seasoned administrator in two of Nigeria’s largest newspaper conglomerates in their time, Guardian Newspapers Limited and the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc, and his more recent endeavours in public relations, advertising and publishing.
    It is not unexpected that contemporary engagers of the Yemi Ogunbiyi phenomenon will most readily define him within the context of his most recent endeavours in advertising, public relations and publishing.
    This will be most fitting for a man who has devoted the better part of the last three decades in the challenging terrains of these variegated, albeit mutually compatible vocations.
    For the avoidance of doubt, about 25 years ago, Ogunbiyi launched into advertising and public relations, when he established Tanus Communications Ltd, to compete in a market hitherto dominated by much older brands in the industry. With pre-existing labels such as Lintas Ltd; Insight Communications Ltd; SO and U Ltd, and similar outfits, already setting the pace in the sector, Ogunbiyi’s creation was without doubt, a neophyte.
    Ogunbiyi’s Tanus Communications, which began operations May 1992, started less than five months after his exit from the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc, where he had functioned as Chief Executive for almost three years. Followers of his media odyssey, which began at the turn of the 1980s with the establishment of The Guardian, had, presumably looked forward to the extension and continuation of his career in journalism, the profession which had brought him so much fame and goodwill in the preceding years. His foray into these extensions of the mass media, without doubt, elicited confoundment from many.
    Not too many remember, however, that Ogunbiyi actually began his illustrious professional career, which has spanned the better part of the past five decades, in the theatre. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature in English from the University of Ibadan in 1971; attended the New York University, Brooklyn for graduate studies and received a Master of Arts and Doctorate Degrees, respectively, between 1972 and 1976. His Doctorate thesis, supervised by the American scholar, Richard Schechecner, was based on film criticism. He subsequently returned to Nigeria to take up a lectureship appointment at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University).
    As he turns 70, April 13, 2017, however, it becomes germane to interrogate the career and enterprise of this scholar, former university teacher, journalist, administrator, public relations doyen and publisher, to properly situate his contributions to these professions and to national development. This is critical so that salient aspects of this endeavours are not casually subsumed under the canopy of his most recent ventures in the Nigerian business and commercial sector.
    Yemi Ogunbiyi’s vocational origins are resident in the finest traditions of the academia, his ideological affiliation and scholastic temperament distinctly of the left-wing Marxian hue, without genuflections. He thus found good company in the Department of Literature of “Unife”, (the abbreviation by which the University of Ife was popularly known), with colleagues like the venerated Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, and the younger Biodun Jeyifo, the fiery critic and theorist; Kole Omotosho, the prolific novelist and literary documentanist and the highly respected oral literature scholar, Godini Gabriel Darah.
    Ogunbiyi joined Soyinka, Omotosho, Femi Osofisan, Dapo Adelugba, Rasheed Onikoyi, Joel Adedeji and Femi Johnson, on the cast of the film adaptation of Kongi’s Harvest, written by Soyinka and co-directed by Soyinka and the African American film director, Ossie Davies, during those years preceding the eventual blossoming of a film and television sub-culture in the University of Ife.
    It was not any surprise therefore, that following the re-configuration of the Department of Literature and the subsequent establishment of the Department of Dramatic Arts in 1977, Ogunbiyi was one of the very first members of the academic staff to be redeployed to the new creation, to join Soyinka.
    Ahmed Yerima in his keynote address at the Third Edition of the Ife International Film Festival, November 29 to December 2, 2012, notes the foundational role played by Ogunbiyi in the development of a film and television curriculum for the University of Ife:
    Film and Television did not come into the Department of Dramatic Arts curriculum until 1978, when the degree programme was started…..
    The Ife curriculum was greatly inspired by Yemi Ogunbiyi (who) was seconded from the Department of Literature to assist Soyinka in setting up the Department of Dramatic Arts…. Ogunbiyi’s background in film gave birth to the course which was titled “Film and Television”.
    Against the backdrop of his endeavours in film and indeed his facial resemblance to the revered African American film actor, Richard Roundtree, who was a household name in the 1970s and whose stage alias was “Shaft”, Ogunbiyi was equally nicknamed Shaft by his numerous contemporaries and friends. He later proved to be the critical shaft of many organisations and initiatives in which he was involved, over time.
