Nduka Obaigbena

Nduka Obaigbena CON, Duke of Owa kingdom (born 14 July, 1959) is a Nigerian media mogul, journalist, newspaper publisher, media entrepreneur, and businessman. He is the founding Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of the THISDAY Media Group and ARISE News Channel. Quotes “Hard work is what leads to success and to be successful, you have to be a master of your circumstance. It is not what you do at the beginning that determines whether you will succeed, but how you end up. Your endpoint is at the very end. So, it is how you finish that is more important than how you started. So, it is what you accomplish at the end that matters the most,” “Like Colin Powell said, it is easy to go to war, but what is your exit strategy? If you don’t plan your exit, you cannot start an entry. So, I cannot say I am successful yet until I get to the finish point. You cannot determine it; you take the punches as they come." “I was not born with a silver spoon. I had to make my way through thick and thin. There is power in insight and experience is what guides decision-making." “I had a cartoon column called Lekeleke for the Nigerian Observer, which made me a rich student. This was because the Nigerian Observer was paying me N10 per cartoon, and I was doing it every day, at this time I was already at University of Benin. I would leave the university, go and draw the cartoon and submit it and by the end of the month, they would pay and that enabled me to buy my first car as a student at UNIBEN.” “So, I did the last interview with Buhari and the first interview with IBB. All these happened when I was about 25 years old. So, I was a young man in my twenties with lots of cash,” "To be successful, you have to be a master of your circumstance. For instance, when we started THISWEEK, there was only one printing press in the whole of Nigeria that could print magazines, it was called Academy Press, and Academy Press was already printing for our competitor which was Newswatch and the market day for magazines was Monday, because you define the week ahead. So, if we went to Academy Press to say deliver for us on Tuesday or Wednesday, they would print for you, but by then it would have been us getting to the market mid-week. So, it meant that we had to find other ways of printing if we were to be in the magazine business. So, we decided to be printing in London. What it meant was that we wrote the magazines, Thursdays was our deadline, we used to fly out to London on same Thursday, landed on Friday, which was the day we used to take the pictures and artworks to the press for it to be printed on Saturday and delivered on Sunday morning and you take it to Heathrow, parcel it and plan for shipping Saturday night, for it to arrive on Sundays. Those days there was something called perishable clearing, so we could clear on the tarmac. So, it was possible to clear the newspapers at the tarmac because magazines’ have a life span and they were treated like eggs or day-old chicks. So, we cleared the magazines either on Sunday morning as it were and they would be ready to be distributed everywhere in the country." So, by Monday morning the magazines would be everywhere in the country and that was how we were able to challenge Newswatch and that got the late Dele Giwa infuriated and then the competition started. So, those were the circumstances then. Then, a few months into that endeavor, we had this debate on whether Nigeria should take the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans which came with conditionalities. So when General Ibrahim Babangida decided to work with the IMF, it meant that we had to devalue the naira; so we then set up what was called the Second-tier Foreign Exchange Market (SFEM). I remember the blackboard on that day the policy took off, the naira which we were buying at about 80 kobo to a dollar, fell to N3.32 to a dollar on the first day, which was a depreciation by over 300 per cent. This made our cost of operation to immediately increase by over 300 per cent, due to the action of the government, but your revenue remained the same. We did not increase our cover price, we endured, tried to raise money because I had a strong board, but the naira progressively depreciated. Eventually computers came in and we started making use of them which meant production processes were enhanced. By 1992, it became clear that it was not sustainable to continue printing abroad because every day the naira kept depreciating, so we could only play catch up. So, the introduction computers in those days was a game changer in terms of the magazine business. We looked at the scenario then and knew that the future of magazines in Nigeria was going to be numbered. That was why we registered Leaders and Company in 1992. I appointed Dele Momodu as the editor and some other persons to start Leaders and Company and that was how we founded THISDAY as a daily newspaper. As at today, all the magazines that existed as at that time are no longer in existence, but we are still here. We transited from THISWEEK to THISDAY. "I was always into the media. Those days when I was in Government College Ughelli, which was the time of the black consciousness, I formed a group called the Black Cultural movement and we campaigned at that time in 1976, few years after the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa. We started campaigning for South Africa’s independence when we were in Secondary School. I remember the federal government launched what was called the South African Appeal Fund, under the then Chief F.S. Edo Osagie, the multi-billionaire. We organised events to raise money for South Africa doing rag days and all that in secondary school. I was a follower of the likes of Malcom X and other black icons. Thus, we started a school magazine called Chindava, which we used to awaken black consciousness in our school. I remember in 1976, the Principal then looked at our first publication and said it was not very good, and then we did another publication and he said ‘better, but not good.’ That was in 1976. So, I left Ughelli College in 1977 and started cartooning for the Nigerian Observer. What then happened was that the military removed the editor of the Nigerian Observer, Chuks Okuwa, who was a good friend of mine and I left the organisation with him. That led to both of us co-founding The Dawn Magazine in Benin City, which existed for few years such that while I was Coordinating Editor, he was the Editor-in -Chief. When I graduated I was posted to the Dawn Magazine to do my National Youth Service and I also employed about five persons who were also doing their National Youth Service Corps at The Dawn. The circulation of The Dawn then was about 5,000. After I left The Dawn, I went to London and then I got introduced to Nigerian Advertising because at that time advertising in Nigeria was controlled by nationals of UK, and at the time airport advertising was very lucrative. That was how I met the likes of Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who was the Public Relations Manager of the Nigerian Airport Authority at that time. He used to give us adverts then because advertising is the key of publishing. So, because I studied Creative Arts with combined honours in Fine Art and English, I was able to create what I wanted, like creating my own designs." "I then joined a company called the Nigerian Advertising Limited, when I graduated in 1982, in London. This was all still before the naira devaluation. Then, the Nigerian Advertising Limited was a very strong agency which aggregated foreign advertising into Nigerian market; so we stayed in London and captured advertising using it for outdoor across Nigeria, in areas such as the airports, lounges and everywhere. So, whilst I was with Nigerian Advertising Limited I got introduced into the world of advertising and was eventually engaged as a consultant for Michael Jarvis and Partners as a researcher on the Nigerian market. They were consultants to advertisers and consultants to media. That was how I got introduced to Time Magazine whose biggest market then was Nigeria. They used to publish one 150,000 copies weekly, selling Time Magazine in Nigeria. In Nigeria, Time Magazine and Newsweek were major clients of Michael Jarvis and partners and I was writing the consultancy to get them adverts from the Nigerian market. That was how I got introduced to Time and Newsweek. But I preferred Time Magazine, which was why I applied to work with them, but Newsweek hired me first. So, I went to New York to work with Newsweek and within a month, I got the offer from Time Magazine. So, I left Newsweek Immediately and joined Time Magazine and I started helping them to develop special sections which was the combination of advertising and editorial, both of which I had the proficiency and skills for because of my background. We developed special sections on Morocco and Zimbabwe and other countries. At the time, Nigeria was going to celebrate its 25th Independence anniversary, I proposed a major special edition on Nigeria at 25, which was perhaps the most successful special section we did. We actually had to plan for it ahead and incidentally, the Head of State at that time was Muhammadu Buhari." "So, I became close to his Chief Press Secretary. So, we started planning the special section. So, by August 1985, I did an interview with Buhari who was to be on the cover for the October 1985 edition. I finished the interview with Buhari and I flew to New York to start the production. It was while I was in New York and the interview had passed editorial checks that I got a call that he had just been overthrown from power. I was the last person that interviewed Buhari before he was removed and I was in shock because Buhari had just approved our payment and in that approval, I was to make $250,000 as commission because it was a global edition that was going to be circulated all over the world. I phoned the villa and they said there had been a coup and General Babangida had taken over. So, I flew back into Nigeria and met with Babangida, which meant we had to also do the first major interview with him as the Head of State. We then published that edition of the magazine and the board of Time Warner Group then hosted Nigeria in New York on the pent House of Time building and invited the US elites to celebrate Nigeria. So, Babangida sent a delegation from Nigeria headed by Air Vice Marshall Ishaya Shekari, Brigadier Anthony Ukpo, who was the Minister of Information, Wada Maida, Abba Dabo and others, who were part of the celebration. Also black leaders like Andrew young, Jessie Jackson and all other black leaders were present at the event which became very successful in New York. That event sort of put a stamp on my career at that time. With that success as a young man with a lot of cash instead of buying cars and the likes, I decided to start a magazine to compete with Time Magazine, even though I was still there. I wanted to tell the Nigerian story. Time was doing it for commercial purposes, not for strict editorial. So, we decided to start a magazine called THISWEEK. Prior to that, the only magazine in existence was Newswatch. But after that Time Magazine event on Nigeria in New York, we did another one in 1986 did for Morocco and Zimbabwe. So, with all that I had enough capital, but I did not want to go on the journey alone. So, I approached Gamaliel Onosede, who was a board room guru and also an old student of Government College Ughelli and his sons were my school mates. Then, we put together a board to drive THISWEEK. I also invited my friend and mentor then, Professor Kwaku Adadevoh, who had just left the position of Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, who I met in Maiduguri, while working with the Time. We also had Arthur Mbanefo who was the leading Accountant then, we had Chief Hope Harriman, who was an accomplished business man; Audu Ogbeh, who I had known during my journalism days, I used to visit him in Benue and he was the youngest Minister under Shagari. There was also Abba Dabo and Chinua Achebe, who eventually he sent his wife, Christy Achebe to represent him on the board, but he was part of the team. So, with that strong board, we launched, but at the end of the day, all of those men, as great as they were, they had the names but magazine requires money. But they were very great in opening doors. So, up until the time of the devaluation we were fine, but the naira devaluation changed everything, which meant we had to start raising capital and we could not harass them (the board members), for money. So when I got my next payment from Time Magazine, I was about 27 years old, I bought myself a Mercedes Benz V Boot and then moved to Ikoyi. I said to myself, instead of spending on magazines every day, at least live some good life. So, when the crises started after the naira devaluation, I started Leaders and Company. That was how Dele Momodu came in and I bought him a brand new Peugeot 504, I was still into politics then from the side because being close to Babangida and co, I was into politics and was the Special Adviser to the then Chairman National Republican Convention (NRC). It was from that we now founded THISDAY. Advertisement External links Category:1959 births Category:Living people Category:Journalists Category:Editors Category:Publishers Category:Businesspeople