It is no longer news that Rotimi Lawrence Oyekanmi has left The Guardian,
a place where he cut his journalism teeth and spent about 18 years,
rising through the ranks to become, at various times, its Head,
Education Desk, Acting News Editor and Head of Features.
A holder of Bachelor of Art degree in Religions/Philosophy, 1992, and Master’s in Public Administration, 1999, from the Lagos State University (LASU), Post-Graduate Diploma in Journalism, from the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ), Ogba, Ikeja, and Associate member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Oyekanmi is now the publisher of The Intellectual magazine which features with unique perspectives, news, features and interviews with critical stakeholders in the education sector.
Make no mistake about it, he is still the news editor, features writer and education reporter he has always been as his skills in these areas have continued to shine like a diadem at his new post at The Intellectual. He still engages himself in the business of newsgathering, news writing and news editing, features writing, etc. as shown in the stories published in The Intellectual since its birth in February.
“The magazine’s primary motive is to continually draw attention to critical education sector issues and encourage healthy debate among stakeholders, primarily within Nigeria, and also in other African countries, with the aim of finding sustainable solutions,” a mission statement posted on its website, wwwtheintellectualmag.com notes.“The Intellectual is committed to encouraging governments at all levels to make adequate budgetary allocations to the sector and to hold those saddled with the responsibility of managing such allocated resources accountable, in the public interest, through the finest brand of professional journalism.”
In no other area has the publisher of The Intellectual exhibited “the finest brand of professional journalism”, than in his decision to maintain a very strong online presence on education issues and other news matters, thereby heeding the warning, in its interview with Femi Adesina, former Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief, The Sun Newspaper Publishing Ltd, former President, Nigerian Guild of Editors, and now Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, on Media and Publicity, that newspapers must be creative to deal with online threats.
Already, readers are beginning to respond to The Intellectual’s decision not to continue to do things the old ways, by going online with its news stories and features, some of which were written by Mary Ogar, one of the correspondents mentored by Oyekanmi, at The Guardian. Take for instance its focus on the elevation of some colleges of education to university. It has a total of 306 views, while “Difficult Times for Nomadic Children”, has 70, “Out of School Children on the rise”, 34, and “UNESCO: Why Nigeria failed to achieve EFA (Education For All( goals” (186), as at the time of going to Press.
The story of how drawing attention to critical education issues became something of a passion to Oyekanmi is what he sets out to tell in this issue of Education Review. Fraught with dangers, adventures, and difficult decisions, it is a story that practising as well as aspiring education reporters will surely find inspiring as illuminating:
My journalism experience at The Guardian
I joined The Guardian officially in December 1996, but unofficially some six months earlier. That was the period when applicants were thoroughly tested before they were given employment letters. I remember that 23 of us (Test Candidates) wrote different tests and at the end of it all, only three of us were taken.
I was posted, first, to the Features Desk, at the time when Harriet Lawrence was the Features Editor and Felix Abugu was her Deputy. At that time, the Features Desk was quite powerful because it supervised others desks like Science, Education, Health, Fashion/Food and Wine. On the Features Desk at that time, I worked with intelligent journalists like Collins Obibi, Chijioke Odom, Nike Sotade, Ronke Odidi, Ibiba Don Pedro, Victor Onyeka-Ben and a few others whose name I cannot remember now.
One of us was posted to the Art Desk where Jahman Anukulapo was the head. The third guy was posted to the Foreign Desk. Of the three of us employed at that time, I was the only one who stayed beyond five years.