    In 1981, Ogunbiyi released the seminal work: Drama and Theatre In Nigeria: A Critical Source Book. The volume which was edited by him, is an assemblage of rigorously researched academic essays by some of the most formidable names in dramatic criticism. These include Soyinka, Jeyifo, Ossie Onuora Enekwe, MJC Echeruo, Ola Rotimi, Dapo Adelugba, Ulli Beier and Ebun Clark. The work remains an invaluable resource material for teachers, students, researchers and enthusiasts alike, in the generational evolution and multicultural dimensions of drama and theatre in Nigeria, as envisioned by Ogunbiyi in the preface to the book. There he defines his motivation for the volume as one informed by the need to:
    …Readily make available those essays which are not quite accessible to students of African theatre history in our universities and colleges. It would also promote a serious starting point for the much needed re-evaluation of Nigerian drama and theatre. (xiii)
    Side by side with his teaching pre-occupation, Ogunbiyi also teamed up with Jeyifo to co-found Positive Review, a journal of society and culture in Black Africa. The journal encapsulated the thoughts and ideals of a generation of left-inclined creative writers and scholars, including Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie, Odia Ofeimun and other more familiar names at the time.
    Ogunbiyi rose to the position of Senior Lecturer and Acting Head of the Department of Dramatic Arts, before he joined the Editorial Board of The Guardian newspapers on an initial one-year sabbatical, at the inception of the newspaper, in 1983.
    Recounting his first meeting with the founder and pioneer publisher of The Guardian, Alex Uruemu Ibru, in a December 12, 2011 tribute, Ogunbiyi says:
    I recall clearly my first meeting with Mr. Alex Ibru. It was in June of 1983. After months of prodding from Dr. Stanley Macebuh to join the nascent team at The Guardian, I accepted his offer to visit the premises of the organisation at Rutam House.
    And as was the tradition in those days, Dr. Macebuh took me to see Mr. Ibru first. Coming from Ife, with my heavy dose of latent left wing biases, I was not sure that I wanted to meet Mr. Ibru just yet. The meeting turned out to be brief…..
    Ogunbiyi subsequently agreed to join the Editorial Board of The Guardian, the intellectual engine room of the organisation.
    In The Whole Truth (2004) a compendium of selected editorials of The Guardian from 1983 to 2003, edited by Reuben Abati, Ogunbiyi is listed in the top ten bracket of 72 full time members of the board; visiting members and consultants alike, among some of the most highly regarded names in the media industry. His colleagues included contemporaries from the academia like Macebuh, Onwuchekwa Jemie, Chinweizu, Osofisan, Herbert Ekwe Ekwe and core media professionals like Sully Abu, Sonala Olumhense and Lade Bonuola.
    Whereas his primary editorial brief consisted of generating editorial topics, canvassing them at regular sittings of the board, drafting editorials and sustaining regular op-ed contributions to the newspapers, the creatively restless and expansively-minded Ogunbiyi spawned several editorial novelties.
    Consistent with his primary commitment to the development of criticism and the growth of creative writing, Ogunbiyi, in response to the challenge and encouragement of Macebuh, initiated the Guardian Literary Series, GLS, in conjunction with Osofisan. The objective was to create a public platform for the appreciation of Nigeria’s very rich literary tradition.
    In his foreward to Perspectives on Nigerian Literature: 1700 to the Present, Volume One (1988), a collection of some of the essays published in the Guardian Literary Series, Macebuh notes that:
    The Guardian Literary Series began as an experiment. Creative writing in Nigeria had a long history. But only a few older writers were sufficiently well-known and this was mainly because most of their major works had been published before the economic slump of the late 1980s….
    The idea at The Guardian, initiated primarily by Yemi Ogunbiyi and Femi Osofisan, was to step in where book publishing companies could not and offer on a weekly basis in our newspaper, a series of critical appraisals of Nigerian writers (viii)
    Ogunbiyi corroborates Macebuh in his preface to the second volume of the publication, Perspectives on Nigerian Literature: 1700 to the Present, Volume Two (1988), when he says:
    It was quite clear from the inception of The Guardian as a serious daily newspaper in July 1983, that sooner or later, the newspaper would have to participate in the effort to help “popularise” our vibrant literature.
    It was clear to the founding fathers that the literary pages of a serious national newspaper, had an abiding duty to participate, initiate and even stir up debate in the all-important area of literature and culture. In a broad sense that was the objective for starting the Guardian Literary Series. (xi)
    Giants in literary criticism who contributed to the project included Wole Soyinka, Abiola Irele, Dan Izevbaye, Isidore Okpewho, Biodun Jeyifo, Akinwunmi Isola, Ernest Emenyonu, Sam Asein, Chidi Amuta, Femi Osofisan, Olu Obafemi, Catherine Acholonu, Ibrahim Yaro Yahaya and Adebayo Williams.
