A former Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Newswatch, Bolu John Folayan, in this interview with GBENRO ADEOYE, says the media needs to do more to inform the public and set political agendas
You have practised journalism for many years, why did you choose to be a journalist?
It was through the inspiration that I got when I was in school. I was in boarding school and the principal made it compulsory for us to watch the 7pm news. In those days, we had people like Bode Alalade reading the news. So I got inspired through that. So I’ve been interested in the entertainment industry. If I hadn’t done journalism, I would have gone for theatre arts. I was in the school’s press club and its theatre arts group. When I was in Form 5, I asked what the people that read news studied and I learnt it was mass communication, so I made up my mind to study mass communication.
You have a PhD in mass communication; do you plan to lecture someday?
I actually lecture; there is no way you will have PhD in mass communication and people won’t ask you to lecture. It is just that I don’t do it full time. I lectured at the University of Lagos; I have lectured at Osun State University and I currently lecture at Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ikeji-Arakeji, Osun State.
How have you been able to balance your work life with your family life because most people married to journalists complain that their spouses hardly remember them when they are at work?
Fortunately for me, my wife also studied mass communication but she has not been practising it. But that has helped me a lot because she understands what the job entails. And since she studied mass communication, she also likes what I’m doing, so I’m a bit fortunate.
Some people believe that male journalists usually indulge in one of three things- women, drinks and cigarettes. Which one is yours?
The influence is always there and what causes it is not the profession itself but the exposure. If you travel a lot, that means you are going to be away from your wife for some time and that will expose you to some of these things. Then if you have friends that you tend to hang out with and stuff like that, it can also be a factor. But as you mature in the profession, you don’t get to do most of those things. Maybe when you are younger, at 21 or 22 years old, you are asked to go to the United States or Jos in Plateau State to spend a week, it would be different. But when you are married, you will behave (well) and all the influences will naturally go away. They are not really part of the profession, but they come about because the profession exposes you to certain things. But if you can manage it, you will be fine.
What is your own social life like?
I’m a Christian, so my social life is a bit limited and restricted to what my faith permits but I socialise a lot. I belong to a social club of professionals in the village; I am also very active in the UNILAG (alumni association) 84/87 set. I socialise through those professional avenues. And as a member of the Nigerian Union of Journalists and the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, when they have conferences, I also socialise. But in terms of going to parties and clubs, that is not my style. In those days when we used to do investigative journalism, we could partake in some things for the purpose of getting sources, but since I am not doing that now, there is no need for it. Now I socialise within the church and within my peer group.
The news media is going through a lot of changes with the advent of bloggers and independent journalists and now, some people will rather read news online rather than in traditional newspapers. How should the traditional media deal with this?
New technology has not only affected journalism but all professions. But in our own profession, it directly affects us in the sense that traditionally, we break news. That privilege is gone forever. We now compete with other people to break the news. But, there are some other things that bloggers cannot do effectively as somebody who studied mass communication. They cannot analyse news the way we analyse news; they cannot do features the way we do features; they cannot do news behind the news and they cannot do investigative journalism the way we do it. They don’t know the ethics of the profession; they don’t know how to probe the sources and double-check information. All journalists need to do is to concentrate on the areas where they have comparative advantage, which is in the treatment of news. For those in print media, they should be getting ready to face the reality that print media will eventually go extinct. All the media are converging now; when I read news on New York Times, I see the video, the audio and the print. But our online platforms don’t have that, so we need to do that. Once we do that, we are going to be in business. There is no way somebody will prefer a blogger when The PUNCH is there doing the job effectively. The blogger can tell you that somebody has won the primary, so we don’t have to compete with them in that area. But they won’t tell the people why and how he won the primary. So in that area, we are going to do better because we have access, accreditation, training and academic competence to interpret the news. Bloggers can break the news, but we should take over from there. They can break the news that Boko Haram is in Lagos, but where are they? How are they planning to strike and where are they likely to strike? It is the journalist that is trained to do that.
You said recently at a public lecture that the media is to blame for the current political situation in Ondo State. How do you mean?
