Assignmentfor Dr. Ikechukwu Obioya

I found a piece of information about the Daily Times

An: ASSIGNMENT

My three days of taking a certificate course in the School of Media and Communication, Pan Atlantic University, is already yielding fruit, as I have been handed an information  that I had sincerely longed for concerning the of Daily Times newspaper’s original owners. The facilitator at S.M.C. who treated the topic, “The Past, Present and Future of News Reporting in Nigeria,” glided over the history of newspapers in the world and Nigeria and during the discourse, told us that the Daily Times group had been founded by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 1925/26. He said the founders had set up the paper as a business concern, which means it contrasted with the early newspapers set up by the nationalists in Nigeria and that had focused on politics of advocacy for Independence. For me, it was heart rending because writers of books on “history of the newspaper industry in Nigeria” and teachers in the journalism schools I attended, focused largely on when the paper was founded -1925/1926, but not about who was behind the paper. I was still in school when government took control of the paper, and I had little knowledge of these facts. Concerning the fight over the paper at various times, what I was able to get was the little that the gladiators let out in the news media.

This revelation about its foundations increased my curiosity because I wanted to fill in a void inside me about the paper.  So, I sought to know from the SMC lecturer why government had intervened in the affairs of the paper years back when it had assumed full control there, because, then, there was little I knew may be because, those involved in the battle for the soul of Daily Times, the government and the media in general had said only the part they wanted the public to know and shielded the real facts on ground . Again, he explained further to the class that government at that time had felt highly uncomfortable with the growing influence of the paper and had only been glad to take over in its time of serious crises. Another notable thing disclosed was that it was in-fact top journalists at the helm of affairs in the paper that had publicly called for a government intervention.

Although I have always pondered  on the dearth of literature on the ownership of Daily Times, what I finally reasoned from this disclosure is that writers and teachers of about the history of the newspaper industry have deliberately let this aspect remain a secret.

Finally, with what I thought was a mystery resolved for me, I would say I do wholly believe in the saying that “learning continues everyday even as we grow old.”

From :Edwin Diala Akalonu

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