A story that is still told twenty years later

Several good things happen in the bedroom, often the place of rest and renewal. Sometime in 2004, Sam Nda-Isaiah and his wife Zainab came up with the idea of ​​a newspaper there.

She previously told the story of how her husband got up in the wee hours, scribbled a few things in a notebook and asked what she thought of the names and the sketch. Of course, that wasn’t the day the newspaper started. But it was only a matter of time.

That idea, which later became LEADERSHIP, has evolved from the snappy, paper-thin one of decades ago to a news content company with a stable that includes some of Nigeria’s most fearless and authoritative news brands. Let’s go back to the years that fueled this growth.

The pharmaceutical laboratory

Sam, as the founder was affectionately known, was a journalist who happened to be a pharmacist. His father, Clement, was one of Northern Nigeria’s most enduring journalists with a strong interest in sports. He worked indoors New Nigerian Kaduna, but its influence and reputation reached far and wide.

His son, Sam, switched to journalism after studying Pharmacy at Obafemi Awolowo University Ife and working briefly at Pfizer. The menopause could have been an occupational accident. I think it was, more accurately, a triumph of genes. He joined for the first time Daily trust, then still in its infancy, as one of the newspaper’s columnists.

After writing columns for years, he collected his selected works in a book, Nigeria: Full Disclosurebefore launching a newspaper. It did take a lot of work. Before the newspaper he started a newsletter, LEADERSHIP Confidential, a highly regarded window into the life, politics and power play among the high and mighty of Abuja, frequented by embassies and the political glitterati.

Confidential mafia

Professor Mahmood Yakubu, Malam Abba Kyari, Adamu Adamu, Mamman Daura, Abba Mahmood and Adamu Suleiman, people who knew the government’s dark secrets, were among the most valuable anonymous contributors. But the newsletter wasn’t enough for Sam, the man with big ideas. He wanted to do more.

He collected the money from the launch of Full disclosure, which was about N20m then. With a small team consisting of Nnamdi Samuel, Abraham Nda-Isaiah, Uche Ezechukwu, Demola Abimboye, Winifred Ogbebo, Douglas Ejembi, Audee Giwa, Kingsley Chukwu, among his initial staff, he released a preview in late September 2004, before the girl edition on October 4, dedicated to God and country.

God and newspapers

I’m not sure God reads newspapers. But countries are paying attention. A few notable newspapers have significantly influenced the course of their countries, for better or worse. When Rudolph Hearst with the New York newspaper, his motive was clear: how to run Joseph Pulitzer New York world out of town.

That rivalry fueled one of the most hysterical eras in American journalism, including Hearst’s use of his press to spark deadly conflict with Spain.

However, the American press also had its unlikely heroes, including Katherine Graham, daughter of the founder of The Washington Post.

Whatever Jeff Bezos undid from the brand today, The PostOverseen by Katherine Graham, it was the newspaper that challenged the US government to publish the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate story, two of the most consequential scoops of the 21st century.

Loaded pistol

I’m not saying LEADERSHIP is that The mail. Not yet. I’m saying that newspapers can somehow influence the trajectory of their country. Lord Beaverbrook eloquently said: “(Press power) is a flaming sword that will cut through any political armor… that does not mean that any major newspaper or group of newspapers can enforce policy or make or dismiss governments as it sees fit, just but because it is a great newspaper.

“Many of these types of papers are harmless because they don’t know how or when to strike. They are unloaded weapons in themselves. But teach the man behind them how to load and what to shoot at; they become deadly.”

The youngest and longest-serving former Prime Minister of the British Labor Party, Tony Blair, knew this. For most of his years at Number 10, when media mogul Rupert Murdoch called once, Blair answered twice.

But again, LEADERSHIP is not SUN or London Times. And neither do Olusegun Obasanjo and Blair. Yet Nigerian President Obasanjo would not easily forget LEADERSHIP. In Too Good to Die: Third Term and the Myth of the Indispensable Man In Chidi Odinkalu and Aisha Osori’s epic catalog we read about the former president’s daring ambition to win an illegal third term.

Beacon, always

Even in its infancy, LEADERSHIP was perhaps the most consistent newspaper to frustrate Obasanjo’s ambition. The country has remained both a scourge of corrupt leaders and a champion of Nigeria’s unity.

Imam Abubakar Abdullahi, for example, came into the spotlight after the company’s awards and conference subsidiary recognized the cleric for hosting Christians in his mosque at the height of the deadly 2018 sectarian violence in Jos.

Also this year, Auwalu Salisu, a Kano-based three-wheeler rider who was rewarded by the newspaper for returning N15m to its owner, received an avalanche of praise including a cash prize of N250m by the Niger State government, which Governor Mohammed Umar Bago has been redeemed and kept under the care of the Sam Nda-Isaiah Foundation.

The newspaper remains fervent in its fight for press freedom, regardless of which Witchfinder General wants to undermine the press. For example, the dogged pursuit of the ‘unidentified’ individuals who murdered Nigerian journalist James Bagauda Kaltho in 1996 led them through a labyrinth of minefields from the Durbar Hotel, Kaduna, where he was bombed, following the trail of one Russell Hanks who was probably the perpetrator. American envoy in Nigeria, and back to the American embassy. The murder is still unsolved.

Neighbor to neighbor

There’s another moment worth retelling. In the heady days after the 2015 general elections, when the former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Godsday Orubebe, besieged and threatened INEC Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, with hell when the final results were announced, the rogue economic wing of the PDP under the auspices of Neighbour-to-Neighbour, offered publishers huge sums of money to publish an advertisement stating that President Goodluck Jonathan had won the elections.

An unsuspecting LEADERSHIP staff collected the money and cheerfully called the publisher to tell him the paper’s bread had been buttered. Sam, whose anger, even in the best of times, was like a raging storm, was on another level of rage. He ordered the bag of cash to be returned immediately. Not long after the money was returned, Muhammadu Buhari was declared the winner, and Jonathan conceded defeat within an hour.

Ghana must-go!

In these twenty eventful years, LEADERSHIP readers have had an infallible companion: Ghana-Must-Go, the irreverent comic strip on the back page. In my time here, I can only remember one time when GMG was stricken and devoid of humor: December 11, 2020, when Sam passed away. The cartoon character was understandably devastated: his life, the life of the newspaper and of many who depended on it, was suddenly hanging by a thread!

The past two decades have been quite an odyssey, with the rapidly changing media ecosystem, increasing adoption of generative artificial intelligence, Big Tech’s misuse and abuse of content, rising costs, and changing target demographics forcing the industry to recalibrate .

But overall, the journey that began in the bedroom over twenty years ago has made significant progress for God and country!

And long may it live!

Ishiewene is editor-in-chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetizing It.