SAMUEL IBIYEMI: WE LOST HIM, BUT HE LEFT THREE POWERFUL LESSONS

SOFT FINANCE

TRIBUTE

On Saturday, July 1st late in the evening, Friday Atufe, one of the country’s outstanding capital market correspondents placed a distress call to me and told me that Samuel Ibiyemi, the publisher of News Direct was in a critical condition in a university teaching hospital. Without wasting time, we had both decided that we should mobilise members of the WhatsApp group of former staff of the defunct Financial Standard for action but not until we after collecting his account number. I was patiently waiting for feedback from Atufe. On the following Tuesday, while scanning my WhatsApp messages, I stumbled on the sad news on the FS alumni WhatsApp platform: Ibiyemi was gone! We lost him to the cold hand of death. Unbelievable. Shocking. Startling.

I was too shocked to make any comments on the platform. The late journalist was someone I had tracked his progress in journalism practice with continuous joy in my heart every time I was briefed about his exploits. After calming down a bit on the news, I decided to do some reflections and good enough I came back with some comforting notes in my diary: The late journalist left some powerful lessons for us to ponder on. I will share just three as a form of tribute.

LESSON 1: PASSION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN QUALIFICATIONS

I met the late journalist in a very interesting way. In 1999, I had just moved from THISDAY Newspaper to join other investors to set up Financial Standard, where I was the pioneer CEO and Managing Editor. Part of the decisions of the FS investors was to create a unique content style that would make the newspaper accessible to even ordinary readers without any serious knowledge of finance or economics. Just before I resumed at FS, I won a Reuters Award which made it possible for me to join other journalists from about 13 countries in the Reuters office in London where we were trained on the nitty-gritty of business and financial reporting. One aspect of the training that fascinated me was the fact that you do not have to have graduated in any discipline in finance to be a good financial journalist. After the training at Reuters, which lasted for four weeks, I got the chairman of FS then Chief Mrs Eniola Fadayomi who was also in London to join me on a courtesy visit to the Financial Times office, which I had arranged. We wanted to learn a few things we could introduce when the paper eventually started. Michael Holman, the Africa Editor of the paper hosted us, he took us round the critical units of the paper. Before we left, Holman autographed and gave us a book on financial reporting which he said they used as the main manual for training their newly recruited journalists.

Back in Nigeria around July 1999, we decided we would not start the newspaper without conducting extensive training for our journalists. So, for three weeks, before the paper started, we locked ourselves in the space that we had set aside as the newsroom and received a variety of training with facilitators which included Matthew Kayees, the Nigerian editor of FT then, Tunde Ipimosho, former editor of Daily Times, Francis Ojo, co-owner of Galaxy Television and director of FS. Simon Kolawole (publisher of The Cable) who was Deputy Editor helped us to recruit a facilitator, a top analyst at First City Monument Bank, who taught us how to analyse the health of companies without looking at their published financial information.

As it turned out, more than 50% of our reporters were from disciplines far away from finance. We continued to observe this deliberately in our recruitments. In 2001 or thereabout, when we needed to recruit more journalists, we invited five reporters who made it through our initial screening process. Samuel Ibiyemi was one of them. The other two were Fredrick Mordi (now a PhD holder manning the PR department of Cadbury) and Edem Vinda who was at one time the Media Manager of Nigerian Breweries. All had neither a background in finance nor training in journalism. As a matter of fact, Ibiyemi was a recruit in the army who just felt he wanted to veer into journalism as a career. He was assigned to cover the energy beat.

As part of our orientation programmes, which I personally supervised, I invited the newly-recruited reporters and a few of the ones on the ground to share a tip on how to build expertise and contacts in the field. It was a simple strategy. I asked all of them to buy an exercise book each and to start recording at the end of every day significant developments on their bits, doing a bit of analysis and also recording all their contacts with their details and figuring out a way of maintaining those relationships.

I did not follow them up. But the following day, Ibiyemi reported back to my office with a long hardcover notebook with the entries he had made that day and wanted to confirm if he got the style right and I confirmed. He left my office and we never discussed it. Several years later, Ibiyemi set up News Direct, which has been a successful newspaper. To my surprise, about five years ago or thereabout, Ibiyemi invited me to give a motivational talk to his staff at an event, which was held in the hotel somewhere in Sango, Otta, Ogun State. That was when I got to know he owned the newspaper. Just before I started my talk, Ibiyemi pulled out a worn-out notebook and asked me if I remembered the notebook. I could not. He reminded me it was the first note he brought to my office back in 2001 and he had used up to 17 of such. I was taken aback. The importance of that encounter came alive yesterday when I asked some of his colleagues on the FS platform to share their notes on our late colleague with me. This is what Iboro Otongora, one of our wordsmiths at FS, sent to me:

“Samuel Ibiyemi was a library of information, a walking encyclopedia in the petroleum industry. He had a hardcover higher education notebook where he meticulously recorded every metric, data, information and perspective on the sector. If we needed information on the industry and it couldn’t be sourced in Ibiyemi’s notebook, it probably couldn’t be found anywhere else. What Ibiyemi lacked in eloquence as a journalist, he more than made up for it in industry. His drive was uncommon. His energy was almost beyond imagination”. I think there is nothing more to add regarding the dividends of passion and diligence.