Now, before I got my employment letter, I had the privilege of being supervised directly by Mr. Femi Kusa, The Guardian’s Director of Publications/Editor-in-Chief at that time and one of the most brilliant journalists Nigeria has ever produced. Mr. Kusa it was who made The Guardian what it is today, although, we had intellectuals like the first Managing Director, Dr Stanley Macebuh. But it was Mr. Kusa who introduced the idea of sections and the days they were featured in the newspaper. And that singular act changed the newspaper’s fortune. A newspaper that was struggling suddenly started making money. When other newspapers saw what was going on, they followed suit and also introduced sections. So, we had Property page on Mondays; Appointment page on Tuesdays; Education, Science and Health pages on Thursdays and so on. Mr. Kusa would call me into his office in those days and ask me which story I was working on. He just took a liking to me and some others like Declan Okpaleke who, I think, he found promising. And when I revealed my story ideas, he would dismiss them and then teach me the technicalities you won’t find in textbooks. He called me a “hard writer.” He would send me to The Guardian’s library in those glorious years to read foreign newspapers like The Times and The Guardian of London. I also read, regularly, Time magazine and The Economist. I spent a lot of time reading Nigerian newspapers too, especially feature stories.
Out of the blues, one day, in early 1997, I was reassigned to the Education Desk. I later learnt it was Mr. Kusa’s idea. I didn’t know why. The guy who was on the beat, Mohammed Abubakar, was transferred to Maiduguri. When I asked Abubakar for the desk’s file, he said there was none. He had no contacts to give me as well, so I took over the Education beat in 1997 with virtually no help.
What I then did was to immerse myself in the library, studying old editions of The Guardian and looking at the type of education stories that were published. I read many stories written by Goddy Nnadi, who covered the beat when Prof Jubril Aminu was Education Minister. Slowly, but steadily, I started building my contact base and luckily for me, The Guardian was well respected and people were willing to talk to me. I had access to Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Education Commissioners, Vice Chancellors, Rectors, Provosts, secondary school principals and corporate organizations that had something to do with the education sector. Apart from the news pages which I had to fill, there was also the education page which I had to fill every Thursday as well.
In those early years, I divided my schedule into three. One was for the routine stories. The second was for investigation and the third for interviews. I knew that two examination bodies – the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) conducted three national examinations every year. WAEC conducts the May/June and Nov/Dec Senior School Certificate Examinations, while JAMB conducts the Universities Matriculation Examination (UME) as it was then known. Each time any of them released its results was an opportunity to do a detailed comparative analysis.
There was also the National Board for Education Measurement based in Minna, Niger State at that time, which handled the Common Entrance Examination for all the Unity Schools. Don’t forget that Universities also have two semester examinations every year. I kept an eye on that as well, especially the results of 100 and 200 level students, because I wanted, always, to compare the candidates’ UME scores with what they were scoring in their first and second years in the university.
The education sector is very wide. You have the Early Child Care and Education, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and then the Technical and Vocational aspects. There is the Adult and Non-Formal education part. You also have the Federal Ministry of Education with its numerous parastatals; the state Ministries of Education with their own agencies. You have the development partners, like UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, all of which have one thing or the other to do with the education sector.
I was also privileged to work with some able assistants and I had, regularly, undergraduates and other students who came for either industrial attachment or the National Youth Service Corps scheme attached to my desk. I mentored many of them and some have gone on to become editors and public relations experts. I enjoyed it all. I took over the Education Desk as the head, from early 1998.
Breaking stories and memorable experiences
We did so many exclusives. One of the stories I will never forget was the establishment of a satellite campus of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) in South Korea. Prof Jelili Omotola was the Vice Chancellor at that time and when the story was published, he didn’t like it at all. Then, I broke another story on his plan to scrap the UNILAG Faculty of Education for some reasons many did not agree with.
I also broke a story on a number of examination fraud syndicates that specialized in writing prepared answers for candidates during the Universities Matriculation Examination (UME), at the time when Prof. Bello Ahmad Salim was Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). Our reports exposed what was going on at JAMB’s Special Centres at that time, leading to JAMB’s decision to scrap those centres. That endeared me to Prof Salim and he used to ask me if I had any information on other syndicates after that story.