    Ogunbiyi equally initiated a series of exclusive interviews with world leaders, which added diversity to the regular buffet of the editorial content of The Guardian. He interviewed Presidents, Heads of State and Prime Ministers like: Shimon Peres of Israel; Muammar Gaddaffi of Libya; Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso; Julius Nyerere of Tanzania; Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
    Reminiscing on his interview with Gaddaffi which he undertook with the founder of The Guardian, Ogunbiyi recalls:
    By far the most bizarre of our trips was our encounter with Col Gaddaffi. We had arrived on a Saturday for a scheduled Sunday appointment with the “Leader” as he was fondly called in all of Libya. At breakfast the next morning, officials from the President’s office came for us, politely chauffeured us to the airport and flew us out without prior knowledge of our destination, to Benghazi, for what we were assured was to be a prompt interview with Col. Gaddaffi… With the private jet that flew us neatly parked at a nearby aerodrome, we ended up spending three days in Benghazi, in near seclusion, without our bags or change of clothing….
    The publisher never accompanied
    me to another interview!
    Upon completion of his one year sabbatical, Ibru brought a lot of pressure to bear in Ogunbiyi and subsequently appointed him Controller, Office of the Publisher in 1985. In a manner of speaking, he became something of the Chief of Staff to the Publisher. Not long after, he was elevated to the Board of Directors as Executive Director, Public Affairs and Marketing from January 1986 to February 1989. In this capacity, he superintended over the Circulation, Transport and Advertisement Departments, the commercial and operational tripod of the newspaper.
    On March 1, 1989 Ogunbiyi was appointed Managing Director of the Daily Times of Nigeria Plc, to replace Olusegun Osoba, who had just completed a five year stint on the job.
    If Ogunbiyi’s six year sojourn in The Guardian enabled him to learn the ropes of newspaper administration and management, his appointment as Chief Executive of the Daily Times was an opportunity to put into practice the aggregate experience garnered and the lessons learnt. It has indeed been argued that there is perhaps no chief executive of the Daily Times, after the iconic Alhaji Babatunde Jose, who impacted as much on the organisation, as Yemi Ogunbiyi.
    The Daily Times of Nigeria Plc was a humongous conglomerate with almost a dozen diverse subsidiaries, notably: Times Publications Division, TPD, (Publisher of the Daily Times and a host of other publications); Nigerpack Ltd; Times Press Ltd; Times Books Ltd; Times Leisure Services Ltd, (organisers of the annual Miss Nigeria Beauty Pageant); Naira Investments; Naira Properties Ltd; Pilgrims Books Ltd and Times Journalism Institute, TJI. The organisation equally owned 80% stakes in the London based West Africa Magazine, which had a complement of Nigerian and foreign personnel alike.
    Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary defines a Shaft among others, as a “rotating rod that transmits motion”. If Ogunbiyi’s longstanding nickname was thought to be just another alias, his exertions at the Daily Times lent credence to the appropriateness of the name, as he proved to be the engine room that drove development in the organisation.
    Niyi Osundare’s impressions of the Times before the Ogunbiyi era in the Daily Times as espoused in Dialogue With My Country, (2011), was extremely scathing. In his essay titled: The Ogunbiyi Phenomenon, Osundare says:
    I stopped reading the Times in June 1980 (yes, I am very sure of the date!) I stopped because what before then was the undisputed flagship of Nigerian print journalism had sunk to such an abysmal level of sycophancy and depravity that is soiled even the hands of groundnut sellers whose unpleasant job it was to use its unsold bundles to wrap their ware. Truth rapidly took on a pale, partisan hue. The Times became a pamphlet in which the time-serving gladiators and opportunists of the Second Republic daily stroked their afflicted egos. Rational thought and a genuinely national discourse took leave of its pages. Obituary advertisements took over, bringing in tons of cheap naira, but systematically killing our national dialogue. What used to be a national dialogue became a national insult. (103)
    Ogunbiyi took up the gauntlet and resolved to reverse the trend. Recognising the fact that his vision for a radical turnaround of the fortunes of the organisation could only be steered by a very solid human resource base, Ogunbiyi began the immediate re-organisation of the manpower content of the organisation.
    The Daily Times of Nigeria Plc was not without select top-rated professionals and intellectuals in its editorial arm, though. There were household names like Onyema Ugochukwu, the economist-banker turned journalist who was one of the pioneers of contemporary business journalism, and Farouk Umar Mohammed, who had served variously as Editor and General Manager of the Daily Times.