LESSON 2: DIG YOUR WELL BEFORE YOU ARE THIRSTY

The title of this particular lesson is not original to me. It was the title of a book considered to be the very best on the power of networking authored by Harvey Mackay described as one of the most outstanding networkers in the world. The lesson here is that it is not when you need friends that you build friendships. A smart networker would figure out what he wants to achieve and deliberately builds an emotional bank of contacts. This would mean spending money and time with strategic contacts you consider necessary for your endeavour. Two years after my first visit to his office, Ibiyemi invited me again to give a talk. After the talk, he threw a question at me: “Sir, you did not even ask me how I got the money to set up the newspaper and build the hotel?”. “Loans and investors’ money”, I suggested. His reply was another revelation. He told me that the entire money came from about two contacts in the petroleum industry he had cultivated following my pep talk with him and his colleagues in my office back in 2001. I have learnt very many powerful lessons on the power of networks but I would just share this particular note from Mackay on the value of strategic networks:
“Talent alone will not save you in today’s economy. The traditional advice – more training and education – will not save you. The government will not save you. No matter how self-reliant, dedicated, loyal, competent, well-educated, and well-trained you are, you need more than you to save yourself. You need a network. You need your network. A network will help you deal with some of life’s minor annoyances as well as your most challenging problems. Your network can provide role models, advise you, comfort you, provide you with financial assistance, intellectual and social resources, entertainment, and a ride to work in the morning.

Without it, you’ll have a hard time finding a client, making a sale, seeking a job, and hiring the right employee. To say nothing of the personal stuff, like locating a competent doctor, buying a house, deciding on a nursery school or your kids”.

Amazing. At that short meeting after my talk, Ibiyemi gave me what I could describe as a masterclass on the value of networking. He said his success could be traced almost 100% to the value of building and nurturing strategic networks.

LESSON 3: LIVE READY; THE OWNER OF LIFE CAN SNATCH IT AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE.

A few of his colleagues on the FS platform also shared this with me:
“Dr Ibiyemi was a focused goal-getting, highly intelligent, self–driven and hardworking journalist and entrepreneur. These qualities set him apart and made him a success as a foremost journalist and mediaprenuer. He was accessible all through and was willing to help his friends. He was dependable. His death created a huge gap. He will sorely be missed”, Taofik Salako, late Ibiyemi’s colleague at FS and Deputy Group Business Editor of The Nations Newspaper.

Another member of FS alumni, Boris Azuka, had this to say about him: ”Late Ibiyemi was a kindhearted follow. I remember when he wanted to start up his newspaper business, he consulted me to help design the masthead and produce the paper which I did. We kickstarted the work in my house at Agege back then. Whenever he came to inspect the work, he always brought with him 25 litres of fuel for me. That was love and commitment being displayed on his part.”

More than the accolades about the late journalist, my main concern was whether he had installed structures and systems that would make his legacy outlast him. I put a call through to his son, Matthew Ibiyemi, a trained lawyer, who is now the editor of News Direct. What he said brought comfort to my heart: “By the grace of God, everything he has laboured to build will stand. He has built structures and systems that allow his business to run with or without him.”

I last met Ibiyemi physically in August last year in Agbor during the funeral ceremonies of the late mother of my boss, Prince Nduka Obaigbena. Ibiyemi was at the head of the high-power delegation of the executives of the Newspaper Proprietor Association of Nigeria of which Prince Obaigbena was the president. I saw the caring side of Ibiyemi then. We had challenges with accommodation as the few hotels in Agbor had been snapped up by other guests. We booked hotels both in Asaba and in Agbor but they could still not match the streams of guests that had invaded Agbor for the burial. Ibiyemi and Feyi Smith did not bulge until we accommodated all the members of the delegation. This included people like Chief Segun Osoba and Mr Ray Ekpu. We promised to catch up in Lagos after the burial but that did not happen as he has gone to the other side.
This is my way of saying, on behalf of your colleagues at former FS. , BYE. Sleep well in the bosom of the Lord.