Even for the West African Examination Council, I exposed some syndicates who were assisting lazy students to write examinations, in connivance with examination supervisors at the centres. One of those impressed by my reports was Mrs. Margaret Shonekan, the only female Head of Nigeria National Office of WAEC, and I was the only journalist she ever granted an exclusive interview during her time.
I had some running battles with the Lagos State Primary Education Board as it was then known because of some stories I did on the state of primary schools in Lagos. After 1999, when the nomenclature changed to State Universal Basic Education Board, one particular board chairman did not like me because of the stories I was writing. But to me, doing my job was more important than making friends with anybody.
I broke stories on the activities of the satellite campuses which the National Universities Commission (NUC) had to deal with. The battle started when Prof Munzali Jibril was NUC’s Executive Secretary, but it was more intense during Prof. Peter Okebukola’s tenure. Many universities were forced to close down their bogus satellite campuses owing to series of The Guardian’s reports as well as reports by other newspapers.
I also broke a series of stories about a cabal at the Federal Ministry of Education, which was frustrating every good move the Education Ministers were making at that time. That was when Prof. Tunde Adeniran and Prof. Babalola Borisade were Ministers. It was basically about juicy positions and contracts. And that particular cabal was made up of individuals from a particular section of the country. I didn’t have any problem with the membership of the cabal, but I had a serious problem with this cabal’s determination to ensure that only its members were appointed to particular positions. It was a very selfish cabal.
There was also the issue of the National Open University of Nigeria. This same cabal didn’t want the thing to work, just because Prof Olugbemiro Jegede, around 2002, was appointed its pioneer Vice Chancellor and the fact that the University was based in Lagos. So, working with their National Assembly collaborators, they blocked all allocations meant for the Open University and for this reason, the institution could not operate smoothly. Jegede was nearly frustrated and other newspapers were busy concentrating on the negative aspects without looking at the core issues. But for former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had to personally intervene, the Open University would not have survived. I wrote on all that.
There was also the University of Benin case and the appointment of Vice Chancellors to Federal Universities. You will be surprised that a lot of petty issues go into appointing Vice Chancellors. When Prof. Emmanuel Nwanze was appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin, those who felt a Bini indigene ought to have got the position did not like it. So, the man faced serious bad mouthing from some prominent Bini indigenes, especially when he moved against some Bini Professors and others, who engaged in plagiarism and examination malpractice. He achieved a lot and he was the first Vice Chancellor that the Students’ Union organised a send-off for. I got into the bad books of some prominent Bini indigenes over my objective reports on UNIBEN, and in fact, a particular Bini socio-cultural group took a full page advert in the Vanguard newspaper, complaining about my reports and mentioning my name. The thing was so serious that our Managing Director instructed me to stop doing any story on UNIBEN.
Another interesting period for me was when Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili was Education Minister. The woman was there for less than two years and she achieved a lot. I wrote about her reforms, especially her courageous efforts in breaking the back of the cabal and stopping the leakages inherent in the Ministry. Interestingly, some aggrieved individuals called me to allege that Ezekwesili was corrupt and that I was biased. I then demanded for evidence, with a promise that if I got any authentic one, I would publish it. The evidence never came.
I also will not forget Dr Chinwe Obaji, who, as Education Minister, introduced the post Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) tests. The uproar generated by this action was so much but I focused on the key issues at that time.
I also broke the story about the emergence of the first Nigerian to become President of the UNESCO General Conference in the person of Prof. Michael Omolewa, who achieved a lot of feats for Nigeria throughout his nine years as Nigeria’s Ambassador to UNESCO.
I interviewed so many important national and international personalities and the list is very long. I had the privilege of interviewing Chief Bola Ige, Prof Wole Soyinka, Education Ministers such as Prof Tunde Adeniran, Prof. Babalola Borishade, Dr Chinwe Obaji, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, Dr Sam Egwu, Hajia Jibril Dukku, Prof. Ruqqayyatu Rufai. The only Ministers I didn’t have a one-on-one with were Abba Ruma, who took over briefly after Ezekwesili left, Prof Fabian Osuji,and Mr. Igwe Aja Nwachukwu. It might surprise you to learn that many of my interviews with the ministers took place outside Nigeria.
