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Traditionally, the newspaper industry has been domiciled in the South-Western part of Nigeria where the old guards like The Vanguard, The Guardian and the Punch have been operating from. However, in the last decade or so, Abuja has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of newspapers produced in the capital, some of them growing […]
Traditionally, the newspaper industry has been domiciled in the South-Western part of Nigeria where the old guards like The Vanguard, The Guardian and the Punch have been operating from.
However, in the last decade or so, Abuja has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of newspapers produced in the capital, some of them growing exponentially in both content and reach in what some believe will balance the tilt of the South-West papers.
Newspapers like Daily Trust and Leadership have already been established in Abuja and they have been joined recently by other papers like Peoples Daily, The Road, the Nigerian Pilot to mention but a few. There are numerous others of course struggling to emerge from the shadows.
But what exactly is behind this sudden growth?
Abdurrazaq Barkindo, Editor-in-Chief of The Road newspaper explains, “we are trying to do a newspaper that talks to the people who govern this country. Nobody does anything else in this country apart from in Abuja. Abuja is the place to be if you want to talk to Nigerians and get Nigerians to correct the injustices in the country.”
Since the relocation of Nigeria’s seat of government to Abuja in 1992 and the return to democracy in 1999, the shackles holding down journalism seem to have been broken and Abuja offered a fresh challenge. The adventures and escapades of Nigerian politicians and the nouveaux riche, the activities of government, the political horse-trading that daily take place in the capital will all make for interesting reading and some investors decided to cash in. Newspaper publishing houses sprouted.
The development has excited some media buffs, notably Dr. Emman Shehu, Director of the International Institute of Journalism (IIJ), Abuja.
“It’s a welcome development because if we are talking about democracy, we must also democratize information and so, it’s good that the print media is expanding in terms of the location of where the publications are coming from,” he says.
A common feature of the Abuja based newspapers is their outlook. Most of them are considered regional. Whereas most newspapers based in the South West (or the Lagos/Ibadan Press as they are referred to in some quarters), report extensively on the southern part of the country, the Abuja based papers cover the hitherto neglected north.
But there are some exceptions, Emman Shehu notes. “There is also a paper that has come up, which obviously has the Goodluck/ Sambo money in it, even when they are trying to have a content that is up to par but in terms of the editorial policy, you will see where the agenda is, which is unlike most of the other Abuja based publications,” he says.
He is of course referring to the Nigerian Pilot, an Abuja based paper that started rolling off the press last year after President Goodluck Jonathan succeeded the late President Umaru Yar’adua. Its content heavily favours President Jonathan, giving substance to allegations that the paper is being bank-rolled by the president.
However, a source within the paper insists that the paper is published by Mr. Dennis Sami (publisher of Newsworld Magazine). The source says the speculations are probably because of the closeness of the president and the publisher, who in fact happens to be from the same state as the president.
But Barkindo is not cutting corners about his newspaper’s agenda. It is pro-north he says. “The Road is a regional paper. Our target audience is the north, we don’t intend to deceive ourselves that we are a national newspaper because any paper that claims to be a national newspaper is wallowing in an illusion of grandeur. There is no national newspaper in the world.”
Uncommon papers
In the run up to the general elections, newspaper sales sky-rocketed and revenues from advertising poured into the industry. New newspapers came on stream, some of them partisan. Some have already closed shop with little circulation and very little advert revenue.
The specialised needs of the FCT is becoming a factor in the evolution of new papers. Abuja This Evening is tottering out of the press. The evening paper published by veteran journalist, Sunday Dare, has just a couple of editions out and seems to be modelled after the sports papers, with about eight pages and costing no more than N50.
Mr. Tunde Akpeji, the paper’s Managing Editor, explains the idea behind the paper. “There is a wide array of people who want fresh information as they commute back home at the end of the working hours. This is the void we are working to fill. Look up the major world capitals, there are evening papers. In Lagos there are evening publications, so Abuja should not be left out. Abuja residents should be able to have something to keep them company and keep them informed when they head home after work.”
The first edition went for the sensational, leading with a story of “sex rumpus in NYSC camp in Keffi” while the second was caught up in the gale of politics and had the lead “Election Latest.” Does this imply that the paper has no direction?
“Abuja This Evening” will offer a mix, a potpourri of content and this does not in any way imply that there is no direction for the newspaper. The focus is to have a daily evening news tabloid that captures the news as it breaks and present news in its freshness with all the facts, it reports political, social, economic, entertainment, religious and other aspects of news and human endeavour,” Mr Akpeji says.
For now, the paper is still feeling the waters but it will sure add an interesting dimension to the growing newspaper publishing business in Abuja.
Counterweight
The emergence of Abuja as the new hub of newspaper publishing is acting as a counterweight in the lopsided leaning of the South-West press. Several years ago, Punch newspaper, for instance, decided to close down most of its offices in the north because the management believed there wasn’t much newsworthy stories coming from the vast region. Many other South-West based papers toed a similar line and focused more on the south.
Many media practitioners challenge this notion and decided to prove it wrong. Barkindo of The Road, for instance, believes his paper is reporting “all the good stories” from the north while trying to reach readers in the south.
Despite the effort, Dr Emman Shehu still feels that the balance has not been reached yet.
“I don’t think the publication of papers in Abuja has reached the level of countering the publications [of the South-West] because those ones have already established a tradition. They have already established an operational capability which some in Abuja don’t have in terms of reach,” he says.
The division between the two cannot be more glaring than it was in the run up to the general elections. Most of the so called South-West papers, which in fact are owned by Nigerians from president Jonathan’s South-South region, sided with the President while the Abuja-based papers favoured his closest challenger, General Muhammadu Buhari.
Challenges of the Abuja press
As with anywhere else, Abuja offers its own set of challenges for the press sprouting all over the capital.
“The peculiarities of publishing in Abuja are many. For example, Abuja wakes a couple of hours later than Lagos. So at a time when events are already taking place in Lagos, the nation’s capital is just warming up. The implication is that you are left with just a couple of hours between sourcing news and being on the streets. You also have cost, you know the city is expensive and that tells on your overhead cost, plus like any other place, the reading culture is in decline, and online is the in thing now so when you are into publishing, you must contend with these things,” Mr Akpeji sums up.
Barkindo however mentions other concerns. “In a civilian regime comes civilian challenges and these challenges are that information is hoarded, a lot of things are not told in the open and a lot of crimes are seen but not reported and these are things we want to expose because when newspapers are funded by moneybags from behind, then you will definitely have encumbrances and road blocks. But we are a newspaper owned by journalists who want to expose the ills in the society totally and our challenges are more because we have to confront all these people who are making this society bad,” he says.
For Dr. Shehu, the challenges do not end there. “The newspapers here still have a problem every publication house faces; distribution, aesthetics problems and even problems in terms of quality even though a couple are making an effort to see that they are up to par. In terms of content there is an effort to see that the content is as interesting as what can be found in the so called south-west papers, one or two going coloured.”
What is clear from this development is that journalism in Nigeria is as vibrant as ever.