PERSPECTIVE

Time for the Galadima to bow out

By

Mohammed Haruna

kudugana@yahoo.com

When Malam Turi Muhammadu, one time editor and managing director of New Nigerian, decided several years ago to write a history of that once great newspaper, his working title was simply New Nigerian: The First 20 Years. Some of the people he got involved in the project thought the title was not catchy enough for the highly influential role the paper played in the affairs of the nation in those 20 years. As a result, several other options were considered. Eventually, the team settled for Courage and Conviction as the main title, with New Nigerian: The First 20 Years as the sub-title.

Anyone who has worked in the New Nigerian or who has been even a casual reader of the paper during those 20 years, will agree that those two words truly captured the essence and the spirit of the paper. It was a newspaper of strong convictions and on virtually each and every occasion it demonstrated the courage to stand up firmly and unequivocally for those convictions. As a result, in under two years the paper became the second largest circulating newspaper in the country, after the Daily Times under the much respected Alhaji Babatunde Jose. It also became second to none as the most influential newspaper. It was not for nothing that it was often described by its admirers and detractors alike as Nigeria’s Al-Ahram, after that great Egyptian paper which, under its great editor Muhammad Heikal, was the Arab world’s greatest voice.

The man most credited with the rise of the New Nigerian was Malam Adamu Ciroma, the Galadiman Fika and  the minister of finance, and the subject of our article this morning.

Malam Adamu came to the New Nigerian with absolutely no knowledge of newspapering. Before his appointment to the editorship of the paper he was a civil servant, first in Kaduna and then in Lagos. As a civil servant, he was, of course, supposed to know how to manage people and his record showed he did. However, as he himself admitted in an interview for Malam Turi’s book, “I had no experience in newspaper production or editing”. In retrospect it can be said that what he lacked in journalism skills, he more than made up with his management skill, his wit and his moral convictions.

As Charles Sharp, the expatriate managing director of the paper whom Malam Adamu served as editor and whom he succeeded as the first indigenous managing director, said, “I was beginning to think we would never find the right man (for the job of editor) when someone said, I think it was Ahmed Joda, that the right man had come along. He was right. His name was Adamu Ciroma.”

According to Sharp, one John Smith, a close friend of his and a former colonial servant who had stayed on after independence, and someone whose judgement he trusted absolutely, thought highly of Malam Adamu. “A very clever chap,”  Smith had reportedly said of Malam Adamu, “but a man with a mind of his own. One of the few who never toadied to the Premier, whom he had a knack of upsetting. Has a tendency to wear European style clothes which was one of the things that upset the old man. I think you may well come to the conclusion that he was worth waiting for.” Once again Smith’s judgement, said Sharp, turned out right on the mark.

For the three years Malam Adamu served as editor from 1966 and for the 5 years he served as managing director from 1969, he made the New Nigerian a must read for the common-man and the high-and-mighty alike. The list of his achievements in making the paper the most influential in the country is the stuff legends are made of. These included the one-inch wide editorial column that ran down the left side of the paper’s front page. That editorial column, which became one of the paper’s trade marks, was probably the best written English in the country, so well written, that the paper’s detractors used to say it was all faxed in from London! Not only was it well-written , it anticipated, sometimes down right dictated, public policies.

There was also the inimitable Candido, one of the longest running anonymous columns, who wrote irreverently about issues and personalities big and small and seemed to have spies in every nook and corner of the country.

On several occasions when Malam Adamu clashed with those in authority, he always stood his grounds on point of principle. On one occasion, at the beginning of the civil war, for example, Major Hassan Usman Katsina, objected to the paper carrying the story of the rebel bombing of Kaduna airport because, as the then Northern military governor, he believed such a publication would undermine national security. Malam Adamu said the greater danger lied in censoring an event that everyone in Kaduna knew had happened. To do so, he said, would be to destroy the paper’s credibility and an organ without credibility is of no use to anyone. The Major remained unpersuaded but the editor went ahead and damned the consequences. The Major threatened fire and brimstone, but in the end sanity prevailed and nothing untoward happened to the editor.