I also had the privilege of interviewing the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) who came on a visit to Nigeria, the current Commonwealth Secretary General, Mr Kamalesh Sharma in London and the current Director General of UNESCO, Mrs Irina Bokova in Paris.
I also thank God for the numerous opportunities I had to travel abroad extensively during my time at The Guardian. I attended many international conferences and wrote many exclusives. I also had the privilege of going for fellowships: the Freedom Forum fellowship in 2000, which enabled me to spend five months at the Post-Graduate Journalism School of the University of California, Berkeley; and the International Visitors Leadership Programme in 2007, facilitated by the United States Department of State. I visited six states spread across the United States in three weeks. It was a memorable experience.
The birth of The Intellectual and its focus
The Intellectual started as an idea in 2007. A group of like minds, including me, decided to try out a publication that would focus essentially on education, because we noticed that most existing publications concentrated on politics and business. It was just an experiment and what we did was to use our spare time to gather exclusive stories and publish them in a magazine format. We all had our primary jobs, but instead of going to parties or drinking joints during our free periods, we devoted ourselves to producing the contents of the magazine. To our surprise and delight, many people liked the idea. Many supporters wanted us to enlarge our scope but we didn’t have the funds to do it then.
We yearned to draw attention to the critical aspects of Nigeria’s education sector. We wanted to prove that without a sound education system, politics and business would eventually crumble. Our concerns were about the deteriorating public education system; curriculum issues and the relationship between education and the country’s survival. For instance, if only 23 per cent of students taking the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) pass five subjects at credit level, including English Language and Mathematics, and if this has endured for three to five years in a row, then every Nigerian should be concerned. What happens to the remaining 77 percent that failed to make it? What are the security and economic implications of that? How will the country replenish its workforce in a foreseeable future? Those were some of the questions agitating our minds at that time. But because we didn’t have the wherewithal to sustain the publication, plus the fact that our primary jobs took more of our time after the idea was conceived, we had no choice but to rest the publication.
But when I left The Guardian last September, I went back to the drawing board. The issues that led to the establishment of The Intellectual then are even more relevant today than when we initially conceived them. Although funding challenges remain, this is a long-term project. We will go on, no matter how long it takes to stabilize because we believe in it. And thank God, we now have the Internet. With our website, www.theintellectualmag.com, we can disseminate news by the minute. We are packaging a number of innovations which we hope to introduce very soon.
The name of the magazine is a reflection of our belief that intellectuals in the society hold the key to many solutions and as such, our society must strive to continue to produce more. We are publishing in magazine format because it is still a monthly affair. At the appropriate time when we go into a weekly and ultimately daily publication, we’ll change to the newspaper format.
Between The Guardian and The Intellectual
The only significant difference between what I was doing while at The Guardian and what I am doing now is the added responsibility of designing survival strategies for the publication, which is quite huge. That includes circulation and income generation. At The Guardian, I didn’t have to worry about income generation because the advert department was saddled with that.
The unique thing with my job is that I mix with the eggheads and brilliant private and public sector people all the time. I am also expanding my knowledge about doing business. What I find is that journalists are very good at writing wonderful stories and crafting attractive headlines, but that alone cannot sustain a newspaper or magazine, especially now that there are so many social media outlets churning our breaking news every second.
Our journey has just started and we are taking one day at a time. We are encouraged by the responses we are getting from those we interact with. Our challenges are not too far from the challenges other media outlets face, especially the challenge posed by the social media and shrinking income. The competition is very tough now, but when going gets tough, the tough gets going.
