Why Gov Kwankwaso should sell off The Triumph for N1 – Garba Shehu

You once edited and managed The Triumph newspapers. What would you say it takes to edit and manage it in your time?We were in The Triumph newspapers and as you know the newspaper is owned by Kano state government. I  was a writer, I was the editor, I edited all the titles, daily and Sunday […]

You once edited and managed The Triumph newspapers. What would you say it takes to edit and manage it in your time?
We were in The Triumph newspapers and as you know the newspaper is owned by Kano state government. I  was a writer, I was the editor, I edited all the titles, daily and Sunday papers. I was the General Manager and Managing Director until I left on my own. The Triumph newspaper had unique features which other government newspapers in the country didn’t have.  
One of it was the fact that it started with the kind of freedom that had never been seen or experienced in any government owned newspapers before. Even while we worked for government, senior government officials would just dismiss us that we Triumph people were rebels or radicals.
This is to tell you that there was also the willingness on the part of government to tolerate criticisms and to allow freedom of expression in Triumph newspaper. I think this was one of what accounted for the success of the newspaper.  I will also not fail to mention the fact that there was consistent  support from government. They had funded The Triumph fairly well.
That meant that the newspaper was in a position to compete effectively with other newspapers in the country. In terms of distribution, The Triumph at one time, had the aspiration to circulate all over the federation before it began to contract and concentrate largely in the North.  When the decline came Triumph was barely seen in Kano and government had to shut the place down.

As its former Managing Director, at what point would you say the newspaper started having problems and what caused it?
It was the late Abubakar Rimi, may God bless his soul, who started the The Triumph with a vision for the paper. To his credit, he established it on the foundation of freedom of expression.
In terms of scope of recruitment he never limit The Triumph staff to Kano. The Triumph recruited some of the best writers in the country. The New Nigerian lost a lot of its staff to The Triumph when it started. People from all over Nigeria aspired to work in The Triumph. They came and were given jobs to do. At one the The Triumph began to go down. I will say that the military, as an institution, has governed this country for a longer period than the civilians. Each military governor who came had the temperament and attitude different from the one the newspaper took off with. While we have some of the governors putting The Triumph in its own journalistic tradition, others had no tolerance. We had some of the governors who would want their pictures to be on the front page of the paper every day and their stories on the front page every day.  
If a major incident happened they would tell the newspaper to keep quiet. This was very dangerous because those who used their money to buy the paper did not do so because they wanted to see the governor’s face, but they wanted to read news and if there is no news in the paper they will not buy. In effect, what I am saying is that excessive control was one of what led to the full of  The Triumph.  
Of course, you also know Nigerian operating environment for the  newspapers has witnessed significant changes. The coming of the private press and what you called independent reporting of stories has brought about radical changes to the newspaper industry.  The readers have come to see that the truth cannot be buried.  Independent newspapers, radio and television want to reach the market and capture it.
Nigerians now have come to distrust government-owned newspapers because they see them as being mere tools of propaganda. In effect, I am  saying it is not only The Triumph that is affected. If you look at the entire publishing  landscape in the country, how many government-owned newspapers are publishing daily?
No government newspaper is  doing daily edition in the country. Some come out once in a week, some once in two weeks and virtually all of them are today in debt because the readers simply don’t want to waste their money  buying government propaganda.

Did you notice this problem when you were managing the newspaper?
No,  the problem The Triumph has today is different.  The Kwankwaso administration,  perhaps, felt it was tired of pumping money into a paper that was not prepared to break even or make profit. Which, again, is not entirely the fault of the workers of the newspaper. As I said earlier, it is the operating environment in the country that is not trusting any publication, radio or television owned by government.  
The governor has decided to shut it down and they are looking for buyers. I think they are still in the market looking for people who will come  put money into the paper.

If you have to advise government on how to revive The Triumph what would you say?
Let me say it is not the question of  if but of need. Kano state needs The Triumph. And the state has everything it takes to sustain a newspaper. What do you need to sustain a newspaper? You need literacy and readership. Literacy level  in Kano is among the highest in the North.
You also need the purchasing power, Kano is commercially viable. I am saying that there are lot of people in Kano with cash in their pockets to buy newspaper.  I am aware that quite a number of independent newspapers in the country do their highest sales in Kano. It is not that there are no buyers there, there are lot of commercial enterprises, including real estate which is booming in Kano. This could provide commercial support in terms of advertising for the newspaper.  
Now what needs to be done in order to revive The Triumph? The government,  I think has an idea.  As I was told they are looking for a private investor to come an buy a stake and share ownership with the state government. In effect, the government does not want to let go 100 percent.
Maybe they want ownership share of the business?  When I heard this was what they wanted to do I wrote a memo to the governor through the Arewa Media Forum and I said to them this idea would not work because the objective of government in its ownership share is different from the objective of the private investor. The government wants to use its own media for purposes of propaganda,  a businessman wants to use the medium to make money.
These objectives cannot mix. You cannot mix ideology, politics with business. Is there any crazy businessman who will come and put his money where government has controlling shares or even equal ownership?
Like I said, the objectives are different. The governor still has some months before he hands over to his successor he can still reverse this idea by outrightly opting out and sell it 100 percent to business people. The Triumph has assets that can attract investors. Even the land on which it is located in that central part of Kano city is alot.
It can be a big attraction for anybody to come and rebuild the place, retain the newspaper there or move it elsewhere. They can as well use the land as its now to set up a commercial viable supporting business for the newspaper.
If government will do a radical thing they can even dash it away.  The Brazilian government was subsidizing  a government enterprise, an aluminum manufacturing company to the tune of two million dollars every month to sustain it. It sold it for one dollar and a group of business people  bought it for one dollar and invested their money to revive it.  After sometime it started to pay one million dollar as tax every month to the Brazilian government.  
So if they dash out The Triumph free of charge today, not to me, but to somebody with the idea of how to run a newspaper  and with money to invest the paper will hire people from Kano, reduce unemployment and those earning salary will in turn pay tax to government.  People will gain as they will come to supply printing materials and businesses will boom as they trade with Triumph.  Logically speaking,  government needs a solution and the one they are dealing with will not deliver The Triumph.