On a previous  occasion, Lagos had asked the New Nigerian not to publish a story on the same dubious grounds of national security. This time the paper obliged in a uniquely creative manner; it printed a blank page and told its readers why. That bit of mischief reportedly got the Head of State, Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi Ironsi, hopping mad. However, somehow in the end no one got thrashed at the New Nigerian.

On yet another occasion when, as managing director, he clashed with Lagos over the arrest of Malam Mamman Daura, his equally capable successor as editor, he demanded rather than pleaded for his editor’s release. “I told him (that is General Gowon as head of State), Malam Adamu said when he met Gowon, “it is not possible for us in the New Nigerian to do Government biddings all the time on every issue. I am not here to beg for Mamman’s release. If you like you can set him free”. A little after this encounter, Malam Mamman was set free. But by now Malam Adamu thought he has had enough and he decided to resign.

It was therefore in the middle of all the ovation the paper was getting that Malam Adamu left the New Nigerian for the uncertainty of the private sector. As one special correspondent who wrote about his departure said in the New Nigerian of February 1, 1974, “Trust the man to know when to quit”. Adamu Ciroma, he said, is one of the few who lived by the truth that it is best to quit when the ovation was loudest.

As someone who cut his journalism teeth in the New Nigerian beginning from my university days in the early seventies, and who rose to become its acting editor for nearly one year in 1980/81 and its managing director for  over three years from December 1985, I am, needless to say, an admirer and a disciple of Malam Adamu.

By sheet example, he – and subsequently, Malams Mamman and Turi – was largely responsible for inculcating discipline, as against mere fear, in the New Nigerian’s newsroom. Reporters and editors alike imbibed the ethos that you do the right thing because it is  right and not because you are scared  of the boss. So reporters reported fairly, accurately and as objectively as possible without any Sword of Damocles dangling over their heads.

Eighteen years after Malam Adamu quit New Nigerian, he seemed to have become a changed man. Among the virtues I had admired most in him were his courage, his independent-mindedness, his wit and his personal integrity. If Malam Adamu gave you his word, you could rest assure that he will keep it come hell, come high water.

This was until General Ibrahim Babangida came along to out-dribble the civilian political class during his eight-year rule from 1985. The reader may recall how Babangida banned and unbanned the first league of politicians as part of what many suspected was his hidden agenda for enthroning diarchy in the country with himself, of course, as the boss. In the end Babangida out-dribbled himself and had to “step aside” in August 1993. But that was not before he had sown the seed of discord among politicians, most notably between Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi and Malam Adamu.

The reader may recall that when Babangida banned the first league, Malam Adamu was among the victims. As a victim, he reportedly gave his word that he will support his friend, Shinkafi – Shinkafi was not among those banned – for the presidency. For some seemingly inexplicable reasons, Babangida changed his mind and unbanned the first league. To the disappointed of many, including myself, Malam Adamu reneged on his commitment to Shinkafi once Babangida declared the presidency a free for all. The result was a terribly unedifying  virtual stalemate between two friends for the presidential ticket of the NRC; the more unediying when Babangida conveniently obliged the harangues of the Lagos press for the cancellation of the primaries of his two parties – the other being the SDP – because they both threw up Northerners as their presidential candidates.

Perhaps, Malam Adamu had a good reason for going back on his word to Shinkafi  but somehow I believed the Malam I admired as the editor and managing director of New Nigerian would have kept that word, no matter what.

All this happened in 1992. Between Shinkafi in 1992 and today Malam Adamu seems to me to have changed even more, hardly for the better. I believe he is still a man of high personal integrity by today’s standards, but by his own exacting standards of yester-years he seems to me to have compromised on those virtues for which I and many many other Nigerians admired him.