We believe in innovation because the only thing that can stand you out is new innovation. We are constantly thinking: how can we do things differently from what others are doing to give us an edge? We must keep evolving and with God’s backing, we’ll get to the Promised Land.
A holder of Bachelor of Art degree in Religions/Philosophy, 1992, and Master’s in Public Administration, 1999, from the Lagos State University (LASU), Post-Graduate Diploma in Journalism, from the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ), Ogba, Ikeja, and Associate member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Oyekanmi is now the publisher of The Intellectual magazine which features with unique perspectives, news, features and interviews with critical stakeholders in the education sector.
Make no mistake about it, he is still the news editor, features writer and education reporter he has always been as his skills in these areas have continued to shine like a diadem at his new post at The Intellectual. He still engages himself in the business of newsgathering, news writing and news editing, features writing, etc. as shown in the stories published in The Intellectual since its birth in February.
“The magazine’s primary motive is to continually draw attention to critical education sector issues and encourage healthy debate among stakeholders, primarily within Nigeria, and also in other African countries, with the aim of finding sustainable solutions,” a mission statement posted on its website, wwwtheintellectualmag.com notes.“The Intellectual is committed to encouraging governments at all levels to make adequate budgetary allocations to the sector and to hold those saddled with the responsibility of managing such allocated resources accountable, in the public interest, through the finest brand of professional journalism.”
In no other area has the publisher of The Intellectual exhibited “the finest brand of professional journalism”, than in his decision to maintain a very strong online presence on education issues and other news matters, thereby heeding the warning, in its interview with Femi Adesina, former Managing Director/Editor-In-Chief, The Sun Newspaper Publishing Ltd, former President, Nigerian Guild of Editors, and now Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, on Media and Publicity, that newspapers must be creative to deal with online threats.
Already, readers are beginning to respond to The Intellectual’s decision not to continue to do things the old ways, by going online with its news stories and features, some of which were written by Mary Ogar, one of the correspondents mentored by Oyekanmi, at The Guardian. Take for instance its focus on the elevation of some colleges of education to university. It has a total of 306 views, while “Difficult Times for Nomadic Children”, has 70, “Out of School Children on the rise”, 34, and “UNESCO: Why Nigeria failed to achieve EFA (Education For All( goals” (186), as at the time of going to Press.
The story of how drawing attention to critical education issues became something of a passion to Oyekanmi is what he sets out to tell in this issue of Education Review. Fraught with dangers, adventures, and difficult decisions, it is a story that practising as well as aspiring education reporters will surely find inspiring as illuminating:
My journalism experience at The Guardian
I joined The Guardian officially in December 1996, but unofficially some six months earlier. That was the period when applicants were thoroughly tested before they were given employment letters. I remember that 23 of us (Test Candidates) wrote different tests and at the end of it all, only three of us were taken.
I was posted, first, to the Features Desk, at the time when Harriet Lawrence was the Features Editor and Felix Abugu was her Deputy. At that time, the Features Desk was quite powerful because it supervised others desks like Science, Education, Health, Fashion/Food and Wine. On the Features Desk at that time, I worked with intelligent journalists like Collins Obibi, Chijioke Odom, Nike Sotade, Ronke Odidi, Ibiba Don Pedro, Victor Onyeka-Ben and a few others whose name I cannot remember now.
One of us was posted to the Art Desk where Jahman Anukulapo was the head. The third guy was posted to the Foreign Desk. Of the three of us employed at that time, I was the only one who stayed beyond five years.
