In your 20th anniversary edition dated Saturday, October 5, 2024 (page 14), in which I featured with my account of my pioneering work there, a former Editor of LEADERSHIP WEEKEND, Mr. Musa Simon Reef, misquoted me. He wrote: “The decision to commence daily production of the newspaper was not without consequences, as the then editor of the weekly edition resigned, insisting he wouldn’t spearhead a daily newspaper that was doomed to fail.”
This comment was a surprise to me because there was nowhere that I ever said I resigned from the company because I didn’t want to “spearhead a daily newspaper that was doomed to fail”.
In the first place, Musa was not even working there when the decision was made and, even though I interacted with him closely in later years, he never interviewed me on why I resigned from LEADERSHIP in December 2005. As I have always said across the years, LEADERSHIP was a great startup that gave its competitors a run for their money. It never appeared doomed to fail. In fact, it had a lot going for it to succeed as a daily.
Also, as I stated in my write-up for your anniversary edition, I was the one who crafted all the pages of the daily before I left. If I felt that it would fail, why should I do that?
My resignation had nothing to do with the Chairman/Editor-in-Chief, Mr Sam Nda-Isaiah’s decision to start daily production. My decision predated his own. I resigned only because Garba Deen Muhammad, the then Editor of the Weekly Trust, and I had decided to float our own newspaper, which we eventually did in Kaduna. It was called The Companion. We saw an opportunity at that time to start the newspaper, but the project didn’t fly as planned due to some circumstances.
I returned to LEADERSHIP in early 2007 after one year of absence, first as the chairman of the Editorial Board for some weeks and then as the editor of the daily, where I served the longest time in the history of the company so far.
Now, Musa is a level-headed gentleman not known for such indiscretions. I have since contacted him over his quip and he has apologised to me, saying he had heard that wrong bit about my resignation from another editor, who is now late. And that was somebody I neither met nor worked with, so he was not competent to say why I resigned.
I am only writing this so that you could avail me the space to put it on the record because you are documenting a great history.
Yours faithfully,
– Ibrahim Sheme Abuja
