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By common consent the
New Nigerian, was, in its first
twenty years at least, second to none in
Nigeria in its literary quality, the
rigour of its editorial column and the
solidity of its reporting. Four
gentlemen were largely responsible for
this reputation, one an expatriate, the
others Nigerians. One of the Nigerians,
Malam Mahmud Turi Muhammadu, died last
Friday September 17 aged 70. He was born
in Bida, Niger State, on January 1,
1940.
The expatriate among
the four was Mr. Charles Sharp, the
newspaper’s first managing director. An
old hand at newspaper publishing in the
North, he was recruited by the regional
government in 1966 to transform the
boring
Nigerian Citizen, then published in
Zaria, from a government megaphone into
a exciting newspaper that would tell the
story of the diverse people of the
region to the world and also tell truth
to power.
Sharp succeeded beyond
his wildest imagination. He did so with
more than a little help from the three
Nigerians recruited in that order for
the top echelon of the company; Malams
Adamu Ciroma, Mamman Daura and Turi
Muhammadu.
If the first two, with
Sharp eventually staying in the
background, were mainly responsible for
the newspaper’s literary quality and the
rigour of its editorial analysis, Malam
Turi was largely responsible for the
solidity of its reporting.
For that reason alone
he deserved as much, if not more,
accolades as has often been given Malams
Adamu and Mamman for making
New Nigerian one of the best
newspapers in the country and arguably
its most authoritative during the reign
of the trio between 1966 and 1983; in
the end a newspaper, by definition, is
judged more by the solidity of its
reporting than by the perspicacity and
the courage of its opinion – and by its
courage to publish the opinion of others
no matter how disagreeable.
Examples of Malam
Turi’s contribution to the solidity of
New Nigerian’s reporting are legion
but three would suffice as proof.
First was a report the
late Abubakar Mani, famous as Kaduna
airport correspondent of the newspaper,
filed from his interview with a very
senior Northern minister in the First
Republic, an interview which was highly
critical of the Gowon regime then in its
twilight.
Mani backed his report
with all his notes from his interview
but that was not good enough for Malam
Turi. Instead he insisted that Mani took
the report to the ex-minister to confirm
its accuracy. Mani did and returned with
the report with corrections in the
gentleman’s own handwriting.
New Nigerian
duly published the report the following
day. However, a few days later when the
gentleman was confronted by senior
officials of the Gowon regime he denied
the report. He would, however, not put
his denial on record because, of course,
he knew the trouble the newspaper took
to verify the story.
Second was a report of
another comment highly critical of the
Gowon regime, this time from a very
senior Catholic cleric in Lagos. As
editor, Malam Turi insisted on
irrefutable proof of the cleric’s
authorship of the speech before he would
publish the report. The resourceful
reporter, Mr. Jola Ogunlusi, went back
to the venue of the speech and somehow
procured the script. The story ran the
following day.
It was just as well
that Malam Turi insisted on such level
of proof. For when the cleric was
confronted by the authorities he too,
like our ex-minister, denied the report.
This time the
authorities felt strongly enough to
petition the
New Nigerian. The newspaper simply
published the government’s rebuttal
alongside the cleric’s script with all
the corrections he made in his own
handwriting. End of story.
Third was my own story
of a conference held in Congo Campus of
ABU in 1977, I think, on the 1979
Constitution then in its draft form.
During the conference the late Malam
Aminu Kano, in an off the cuff remark,
accused the Murtala/Obasanjo regime of
“soft subterranean influence” in trying
to replace the parliamentary
constitution the military overthrew in
January 1966 with an American type
presidential system.
The
New Nigerian ran my story after much
grilling from Malam Turi. Several days
later the newspaper received a threat
from the late Chief Rotimi “Timi the
Law” Williams, then chairman of the
Constitution Drafting Committee. He
would, he said, sue us and Malam Aminu
for libel if the great radical
politician did not retract his claim.
A rather worried Malam
Turi summoned me to his office and asked
if I was really sure of my story since
we were the only newspaper to report it.
I said I was. All the same he insisted I
travelled to Kano to get Malam Aminu’s
confirmation. I did. And Malam Aminu not
only confirmed my story, he did so in
writing – and with additional remarks
that he was too old in politics to say
what he did not mean or what he was not
sure of.
We published Malam
Aminu’s short statement the following
day. We never heard from the great
lawyer again until he died.
The first time I met
Malam Turi in 1974 he was already the
editor of
New Nigerian. By then he had been
recruited away from his teaching career
which he had pursued before he went to
read for a degree in History at Ahmadu
Bello University (A.B.U.), Zaria. Even
though he was new to the profession, he
was trusted with the responsibility of
establishing and managing the Lagos
plant of the newspaper, something which
made it the first newspaper in the
country to publish from two cities. He
more than proved his mettle; hence his
fast rise to the editorship of what was
then the most powerful newspaper in the
country.