Now, before I got my employment letter, I had the privilege of being supervised directly by Mr. Femi Kusa, The Guardian’s Director of Publications/Editor-in-Chief at that time and one of the most brilliant journalists Nigeria has ever produced. Mr. Kusa it was who made The Guardian what it is today, although, we had intellectuals like the first Managing Director, Dr Stanley Macebuh. But it was Mr. Kusa who introduced the idea of sections and the days they were featured in the newspaper. And that singular act changed the newspaper’s fortune. A newspaper that was struggling suddenly started making money. When other newspapers saw what was going on, they followed suit and also introduced sections. So, we had Property page on Mondays; Appointment page on Tuesdays; Education, Science and Health pages on Thursdays and so on. Mr. Kusa would call me into his office in those days and ask me which story I was working on. He just took a liking to me and some others like Declan Okpaleke who, I think, he found promising. And when I revealed my story ideas, he would dismiss them and then teach me the technicalities you won’t find in textbooks. He called me a “hard writer.” He would send me to The Guardian’s library in those glorious years to read foreign newspapers like The Times and The Guardian of London. I also read, regularly, Time magazine and The Economist. I spent a lot of time reading Nigerian newspapers too, especially feature stories.
Out of the blues, one day, in early 1997, I was reassigned to the Education Desk. I later learnt it was Mr. Kusa’s idea. I didn’t know why. The guy who was on the beat, Mohammed Abubakar, was transferred to Maiduguri. When I asked Abubakar for the desk’s file, he said there was none. He had no contacts to give me as well, so I took over the Education beat in 1997 with virtually no help.
What I then did was to immerse myself in the library, studying old editions of The Guardian and looking at the type of education stories that were published. I read many stories written by Goddy Nnadi, who covered the beat when Prof Jubril Aminu was Education Minister. Slowly, but steadily, I started building my contact base and luckily for me, The Guardian was well respected and people were willing to talk to me. I had access to Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Education Commissioners, Vice Chancellors, Rectors, Provosts, secondary school principals and corporate organizations that had something to do with the education sector. Apart from the news pages which I had to fill, there was also the education page which I had to fill every Thursday as well.
In those early years, I divided my schedule into three. One was for the routine stories. The second was for investigation and the third for interviews. I knew that two examination bodies – the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) conducted three national examinations every year. WAEC conducts the May/June and Nov/Dec Senior School Certificate Examinations, while JAMB conducts the Universities Matriculation Examination (UME) as it was then known. Each time any of them released its results was an opportunity to do a detailed comparative analysis.
There was also the National Board for Education Measurement based in Minna, Niger State at that time, which handled the Common Entrance Examination for all the Unity Schools. Don’t forget that Universities also have two semester examinations every year. I kept an eye on that as well, especially the results of 100 and 200 level students, because I wanted, always, to compare the candidates’ UME scores with what they were scoring in their first and second years in the university.
The education sector is very wide. You have the Early Child Care and Education, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and then the Technical and Vocational aspects. There is the Adult and Non-Formal education part. You also have the Federal Ministry of Education with its numerous parastatals; the state Ministries of Education with their own agencies. You have the development partners, like UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, all of which have one thing or the other to do with the education sector.
I was also privileged to work with some able assistants and I had, regularly, undergraduates and other students who came for either industrial attachment or the National Youth Service Corps scheme attached to my desk. I mentored many of them and some have gone on to become editors and public relations experts. I enjoyed it all. I took over the Education Desk as the head, from early 1998.
Breaking stories and memorable experiences
We did so many exclusives. One of the stories I will never forget was the establishment of a satellite campus of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) in South Korea. Prof Jelili Omotola was the Vice Chancellor at that time and when the story was published, he didn’t like it at all. Then, I broke another story on his plan to scrap the UNILAG Faculty of Education for some reasons many did not agree with.
I also broke a story on a number of examination fraud syndicates that specialized in writing prepared answers for candidates during the Universities Matriculation Examination (UME), at the time when Prof. Bello Ahmad Salim was Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). Our reports exposed what was going on at JAMB’s Special Centres at that time, leading to JAMB’s decision to scrap those centres. That endeared me to Prof Salim and he used to ask me if I had any information on other syndicates after that story.
Even for the West African Examination Council, I exposed some syndicates who were assisting lazy students to write examinations, in connivance with examination supervisors at the centres. One of those impressed by my reports was Mrs. Margaret Shonekan, the only female Head of Nigeria National Office of WAEC, and I was the only journalist she ever granted an exclusive interview during her time.
