He Was The Best Of New Nigerian’s “Young Turks”

By Mohammed Haruna

Alhaji Yakubu Mohammed, a co-founder of Newswatch who died in the early hours of Wednesday January 14 aged 75, and myself were friends and professional colleagues of over 50 years. This goes back to our days of reporting and writing for the defunct New Nigerian as undergraduates, he from the University of Lagos {UNILAG) and I from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria.

Both of us joined the newspaper, once regarded as the most literate, authoritative and independent in the country, as full time staff in 1976 after our National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) year in 1975. He had served with the newspaper as a youth corper at its headquarters in Kaduna on its own request, and I at a Catholic secondary school in Ozuobulu, near Nnewi, in Anambra State.

I had wanted to serve at the newspaper’s Lagos office but the late Malam Turi Muhammadu, then the Editor and mentor to both Yakubu and myself, told me he was sorry he couldn’t oblige me because NYSC gave the newspaper only one slot. And, given the fact that even as an amateur reporter as a student of Mass Communication Yakubu had beaten other national, many of them older, newspapers to big stories like the forged certificates admission racket at UNILAG in 1974, he was the obvious choice.

I couldn’t quarrel with the newspaper’s decision, but belonging to the same Nupe ethnic group and coming from the same Bida town in Niger State with Malam Turi, I had thought he would made a case for me with the NYSC to be posted to the newspaper’s Lagos office. Instead, he urged me to accept my posting.

Malam Turi’s decision spoke volumes about the New Nigerian as a newspaper which put great store on merit and professionalism, values that reflected in the quality of its journalism and the rigour and pungency of its editorials and articles in those good old days.

Apart from Yakubu and myself, three other graduates joined its editorial department in the same year, namely, Mvendaga Jibo, currently a professor of Journalism at Benue State University, Sule Iyaji and Rufa’i Ibrahim, both of them late. Actually, Mvendaga who, along with Rufa’i, had graduated in Political Science from the University of Ibadan in 1974, had joined the newspaper the year before us. But then shortly after his appointment he left to pursue a Masters in the UK on a Commonwealth Scholarship before returning in 1976 to rejoin the newspaper.

Before Mvendaga, Sully Abu had been recruited in late 1972 after his Higher School Certificate from Federal Government College, Sokoto, where he was editor-in-chief of its Press Club. He then rejoined as full time staff in 1978 after his graduation from the University of Ibadan and youth service.

A year or so later, we were joined by Clem Baiye (who, like me, had also reported and written for the newspaper as a student in ABU) and Musa Shafi’i. Musa came in from Bayero University, Kano.

As Yakubu said in his recollection of his days at the New Nigerian in his memoir, Beyond Expectations, Malam Turi fondly labelled the eight of us “Young Turks” on account of the rigorous way we always engaged him, and the management in general, on the content of the newspaper in and out of editorial meetings.

Together the eight of us got on very well with each other like a house on fire, as the English would say. Sadly, this happy relationship did not last for long. First, Jibo who had been appointed Political Editor on his return from the UK, disagreed on policy with the management over an issue and was asked to resign, which he did. Rufa’i joined him in solidarity and both left to join the Daily Times. Next, Sully left to become the spokesman of the late Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, the radical civilian governor of Kano State under the leftish Peoples Redemption Party (PRP).

After that, Iyaji left to work for Peugeot Automobile Company of Nigeria in Kaduna as its spokesman. That left Yakubu, Clem, Musa and myself out of the eight “Young Turks”, with Yakubu as the first among equals in the team, as the newspaper’s second Associate Editor in Lagos. The first was the late Chief Mike Pearse.

We remained a happy and cohesive bunch until the return of civilian rule in October 1979 which came with a change in the leadership of the newspaper when Malam Turi, who had succeeded Malam Mamman Daura as Managing Director, was replaced by the late Alhaji Tukur Othman, himself a veteran of the newspaper.

Sadly, matters started to take a turn for the worse under Alhaji Tukur. When the new civilian authorities in Lagos started meddling in the running of the newspaper, he, unlike his predecessors, did little to pushback. On the contrary, he aided and abetted their meddlesomeness.

Yakubu became the first victim of this interference. His story of how he was almost literally pushed out in 1980 from a newspaper he had grown to love so much, is one of the highlights of his memoire which he presented to the public in Lagos – his second home after his hometown of Ologba in Dekina Local Government of Kogi State – barely two months ago on November 4.

Much as I had wanted to, I could not attend the presentation because of an exigency of work at INEC. But we kept in touch during and after the preparations for the presentation. On one occasion shortly after the presentation, he suggested that the two of us sit down to write the full story of New Nigerian as soon as my second tenure as a National Commissioner at INEC ended in February next year. Our common mentor, Malam Turi, had written an authoritative story of its first twenty years.

If, as I said above, Yakubu was the first victim of the Federal authorities’ meddlesomeness in the management of the New Nigerian, I almost became the second – but, in part, for one fortuitous encounter in the early eighties Yakubu had with then military President Ibrahim Babangida at the Victoria Island, Lagos, residence of a friend they shared.

Before that fateful encounter, I had acted as the Editor of the newspaper for eleven months following the suspension of the substantive Editor, Malam Ibrahim Suleiman, as a result of a hot verbal altercation he had on the premises of the company with the late former Governor of the old North-West State, retired Commissioner of Police Usman Farouk. The altercation was over the Police commissioner’s campaign for the creation of Gombe State out of the old Bauchi State. While Malam Ibrahim was from Bauchi, Alhaji Usman was from Gombe.

Whereas Malam Ibrahim was not reinstated, I was never confirmed. Instead, the late Dan Agbese, who was then acting as the Secretary to the Government of Benue State and who was already a highly respected veteran journalist and had indeed worked for New Nigerian before pursuing a first degree in Journalism at UNILAG, was appointed as the Editor and I was made his Deputy. It was as Deputy Editor that, for some inexplicable reason, the management suddenly deployed me to the Marketing Department.

Before my deployment, I had been admitted by the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University, New York, for a Master’s degree and the company had accepted to sponsor me for the course. Again, for some inexplicable reason, it suddenly withdrew its sponsorship. Worse, it said if I insisted on going ahead, I would have to resign, as the course had no relevance to my new job.

Eventually the company relented on this insistence. Even then it was clear for all to see that something mischievous and malicious was afoot.

It seems President Babangida had an inkling of my travails because, according to Yakubu, he asked after me during their said encounter. As he told it in his memoire, Babangida had jokingly asked him how he could tell between Yakubu and myself, both of us being rather smallish in stature and having a similarity of sorts in our names.

My most distinguishing feature, Yakubu said he replied Babangida, was that I wore a “trendy” eyeglass and he did not wear any at that time. Babangida then asked him if he knew what was happening to me at the New Nigerian. It was then that he gave him details of my travails and Babangida told him to ask me to call him.

–Haruna, National Commissioner, INEC, Abuja.