On Saturday, November 9, 2024, Chief Onyema Ugochukwu turned 80. The celebration, though muted in line with the nation’s economic realities of the day, drew friends and well-wishers from across the country. A man of many parts, Onyema means many things to many people and every person who has had close contact with him, has one pleasant story or the other to tell about him.
Yours sincerely missed the celebration. The 20th edition of the All Nigerian Editors Conference was held in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital and it was equally a tribute to Ugochukwu who occupies a pride of place in the history of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, the association of members of the topmost stratum of Nigeria’s journalism practice.
For a man who started out as a banker, it was journalism that drew him away from the Central Bank of Nigeria which held a more promising future, economically, for him. Almost everyone agrees, however, that journalism is the career that defines his life. He was among the first set of graduates in the newsrooms, lured by the great Babatunde Jose, then Managing Director of Daily Times, to join the team that birthed Business Times, the specialised publication in the stable that reported the nation’s new economic trajectory of the early 70s. That he rose to the pinnacle of the profession as editor of Business Times from 1977 to 1982, editor of West Africa from 1983 to 1986 and ultimately, as Editor of the flagship national newspaper, Daily Times from 1986 is well known. What may not be so is his major role in the leadership of the umbrella association of media editors, the Nigerian Guild of Editors.
He was obviously not one the Guild’s founding fathers but he counts among the few that rose to the occasion in the 1980s to reawaken the body when if faced imminent death at a time it was supposed to be in the vanguard of opposition to draconian military decrees and government’s stifling policies.
Considering the deep division that afflicted the Guild from 1982 till 1988, his leadership for the following two years was a defining era for it. Ugochukwu takes credit for the resilience in the face of the challenges faced by journalists in the country at the time, mainly because he succeeded in returning it to the part of dignity and growth that it enjoys till this day.
The near death of the Guild in the early 1980s has its roots in the crisis that arose at its national convention of 1982 in Minna and the internal contradictions arising from it. In his book, Uneven Steps: The Story Of The Nigerian Guild of Editors, former editor of Thisweek, Lanre Idowu was detailed on the background to the crisis: the agitation for a zoning arrangement for sharing of the Guild’s offices which borrowed from the political lexicon and practices of the ill-fated Third Republic.
The December 1983 coup d’état led by Major-General Muhammadu Buhari sacked the civilian administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari and toppled the fledgling Third Republic; it ushered in another dark era of muzzling the press. Within four months of mounting the saddle, Buhari introduced draconian laws to suppress freedom of speech, the most notorious of them being the promulgation of the Public Officers (Protection Against False Accusation) Decree 4 of 1984. The decree was meant for the punishment of journalists whose reports ridiculed any government official, regardless of whether it was factually true. It was under this obnoxious law that two Guardian reporters, Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson were jailed. The overthrow of Buhari in 1985 had ushered in General Ibrahim Babangida who started out by opening the democratic space and received plaudits for his policies across the country until the discreet enlistment of Nigeria into the IOC brought the press and his government to loggerheads.
In these periods of anxiety, the Nigerian Guild of Editors was nowhere to raise its voice on behalf of the editors involved. Their members were regularly arrested and detained, media houses were routinely invaded and publications were often seized in the streets by armed men. The slide into the abyss and imminent death of the Guild portended grave consequences for journalism practice and its practitioners and someone must intervene to arrest the situation.
Ugochukwu who was editor of Daily Times, reached out and found soul mates in Nduka Obaigbena, Editor-In-Chief of Thisweek, Wada Maida, Editor-In-Chief of the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN and Nwabu Mgbemena, General Manager of NAN. Their discussions centred on the resuscitation of the NGE that had by then ceased to function. When they called the first meeting of editors on 12th March 1988, among the major decisions taken that day was to hold a fresh convention of the Guild in Abuja.
The convention which turned out to be an elective one, came up 14-16 September, 1988, exactly six years after the fracas in Minna. The Abuja convention which took place at the Nicon Noga, now Transcorp Hilton, Onyema Ugochukwu, editor of Daily Times, was elected as the Guild’s new President. It was a difficult period to lead the Guild but Ugochukwu was determined. On the challenges of that period, he did not believe in open confrontation with the government, but relied on his negotiation skills which a few criticised, among them the one-time President of the Guild, Chief Chris Maduabrochukwu Okolie.
The event of 1990 would, however, vindicate him. The Gideon Orkar coup had shaken the very roots of the military government and the suspicion that some editors were in the know of the uprising had led to a clampdown of editors like never before. It was a major test of the Ugochukwu leadership when three editors, Chris Mammah of The Punch, Chris M. Okolie of Newbreed and Chris Okojie of Vanguard newspapers were picked up by military intelligence officers. Just as Ugochukwu and his team worked round the clock to get the men released, the government followed its actions by shutting down their publications one after the other for varying lengths of time. While Punch was shut down for a month, Newbreed closed for two months and Vanguard was off the streets for two days. Champion newspapers whose editor was not involved, also suffered closure for four days. Thanks to the President’s negotiations, he got government officials at high levels to sit down and discuss with the Guild’s leadership.
The Guild weathered the storm of 1990 with dignity rather than humiliation. More importantly, the era marked a turning point in the Guild’s relationship with government, a difficult era when quiet negotiations got the military to show some respect to the Guild and its leaders.
It was a triumph of statecraft that not only earned results, it earned for the Guild the respect that military administrations of the day rarely gave. More importantly, Ugochukwu did not only play a leading role in resuscitating the Guild from the throes of death, his era of the Guild leadership returned the group to the path of steady growth that it still enjoys today.
As this great journalist and a leader of men marks this golden age, this is wishing Chief Onyema Ugochukwu, a more fulfilled life.