The media is not entirely to blame. The media is not setting the agenda. In modern day, the media does not only set the agenda, it builds the agenda. Agenda setting theory says that given the prominence it gives to certain news, people begin to talk about the news. In the case of Ondo State and our political situation, the media is not talking about the real issues. The media is not asking people that want to become the state governor where they are coming from, what their experiences are. You say you want to improve people’s lives, how are you going to do it? Make a parallel to what we see in the US. Even though Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton try to shift the attention to personal attacks, the media draws them back to talk about issues. Even though we are in Nigeria, we know how both candidates differ on foreign policy and so on.
For instance, can you mention one programme of each of the top three governorship candidates in Ondo State? What is it that they want to do? They are not saying anything like that. Seven months’ salaries are being owed, how are you going to pay the workers? Where are you going to get the money? Some of the candidates don’t even know how much the state gets from the federation account every month. We are not focusing on the candidates and how competent they are for the job. If we look at the three major candidates that we have now: Chief Olusola Oke; Chief Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN); and Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim, how much does the populace know about them?
Akeredolu is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, but I don’t know more than that. How does he run his chamber? Oke has been in the NDDC (Niger Delta Development Commission) before, how did he perform there? Ibrahim is known to be an entrepreneur, but how did he run his companies? I know him to be somebody who can grow money but I don’t see him as somebody who can grow institutions. Is he doing well in his business? Have you found out if he is paying salaries there? That way, people will be able to judge and decide who to vote for.
I read in the papers that one candidate said he would beat all the candidates combined; that is not what we want to hear. How are you going to run the state? The state is neck-deep in debts.
I’m proposing collation for voter education. INEC is not doing that. Voter education has gone beyond asking people to come out and vote. We want people that will be able to organise debates and do fact checking. If Ibrahim says he has been paying salaries of workers, let us go to his companies and find out if it is true. Why can’t universities do researches? We need to have a coalition of NUJ, NIPR, Advertising Practitioners of Nigeria, Nigerian Bar Association, Academic Staff Union of Universities, National Association of Political Science Students of Nigeria, and so on. Let them do debates and polling. Ekiti governorship election is coming in 2018, let there be robust debates.
What do you think about the recent issues in Ondo politics?
As far as I can see it, Jegede has three options. He can go and work with Ibrahim and then win at the Court of Appeal to get Ibrahim sacked. Or he can go and work with Oke or work with Akeredolu. Like it is done abroad, our universities should also conduct polls to let us know the strengths of this candidate and the weaknesses of that candidate. The poll is not about who wins but about the issues in different areas, the priorities of areas.
There are allegations that some political forces are behind Ibrahim to thwart the chances of the PDP in Ondo. What do you think?
I’m not working for Ibrahim, but I know him very well. If you want to beat him, do your legal work very well. His greatest strength is to use the law to fight people. In fact, if he finds out that he doesn’t have an avenue in law to fight you, he will surrender.
Let me give you the background: Mimiko joined the PDP from the Labour Party; Ibrahim joined the PDP from the All Nigeria Peoples Party in those days and started funding the party. He bought vehicles for them and so on. While Mimiko was still in the Labour Party during his first term, Ibrahim was the PDP leader in the state. But former President Goodluck Jonathan worked for Mimiko against Oke, the PDP candidate at the time. The deal was that if he got Jonathan’s support and won, he would defect to the PDP. So when Mimiko returned to the PDP, he imposed his structure in the Labour Party on the structure that was on ground in the PDP. They debated it and offered Ibrahim some positions, but Ibrahim said no. And because the President supported Mimiko, Ibrahim could not present his own candidates to the Independent National Electoral Commission at the time. That was the beginning of the problem. The matter dragged in court until judgment was delivered in June. And that is the appeal that is being held now. The same judge that gave that judgment that Ibrahim’s EXCO was the authentic one was the one that said Ibrahim’s primary was the authentic primary of the party. So INEC obeyed the court order. The matter in Ondo State is not between Ahmed Makarfi and Ali Modu Sheriff. The constitution of the party says that the primaries for House of Representatives and the Senate shall be conducted by the state EXCO. The state EXCO shall forward the list of winners to the national body of the PDP. So when Mimiko defected to the PDP, it was the list of the new EXCO formed by him that was sent to the national body of the party and not that of the old EXCO he met on ground. Ibrahim went to court because INEC did not collect the list of candidates from him. He wanted the court to enforce the June ruling that INEC collected the outcome of the wrong PDP EXCO in the state. At the time, they ignored him and said he was not a member of their party. So now after the judgment came, they are now accusing the Federal Government of complicity in the matter.
