Several good things happen in the bedroom, often the place of rest and renewal. Sometime in 2004, Sam Nda-Isaiah and his wife Zainab conceived the idea of a newspaper there.
She told the story before of how her husband got up in the wee hours, scribbled a few things in a jotter, and asked what she thought of the names and the sketch. That was not the day the newspaper started, of course. But it was only a matter of time.
That idea, which later became LEADERSHIP, has evolved from the feisty flimsy of decades ago into a news content company with a stable comprising some of Nigeria’s most fearless and authoritative news brands. Let’s walk back through the years that fostered this growth.
The pharma’s lab
Sam, as the founder was fondly called, was a journalist who happened to be a pharmacist. His father, Clement, was one of Northern Nigeria’s most durable newspaper deskmen with a strong interest in sports. He worked in New Nigerian Kaduna, but his influence and reputation went far and wide.
His son, Sam, branched off into journalism after studying Pharmacy at the Obafemi Awolowo University Ife and working briefly at Pfizer. The transition might have been a vocational accident. I think, more appropriately, it was a triumph of the genes. He first joined Daily Trust, then in its infancy, as one of the newspaper’s columnists.
After years of column-writing, he compiled his selected works into a book, Nigeria: Full Disclosure, before launching a newspaper. It took a lot of work, though. Before the newspaper, he started a newsletter, LEADERSHIP Confidential, a highly-prized window on life, politics and powerplay among Abuja’s high and mighty, patronised 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 dark secrets of government, were among the most valuable anonymous contributors. But the newsletter wasn’t enough for Sam, the man of big ideas. He wanted to do more.
He gathered the money from the launch of Full Disclosure, which was about N20m then. With a small team comprising Nnamdi Samuel, Abraham Nda-Isaiah, Uche Ezechukwu, Demola Abimboye, Winifred Ogbebo, Douglas Ejembi, Audee Giwa, Kingsley Chukwu, among his earliest staff, he released a preview towards the end of September 2004, before the maiden edition on October 4, dedicated to God and country.
God and newspapers
I’m not sure God reads newspapers. But countries pay attention. A few notable newspapers have significantly affected the course of their countries for ill or for good. When Rudolph Hearst started the New York Journal, his motive was clear: how to run Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World out of town.
That rivalry inflamed one of the most hysterical eras in American journalism, including Hearst’s use of his press to instigate deadly conflicts with Spain.
However, the US press also had its unlikely heroes, one of the most remarkable being Katherine Graham, daughter of the founder of The Washington Post.
Whatever Jeff Bezos may have unmade of the brand today, ThePost, on Katherine Graham’s watch, was the newspaper that defied the US government to publish the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate story, two of the most consequential scoops of the 21st century.
Loaded gun
I’m not saying LEADERSHIP is The Post. Not yet. I’m saying that newspapers can affect their countries’ trajectory one way or the other. Lord Beaverbrook eloquently said, “[Press power] is a flaming sword, which will cut through any political armour…that is not to say that any great newspaper or group of newspapers can enforce policies or make or unmake governments at will, just because it is a great newspaper.
“Many such newspapers are harmless because they do not know how or when to strike. They are in themselves unloaded guns. But teach the man behind them how to load and what to shoot at; they become deadly.”
The youngest and longest-serving Former British Labour Party Prime Minister, Tony Blair, knew this. For most of his years in Number 10, whenever the media mogul Rupert Murdoch called once, Blair answered twice.
But again, LEADERSHIP is not SUN or Times of London. Nor is Olusegun Obasanjo, Blair. Yet, Nigeria’s President Obasanjo would not forget LEADERSHIP in a hurry. In Too Good to Die: Third Term and the Myth of the Indispensable Man, the epic catalogue by Chidi Odinkalu and Aisha Osori, we read about the daring ambition of the former president to wrest an illegal third term.
Beacon, always
Even in its infancy, LEADERSHIP was perhaps the most consequential newspaper that frustrated Obasanjo’s ambition. It has remained just as much a scourge of crooked leaders as a champion of Nigeria’s unit.