I had some running battles with the Lagos State Primary Education Board as it was then known because of some stories I did on the state of primary schools in Lagos. After 1999, when the nomenclature changed to State Universal Basic Education Board, one particular board chairman did not like me because of the stories I was writing. But to me, doing my job was more important than making friends with anybody.
I broke stories on the activities of the satellite campuses which the National Universities Commission (NUC) had to deal with. The battle started when Prof Munzali Jibril was NUC’s Executive Secretary, but it was more intense during Prof. Peter Okebukola’s tenure. Many universities were forced to close down their bogus satellite campuses owing to series of The Guardian’s reports as well as reports by other newspapers.
I also broke a series of stories about a cabal at the Federal Ministry of Education, which was frustrating every good move the Education Ministers were making at that time. That was when Prof. Tunde Adeniran and Prof. Babalola Borisade were Ministers. It was basically about juicy positions and contracts. And that particular cabal was made up of individuals from a particular section of the country. I didn’t have any problem with the membership of the cabal, but I had a serious problem with this cabal’s determination to ensure that only its members were appointed to particular positions. It was a very selfish cabal.
There was also the issue of the National Open University of Nigeria. This same cabal didn’t want the thing to work, just because Prof Olugbemiro Jegede, around 2002, was appointed its pioneer Vice Chancellor and the fact that the University was based in Lagos. So, working with their National Assembly collaborators, they blocked all allocations meant for the Open University and for this reason, the institution could not operate smoothly. Jegede was nearly frustrated and other newspapers were busy concentrating on the negative aspects without looking at the core issues. But for former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had to personally intervene, the Open University would not have survived. I wrote on all that.
There was also the University of Benin case and the appointment of Vice Chancellors to Federal Universities. You will be surprised that a lot of petty issues go into appointing Vice Chancellors. When Prof. Emmanuel Nwanze was appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin, those who felt a Bini indigene ought to have got the position did not like it. So, the man faced serious bad mouthing from some prominent Bini indigenes, especially when he moved against some Bini Professors and others, who engaged in plagiarism and examination malpractice. He achieved a lot and he was the first Vice Chancellor that the Students’ Union organised a send-off for. I got into the bad books of some prominent Bini indigenes over my objective reports on UNIBEN, and in fact, a particular Bini socio-cultural group took a full page advert in the Vanguard newspaper, complaining about my reports and mentioning my name. The thing was so serious that our Managing Director instructed me to stop doing any story on UNIBEN.
Another interesting period for me was when Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili was Education Minister. The woman was there for less than two years and she achieved a lot. I wrote about her reforms, especially her courageous efforts in breaking the back of the cabal and stopping the leakages inherent in the Ministry. Interestingly, some aggrieved individuals called me to allege that Ezekwesili was corrupt and that I was biased. I then demanded for evidence, with a promise that if I got any authentic one, I would publish it. The evidence never came.
I also will not forget Dr Chinwe Obaji, who, as Education Minister, introduced the post Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) tests. The uproar generated by this action was so much but I focused on the key issues at that time.
I also broke the story about the emergence of the first Nigerian to become President of the UNESCO General Conference in the person of Prof. Michael Omolewa, who achieved a lot of feats for Nigeria throughout his nine years as Nigeria’s Ambassador to UNESCO.
I interviewed so many important national and international personalities and the list is very long. I had the privilege of interviewing Chief Bola Ige, Prof Wole Soyinka, Education Ministers such as Prof Tunde Adeniran, Prof. Babalola Borishade, Dr Chinwe Obaji, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, Dr Sam Egwu, Hajia Jibril Dukku, Prof. Ruqqayyatu Rufai. The only Ministers I didn’t have a one-on-one with were Abba Ruma, who took over briefly after Ezekwesili left, Prof Fabian Osuji,and Mr. Igwe Aja Nwachukwu. It might surprise you to learn that many of my interviews with the ministers took place outside Nigeria.
