“Calamity As Painful As Death Befell Us After Handshake With Jimoh Ibrahim” – Mohammed, co-Founder, Newswatch Magazine

By Gideon Njoku

One of Nigeria’s most accomplished Journalists and Columnists, Yakubu Mohammed, has told the sad story that led to the collapse of Newswatch Magazine, the first serious and as then, most successful Weekly News Magazine published in Nigeria.

Along with late Dele Giwa, Yakubu, Ray Ekpu and Dan Agbese founded Newswatch. It was their brainchild. It was also the toast of the moment. And had some of Nigeria’s bests in the Journalism profession on board.

However, it, suddenly, gradually disappeared from the newstands after months of “struggling”,  attributed mainly, to the punishing economic situation in the Country which also forced other News Magazines to migrate from hard copy to Online. It has not been the same for the Magazine industry and their founders since then.

What surprised many when Newswatch went under was that it did at a time it was public that Jimoh Ibrahim, business mogul, serial entrepreneur, now a Senator, had, allegedly, pumped in hundreds of millions of Naira into the publishing house as a core investor; that the quartet of Ekpu, Agbese, Mohammed and Soji Akinrinade, will still be there as Executive Directors and see to the running of the Company they had sweated for, and invested so much in. They were to be consulting Editors. What was expected was that Newswatch would “roar”. But that didn’t happen.

Within a couple of months, Ibrahim did away with the quartet before they knew what was happening. They were humiliated out. Nobody quite knew what happened. It was all guess work and speculation. But finally, the messy, inside story is out, from the horse’s mouth – Yakubu Mohammed.

Mohammed, in his just finished memoir, “Beyond Expectations”, likened what they went through in the hands of now Senator Ibrahim to “as painful as death.” He said it was worse than the 13 days they spent in prison during the repressive regime of late Head of State, General Sani Abacha.

He said that the first time they met with Ibrahim and shook hands with him, they thought it was beautiful, but  were unaware it was the death warrant of the magazine they were signing.

12 years after, they are still in Court with Ibrahim over Newswatch, over unfulfilled promises, assurances and agreements. However, he disclosed that a number of prominent Nigerian Leaders, including former President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Head of State, General Abulsalami Abubakar, have waded in, and that both parties could settle out of Court and perhaps, Newswatch could come back on stream.

Part of Mohammed’s story in his memoir reads:

“The founders (of Newswatch) had decided to expand the operations of the weekly magazine in 2011, after 25 years of successfully publishing it.

They decided to expand operations to include a daily newspaper and a radio station.

“We also planned to reposition our nascent book company, NewswatchBooks Limited, and make our library the best media archive in this part of Africa and ,thereafter, retire.

“To make this dream come true, we decided to shop for more investors as we did when we conceived the idea of Newswatchin 1984.

“We involved our managers in search of credible investors.

“One of them, Bankole Makinde, our advertisement manager, introduced to us Jimoh Ibrahim, a businessman and publisher as a possible core investor.

“Ray, Dan, Soji (Akinrinade) and I walked into the warm embrace of Barrister Jimoh Ibrahim in May 2011.

“There was nothing to indicate to us that we were about to sign the death warrant of our company, Newswatch Communications Limited.

“We did not anticipate that any fate worse than our 13-day ordeal in Abacha’s gulag would come our way again.

“But the calamity that befell us after a handshake with Jimoh Ibrahim was as painful as death, and signalled a reversal of fortune and the death of a dream.

“Newswatch, the darling of media consumers in Nigeria and abroad, had suffered an almost irreversible misfortune.

“At the time of writing this, it has been off the streets for 13 years.”

He said that Ibrahim had initially announced the retention of theNewswatch founders as Executive Directors and Consulting Editors for a period of two years, but gradually started reneging on agreed terms.

“We were to resume after our vacation. But this was not to be so.

“In the same vein, he equally failed to pay the N510 million for his 51 per cent shares in line with the share purchase agreement.

“After pussyfooting for a while, he reluctantly approved that the company should pay us our retirement benefits.

“For this, he made available a total sum N310 million, saying to us that this was what the company could afford”

Until he finally eased them out,  Mohammed said, the company could still not afford to pay the balance of their benefits. But he said that was nothing compared to the fate that later befell them.

“After holding board meetings for one year, he whimsically closed down the company in 2012 when staff were complaining about unpaid salaries and allowances.

“Because we intervened on behalf of the staff, he said we were no longer directors of the company.”

They finally ended in court with him, and still there 12 years and counting. But a glimmer of hope.

According to him, “On the advice of prominent leaders in this country, including President Olusegun Obasanjo and Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar, we approached Sen. Ibrahim to discuss the matter.”

Perhaps, this intervention would work. And just perhaps, one day, Newswatch would come back on stream.