Ibrahim has an ambition to be governor. He is rich, so the only thing he needs is power. I know him inside out; he just wants to enjoy himself. If he doesn’t work, fine. If it works, fine. He has a personal vendetta to settle with Mimiko. Jonathan promised Ibrahim that he was going to give him the ticket four years ago to run for governor; it was sealed and delivered. Mimiko scuttled that and denied him the ticket while operating from the Labour Party. Now that he has spent eight years, he still wants to deny him the chance to run, so Ibrahim is not happy and he wants to prove to him that he has money and intellect. It is personal.
You have practised for 30 years and you were the MD/CEO of Newswatch, what would you say were your biggest challenges on the job?
I had several challenges. What you sell in the media is the brand. So the fact that the owner (Ibrahim) had issues with Ray Ekpu and others (pioneer founders of Newswatch) affected the brand. People didn’t want to associate with the brand. Some felt that he cheated Ekpu and others, so we had to do a lot of explanation when we talked to people. So instead of getting on with the job proper, we were busy trying to straighten out the image of the newspaper. For instance, all the contents of The PUNCH today, if you put them in another paper and call it something else, people will not buy it. What people are buying is the brand. And two, the generic problem in the industry whereby adverts don’t come to magazines was also there. So I realised that people could pay for special reports, so we started that initiative. I leveraged on that. The third problem was that the proprietor did not believe in funding the magazine, he said it was a strong brand and had been there for many years. He didn’t believe that we had image problem. I didn’t get one naira in terms of funding for the period I was there. He only paid salaries for one year. The money we made was used to print and market the magazine. And it became really tough, we started owing salaries too. If I had enough funding, I would have diversified. I would have gone into training. In fact, I wrote a proposal to him that we should use our Oregun office as journalism school and affiliate with London School of Journalism to issue certificates and we would have made money with the brand. But Ibrahim only thinks in terms of money. Everything is about money, money, money. If he has an investment that cannot give him a high rate of returns, he won’t pay attention to it. He would say ‘journalism is wahala o, if I put the money you are talking about in my bank; I know how much I would make’. But in this profession, you spend and spend before you can start making money. He wanted quick money.
So do you regret working at Newswatch as MD/CEO or working for Ibrahim?
I regret working for him but I don’t regret being MD of Newswatch. Newswatch remains the icon of journalism in Nigeria. The brand is still strong. If tomorrow, Ibrahim can come to the round table with Ekpu and others and they can all agree to move the brand forward, it will bounce back. The name is still good; you can use it to drive a TV or radio station. So I have no regret working as MD Newswatch; I changed the face of the magazine. I was able to showcase my talent. I proved what I could do. But I regret working for him and the fact that I couldn’t fulfil my dreams for the place. I left voluntarily when I saw that he was not paying attention to what I wanted. But I have no grudge against him; he is somebody that I learnt from in terms of how to make money and think intellectually when it comes to business. He is also good in his calling in terms of how to grow money. He taught me how to make money; not that he sat me down to do that, but I saw how he handled money. I was close to him from the time he made his first millions till when he became a billionaire. He didn’t steal; he was just smart. I don’t greet him and we don’t talk but I will say the truth. He has a gift of scanning opportunities and capitalising on them. At the time that banks were recapitalising from N5bn to N25bn, they had excess money. So he positioned himself to borrow money from them; they were begging him to borrow money and he was using it to buy assets. If you do any business with him, he will insist on having documentations. If he paid back money he borrowed from you, he will demand for a paper from you to show he has paid you. The first time I heard about ‘exit certificate’; it was from him. He would say give me my exit certificate. And sometimes, he would renegotiate the loan. If he owed N50m, he could say he would pay N25m, will you collect it? But you will give me an exit certificate that will show that I am not paying anything again. He is a very smart person when it comes to that; he is just like Donald Trump. But you cannot blame him for that.