I also had the privilege of interviewing the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) who came on a visit to Nigeria, the current Commonwealth Secretary General, Mr Kamalesh Sharma in London and the current Director General of UNESCO, Mrs Irina Bokova in Paris.
I also thank God for the numerous opportunities I had to travel abroad extensively during my time at The Guardian. I attended many international conferences and wrote many exclusives. I also had the privilege of going for fellowships: the Freedom Forum fellowship in 2000, which enabled me to spend five months at the Post-Graduate Journalism School of the University of California, Berkeley; and the International Visitors Leadership Programme in 2007, facilitated by the United States Department of State. I visited six states spread across the United States in three weeks. It was a memorable experience.
The birth of The Intellectual and its focus
The Intellectual started as an idea in 2007. A group of like minds, including me, decided to try out a publication that would focus essentially on education, because we noticed that most existing publications concentrated on politics and business. It was just an experiment and what we did was to use our spare time to gather exclusive stories and publish them in a magazine format. We all had our primary jobs, but instead of going to parties or drinking joints during our free periods, we devoted ourselves to producing the contents of the magazine. To our surprise and delight, many people liked the idea. Many supporters wanted us to enlarge our scope but we didn’t have the funds to do it then.
We yearned to draw attention to the critical aspects of Nigeria’s education sector. We wanted to prove that without a sound education system, politics and business would eventually crumble. Our concerns were about the deteriorating public education system; curriculum issues and the relationship between education and the country’s survival. For instance, if only 23 per cent of students taking the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) pass five subjects at credit level, including English Language and Mathematics, and if this has endured for three to five years in a row, then every Nigerian should be concerned. What happens to the remaining 77 percent that failed to make it? What are the security and economic implications of that? How will the country replenish its workforce in a foreseeable future? Those were some of the questions agitating our minds at that time. But because we didn’t have the wherewithal to sustain the publication, plus the fact that our primary jobs took more of our time after the idea was conceived, we had no choice but to rest the publication.
But when I left The Guardian last September, I went back to the drawing board. The issues that led to the establishment of The Intellectual then are even more relevant today than when we initially conceived them. Although funding challenges remain, this is a long-term project. We will go on, no matter how long it takes to stabilize because we believe in it. And thank God, we now have the Internet. With our website, www.theintellectualmag.com, we can disseminate news by the minute. We are packaging a number of innovations which we hope to introduce very soon.
The name of the magazine is a reflection of our belief that intellectuals in the society hold the key to many solutions and as such, our society must strive to continue to produce more. We are publishing in magazine format because it is still a monthly affair. At the appropriate time when we go into a weekly and ultimately daily publication, we’ll change to the newspaper format.
Between The Guardian and The Intellectual
The only significant difference between what I was doing while at The Guardian and what I am doing now is the added responsibility of designing survival strategies for the publication, which is quite huge. That includes circulation and income generation. At The Guardian, I didn’t have to worry about income generation because the advert department was saddled with that.
The unique thing with my job is that I mix with the eggheads and brilliant private and public sector people all the time. I am also expanding my knowledge about doing business. What I find is that journalists are very good at writing wonderful stories and crafting attractive headlines, but that alone cannot sustain a newspaper or magazine, especially now that there are so many social media outlets churning our breaking news every second.
Our journey has just started and we are taking one day at a time. We are encouraged by the responses we are getting from those we interact with. Our challenges are not too far from the challenges other media outlets face, especially the challenge posed by the social media and shrinking income. The competition is very tough now, but when going gets tough, the tough gets going.
We believe in innovation because the only thing that can stand you out is new innovation. We are constantly thinking: how can we do things differently from what others are doing to give us an edge? We must keep evolving and with God’s backing, we’ll get to the Promised Land.
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