I have at least two good reasons for saying so. First, was his apparent decision to remain in President Obasanjo’s cabinet after what Obasanjo did to his friend, confidant, soul-mate and long time political ally, Chief S.B. Awoniyi, during PDP elections two years ago in which Chief Gemade was openly rigged into the chairmanship of the party. The whole world saw on television Malam Adamu, himself, and others like Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, walk over to President Obasanjo at the venue of the election to complain about the shameless exchange of money for votes against Awoniyi. The President merely shruged the event away. After that event I was absolutely sure Malam Adamu would resign. He didn’t and that truly made me sad. There are reports that he did put it his letter and that Obasanjo rejected it. But the Malam Adamu I admired as New Nigerian’s boss would have insisted.

My second reason for believing Malam Adamu has changed was his interview penultimate Saturday with Thisday. That interview suggested, at least to me, that he seems to have lost some of his sharp wit along with the decline in his courage and convictions. First was his defence of Obasanjo’s record on his promise to fight corruption. “Institutions to fight corruption like the Anti-Corruption Panel”, Malam Adamu said rather defensively, “have been set up, the civil service system is being reformed and procurement contract system is being put on a normal basis. Before, none of these were advertised, contracts and things like that”.

As Candido back in 1967, I am sure that Malam Adamu would have considered this as, at best, a white wash for a regime that has said much about fighting corruption but not only has done pretty little about its commitment, it has actually used corruption as a weapon to get what it wants, most notably in the National Assembly and in the ruling party. For a lesser offence than the ones Obasanjo’s regime has committed, Malam Adamu would surely remember that, once-upon-a-time, he had described the behaviour of the military governor of the then North-Central State as “scandalous”. “This,” he had said in the New Nigerian of August 23, 1967 “is the only way I can describe the hugger-mugger manner in which the Emir of Daura, has been reinstated by the Military Governor of the North-Central State… No air of mystery should be allowed to envelop the deeds of public men, particularly when such actions have repercussions.” The Emir had been reinstated without reason following his suspension as a result of his implication in allegations of abuse of office at the then Northern Nigeria Marketing Board where the Emir had worked.

Second, was his defence of his remarks about the recent condemnable mob action against Vice-President Atiku in Kano. Malam Adamu had himself been widely condemned for comparing what happened to Atiku in Kano to what happened to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in Mecca. His reaction has been to deny making such comparisons. “I said what happened in Kano,” Malam Adamu said, “reminded me of what happened in Makka. I did not compare the vice-president with the prophet. I can’t do that. I am too knowledgeable about Islam to do that”. Surely, however, if what happened to Atiku in Kano reminded him of what happened to the prophet in Mecca, is it not logical to conclude that he was comparing one with the other?

Last but by no means the least, I find it hard to understand how a man of conviction like Malam Adamu cannot see a conflict of interest between his job as a minister and his job as Obasanjo’s campaign coordinator. Surely, there is a conflict of interest between the job of a minister who will approve payments for contracts, participate in the sharing of government patronages and implement appropriations, on the one hand, and the job of a coordinator who is to ensure his boss’es victory, on the other. “I am combining the job”, he told Thisday, “because they think I can do it.” They, meaning Obasanjo and Atiku.  A more principled Malam Adamu would have done it because he believed it was right, not because someone else, no matter who he was,  believed he could do it.

Well, I suppose we all change in life. I too have. There are things I have compromise on and others which I may compromise on which I would have never have imagined I would, many years back. Life, however, is a circle. I believe one of the opportunities of longevity is that in one’s old age one ought to be able to rediscover one’s virtuos convictions at youth when one had little or no responsibilities. I believe Malam Adamu at over 60 years is past that old age. He has pretty little excuse, therefore, to carry on the way he has, particularly in the last three years.

Inspite of every thing, Malam Adamu remains to me an exemplar, at least comparatively speaking. For the sake of those of us – and I want to believe there are still many of us – for whom he was a journalistic icon, he should quit public office and go home to his venerable job as the Galadiman Fika. If he could quit back in 1974 when the ovations were loud and clear, he has even more compelling reason to quit now that the ovation has decreased sharply and, in any case, all he should really be thinking about is his life here-after.