When I first met him I
was an undergraduate in political
science in A.B.U. and was editing one of
those campus rags notorious for bugging
students and faculty members alike. The
rag I edited went by the improbable name
of
Bullet.
As you can imagine
this was not really professional
journalism, something that had been
after my heart going all the way back to
my primary school days in the late
fifties. Because Malam Turi came from
the same town as I, I thought I could
exploit that connection and get a job
with his newspaper. I tried and it paid
off.
One fine morning
during a long vacation from the
university my uncle, benefactor and a
friend of Malam Turi, Alhaji Baba
Abubakar, took me to the newspaper’s
headquarters on Ahmadu Bello Way,
Kaduna, and told him I was his son who
had always wanted to be a journalist.
The newspaper, my uncle reminded his
friend, had published some of the stuff
I had sent to it. There and then I got
my first job as a part-time cub
reporter.
For me the rest, as
they say, has been history. Thanks to
his mentoring of my journalism career, I
rose from cub reporting as an
undergraduate through acting editorship
of
New Nigerian and eventually to its
managing directorship.
I was, of course, not
the sole beneficiary of Malam Turi’s
benefaction. Possibly an even greater
beneficiary was Yakubu Mohammed, a
founding publisher of
Newswatch, and before then a senior
and pioneer editor at the late Chief
M.K.O. Abiola’s
Concord, since rested.
Before me Yakubu had cub-reported for
New Nigerian as a brilliant student
of mass communications at the University
of Lagos (Unilag). About that time the
newspaper had started a soft-news
four-page pull-out called “Saturday
Extra” which was a precursor of the
weekend newspaper that was to be
popularised by Mike Awoyinfa with
Saturday Concord.
Yakubu and I
alternated in writing tit-bits for the
pull-out on campus life from Unilag and
ABU respectively at the initiative of
Malam Turi.
There were others
more. These included Clem Baiye also
from ABU, Sully Abu, Mvendaga Jibo and,
I think, Rufa’i Ibrahim, all from the
University of Ibadan.
All six of us
eventually joined the newspaper upon
graduation at various times as editorial
executives. Later we were joined by Musa
Shafi’i and Abba Dabo from Bayero
University, Kano. With a few younger
hands in the news room like Mohammed
Bomoi and Abdulhamid Babatunde, we
became one big happy family Malam Turi
half-jokingly labelled “Young Turks”
because of the way we often challenged
conventional editorial wisdom in the
company.
Yakubu and I were the
first of the graduates to join the
company on the same day in 1976
following our national youth service the
year before. As someone for whom
professionalism must always trump ethnic
sentiments Malam Turi apparently
considered Yakubu a more useful material
for
New Nigerian than me.
First, he retained
Yakubu to serve his national service in
the newspaper and turned down my request
to have my posting to the then
East/Central State changed to also serve
in Kaduna. Next, after we both
eventually joined as full time staff,
Yakubu benefitted ahead of me from a
diploma course abroad meant to groom us
“Young Turks” for leadership positions
in the company. Finally Yakubu was
appointed managing editor, the post next
in line to the editorship of the
New Nigerian, which in turn, was
next to the managing directorship.
All this time I was
happy tagging along a step behind Yakubu.
Then Malam Turi resigned in keeping with
what had become a tradition of the
newspaper’s managing directors leaving
the stage when the ovation was loudest.
Alas, this marked the
beginning of the decline of the
newspaper. For some inexplicable reason
the new management turned the
arrangement it inherited from Malam Turi
which he, in turn, had inherited from
his predecessors, completely upside
down. For some even more inexplicable
reason the management also tried to
frustrate those of us Malam Turi had
taken under his wings out of the
company.
Yakubu took the cue
and left. One by one others too left.
But I resisted tempting offers from
other newspapers like
The Guardian, then new on the block,
and Punch, then under Mr. Sam Amuka, and
stayed back, conscious all the time of
Malam Turi’s constant reminder to me
about the virtues of patience.
Long after he retired
from journalism, he retained an abiding
interest in the profession and turned
himself into an unpaid constructive
critic of fledgling newspapers. Little
wonder then that in late 1989 he was
appointed chairman of a committee on how
to commercialize the News Agency of
Nigeria.
The following year he
was appointed chairman of the
Daily Times, then still a thriving
and formidable newspaper with Dr. Yemi
Ogunbiyi as managing director.
When in 1990 I
co-founded the now defunct
Citizen newsmagazine along with
Bilkisu Yusuf,
New Nigerian’s first and only woman
editor, Adamu Adamu, another
New Nigerian alumnus, and Kabiru
Yusuf, executive chairman of
Trust, it was only natural that I
approached Malam Turi to chair the
company. He did so happily at no cost to
the company.
Anyone who knew him
even from a distance would testify to
the fact that he was a decent human
being who was simply incapable of
malaise and hypocrisy. That must have
been the secret of his success in life
professionally and otherwise.
May Allah grant him
aljanna firdaus.
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