Uncle Sam: Three Leadership Lessons

Eniola bello

It was strangely dramatic. My first personal contact with him, that is. My steps, which were heavy  climbing the staircase, became heavier, from apparent unease, as I followed NiranMalaolu, the supervising Editor for Sunday Vanguard, through the passageway to his office. As I followed Malaolu through the outer office, the secretary nodding her head to his office door, he was sat behind a large desk, a pair of glasses hanging on a long rope holder resting on his chest, a copy of the Sunday edition spread out before him, his attention on a featured interview I had written on a lawyer and human rights activist, Dr. Olu Onagoruwa, now late. Malaolu stepped to one side and left me in the direct line of sight of Sam Amuka-Pemu, the founder and publisher of Vanguard Newspapers, popularly addressed as Uncle Sam, even by his employees.

“You wrote this?”, Uncle Sam asks in a thin yet stern voice, pointing at the full page report with my byline in bold display, his demeanour neither hostile nor friendly.

“Yes sir”, I mutter beneath my breath, my eyes fixed somewhere over his head and the ceiling.

“Can he talk?”, he asks, again in that thin voice.

I was confused, my mind in a whirlwind, unsure of how to respond to this line of questioning. I was sure Uncle Sam couldn’t have been asking if a national figure like Dr. Onagoruwa was dumb. Having joined Vanguard early 1991, I had only been working for a couple of weeks before my summon into the publisher’s office. Malaolu, who had brought the message to me in the newsroom where I had been crafting another story, didn’t advise me on the reason for my summon before leading me upstairs. Until that moment, I had only seen Uncle Sam from a distance either walking past the newsroom to the Editor’s office, or, from the anonymity of the regular section of the staff canteen called The Canal, as he walked to the Management Section to join senior editors and management staffers for their Monday free lunch.

“Does he speak in any language at all?”, he asks a little impatiently, dragging me out of my reverie.

“Yes”, I manage to respond, still unsure what the issue was.

“Well, next time allow him speak, use quotes”, he says, waving me away.

I had ambled out of his office, leaving Malaolu behind, wondering why he had to summon me on what was such a minor issue, or so I had thought. Since Malaolu hired me to work with him, one of my duties was the weekly personality interview, not the question and answer format, but the feature version where I had had to weave together the form (what we called atmospherics in the newsroom) and content in a descriptive and interpretative style. I had barely settled down on my desk when Malaolu walked into the newsroom and perhaps noticing my worried look, patted me on the back with a smile, saying: “Don’t be worried. Uncle Sam liked your writings and wanted to know you, place your face to your name.” But then, the experience had left a lasting lesson on me – there is no perfection in human endeavour; there’s always room for improvement.

Before leaving Vanguard within a year of my employ, I didn’t have any other opportunity of another personal contact with Uncle Sam. And that opportunity wouldn’t present itself until sometime in 1997 when I had become an Editor in THISDAY which had taken a bold step to fully print in colour, tentatively with the Saturday edition. After a few weeks of printing Saturday edition in full colour, the Sunday edition was added. Another few weeks down the line, the daily edition on Monday hit the newsstands in full colour. Perhaps because of the costs and logistics involved in the THISDAY experiment, other media owners thought it was a crazy and bound-to-fail gamble. For one, there was no press in Lagos where most newspapers including THISDAY were printed, that had the web machines to process any colour print of quality. For another, we faced a logistics nightmare in opting to print in Abuja where we found a press with the capacity to meet our quality requirements. At the time, Nigeria had no email facilities. As a result, an editor usually joined an early evening flight to Abuja with floppy disks of press-ready materials to beat an 8.00 pm deadline despite the likelihood of delayed or cancelled flight, or even a major news break.

It was during this period of THISDAY experiment in colour printing that I ran into Uncle Sam at one of those media events. “Where in the world is the Superstar?”, he asks in apparent reference to THISDAY Chairman NdukaObaigbena. Before I could explain Obaigbena’s absence, he says in that thin voice, a worried frown on his face, “Are you people trying to use colour printing to drive us out of the market? Don’t you think this (colour printing) will kill you (THISDAY) first?” In no time, however, THISDAY began printing in colour every day of the week after it installed a colour press first in its Lagos office, and later in Abuja. Major advertisers noticed the consistency and THISDAY enjoyed increased patronage even at premium rates. Other media owners, who had initially expressed scepticism, joined the colour printing train. Uncle Sam even went beyond investing in colour printing press; he changed the character of his newspaper.  Before the editorship of GbengaAdefaye, Vanguard had previously made a name as a tabloid not just in form, like most Nigerian newspapers, but also in character. It was strong on human interest stories, on people, on fashion, on sports; its news stories were short and breezy and its pages breathed with generous use of photographs; its readers were daily entertained with a woman’s scintillating photograph on page 3; and there was a special attention to everything feminine that it even had a Woman Editor as one of its senior editors. By the time Adefaye became General Manager/Editor-in-Chief, Vanguard had undergone a character change. There was less focus on those tabloid elements. News stories were longer and more detailed. There was greater emphasis on politics and polity. Business and finance stories were getting more space. The Page 3 girl disappeared. With the change in the newspaper character, Vanguard got an increased share of the ad spend from governments, from banks, from telcos and from other big businesses. Another unmistakable lesson: Evolve, grow and adapt to changing environment.

Uncle Sam is today’s undisputed patriarch of the Nigerian media. Leaders across every sector of Nigerian society – media, politics, business, traditional – treat him with respect, if not reverence. As an Editor and columnist in Daily Times of the 70s, co-founder of The Punch, and founder of Vanguard, Uncle Sam has in the last six to seven decades observed Nigeria’s politico-economic development, or lack of it, mostly from very privileged ring side seat. As life patron of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN), he has long mastered the art of developing personal relationships with editors, columnists and media managers across different generations. Despite his influence and reach, he walks with a cloak of anonymity, wears simplicity like a life jacket and can be completely anonymous in a crowd. The final lesson: you do not need to be loud to show off your reach and influence; there’s power in simplicity.

There is no question that at 90, Uncle Sam has lived a life of purpose and impact. If his general attitude to life and living is any guide, we’d still be blessed with his guidance for many more years to come.