After he sacked you on live TV, you said he only wanted to embarrass you in public and that you had earlier informed him that you were resigning. Why would he want to embarrass you publicly like that?
The problem with Ibrahim is that somehow, he doesn’t take joy in my success. How and why? I don’t know. We are from the same village and had more than 35 years of friendship. But now, we don’t talk. It is not that we are fighting. But he does his own; I do mine. When I was about to leave Newswatch, I held a meeting with my members of staff and told them I would be leaving. Some people said I should not inform him, but I said no. I was working in UNIOSUN when he called to tell me that he had bought Newswatch and wanted me to be the MD. Over nine months, we discussed. So I felt that we should also have the same gentleman discussion when it was time for me to leave. So I went to his place and told him that I would be leaving to return to academics.
Why did you choose to leave?
I already owed six months’ salary as of that time. I couldn’t pay salaries. I didn’t have money to run the place; he was not funding it; he didn’t give me official car. I was just struggling. And I was not unemployed when he called me for the job. With all humility, I am a brilliant guy. I was not looking for job. I felt it was a strong brand and I could offer my talents there. I said I was returning to my business and that I could be lecturing part-time and he said it was okay. He said I could even do lecturing full time. I said no, I would not have time for my business and time to practise all the things he taught me about making money. He said okay and that we would still talk. Then around December, when he was preparing for the conference where he said on live TV that I was fired, he made me deputy coordinator of the conference. That December, I told him that my daughter in a private university needed to pay her tuition and that I needed some money. The tuition was N700,000 and I had not collected salary for seven months, but I already had N300,000 which I had made from the other things I was doing. I told him that I would pay back but he didn’t lend me the money. So I vowed that I would not go to the office again, that I would be an irresponsible father if I could not pay my child’s tuition. He said okay. Obviously, he was not happy. I had already resigned my appointment before he now announced in public that he had fired me. So I said to him, ‘you talk to me like that, after all I did for you.’ I was his campaign manager when he contested in the Ondo State governorship election in 2003. Everyone in his camp left except me. I was loyal to him. So I said, ‘you are a wicked person but I leave you to God if you could say on TV that you sacked me when I had already resigned.’ I started reviewing things, he would not give me the perks of office, no official car, I was using a Kia Picanto from the cars for marketers. I organised awards, I changed the face of the magazine. His nature is not to make his friends to develop; that is his weakness.
It was learnt from someone who worked at Newswatch that during one of the Monday meetings they used to have, Ibrahim alleged that you looted his company. Are you aware of that?
As a matter of fact, I wrote him that I would stay for three months so that if there was any question, I was ready to answer it. He didn’t use the word. What people heard him say was that: what were you doing when the MD was withdrawing N5m from company’s account? What was there to loot in the company? How many adverts were we getting? I was being owed like other workers. Even many of the commissions I was supposed to get for the adverts I brought in, I have not got many of them till now. He knew me inside out that I would not steal. The money he was talking about was overpayment for an advert. Somebody did a supplement for N10m in one of the awards we had. He didn’t even come for the award. I was not the only signatory to the account; they signed and the money was paid. The money did not come to my pocket; it was transferred to whoever wanted to get it. The money that belonged to the company was N10m, was there any N5m that was outstanding, no? You could not even steal Ibrahim’s money. He had his own cheques. If you had excess money, he would ask you to transfer the money to him. I was brought up by middle class teachers, so I am a contented person. I have my own ambition. Some people are still aspiring to be like me, so I am contented. Why would I steal his money? He might have said that elsewhere just to defend his action. But I will never have anything to do with Jimoh Ibrahim again, never, till I go back to my God. That is me. I respect him, he is smart and intelligent, he knows how to use people but he doesn’t wish people close to him well, including relations. If he changes that attitude, fine. If not, that is his problem. Nobody is perfect. That is his lifestyle; there are people that are more terrible than him.
Punch
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