From Iwe Iroyin, a Yoruba language title which became the first Nigerian newspaper published in Abeokuta in 1859, to the Anglo-African, the first English language newspaper in Nigeria published in Lagos in 1863, the print media have blossomed and diversified.
The country currently has about 150 dailies; national, regional, local; which suggest a success story. Until the onslaught of the internet is factored in, and dwindling advertisement revenue is considered.
Special Correspondent, Fatima Muktar, collates the views of media teachers and practitioners from the known – lack of adverts; to the unknown – how to compete and survive.
Check out Lagos. Its media dominance is not new; it has been the biggest player since the 1860s.
Nigeria is a monoeconomy, dependent mainly on oil. States depend on monthly hand outs from Abuja through federal allocation.
As petrol naira, the grease of the economy, has reduced as a result of falling oil price, so has the spending of the government at all levels, individuals, companies – and advertisers, the life line of newspapers.
Normally, things trickle down from the centre. But Muhammadu Buhari is on a crusade to clean the country up, and he is tight fisted. He does not want frivolous advertisements from the government, about the government, or its officials.
States have taken a cue. Many of them are broke, anyway.
Newspaper proprietors try to get advertisements from a range of companies. The fear of winding up if advertisers pull out makes them see advert revenue as the biggest hurdle.
The rapid development of new technologies contributes to the starvation, as some readers consider buying a newspaper a luxury or unnecessary with free online editions of local and international media.
Calabar to Abeokuta, before Lagos
Nnanyelugo Okoro, senior lecturer in the department of mass communication, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), in a paper entitled “Mass Media in Nigeria: An Exploratory Analysis”, recalled that the “The establishment of Iwe Irohin marked the beginning of the mass media of communication in Nigeria.
“However, the foundation which made possible the mass production of the printed word was laid in 1846 when the Presbyterian mission installed a printing press in Calabar.
“The main purpose of setting up the printing press was to enable the local people acquire knowledge and information through reading.
“In 1863, the Anglo-African, a weekly newspaper, made its appearance on the newsstands.
“This paper, which is regarded by media historians as the first English language newspaper in Nigeria, was published by a British-Jamaican trader, printer and teacher, Robert Campbell, who was the proprietor and editor.
“The paper was used in promoting the interest and welfare of Lagos and its people.
“The 1880s witnessed a phenomenal surge in the number of newspapers.
“These included the Lagos Times and Gold Coast Advertiser (1880), the Lagos Observer (1882), the Eagle and Lagos Critic (1883), the Mirror (1887), the Lagos Weekly Record (1894), the Lagos Echo (1894), and the Lagos Standard (1894).
“These newspapers severally and collectively attacked what they deemed obnoxious in then British Colonial Administration.”
At independence in 1960, most newspapers were local in outlook and owned by political parties. Each of the three regions had a dominant party with a loyal newspaper or newspapers.
The Northern Region came under the jurisdiction of the Northern People’s Congress (NPC). The Nigerian Citizen was its official party organ.
In the Western Region, Nigerian Tribune was the official newspaper of the Action Group (AG) and the party had substantial holdings in the Daily Service.
Nigerian Tribune, established in 1959, is Nigeria’s oldest surviving private newspaper.
In the Eastern Region, Nnamdi Azikiwe’s chain of newspapers projected the image of his party, the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC).
The party established Nigerian Outlook.
Besides, Zik established newspapers in the North, South West, South East, and South South to fight against colonialism and agitate for independence.
Dependence on adverts
Mohammed Gujbawu, head of the department of mass communication, University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID), explained that “newspapers of course may find it difficult to augment their revenue base through advertisements under the dispensation or the present government.
“They had enjoyed a bumper period during the build up to the 2015 elections from both the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) and the main opposition, APC (All Progressives Congress).
“This demonstrates that it was not only the PDP that spent a fortune on political adverts. The APC had also countered so many allegations directed at its principal actors like Muhammadu Buhari, Bola Tinubu, Kayode Fayemi, et al.
“The PDP was of course the bigger spender, with media budget running into several billions of naira.”
Newspaper oganisations are desperate to take in any advert.
This point was illustrated early this year when The Punch published an advert many described as over the top.
The front page advert placed by Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, suggested that Buhari, the then APC presidential candidate, would die in office if elected president.
The advert put a huge question mark over the picture of Buhari which was placed beside the pictures of late Nigerian leaders.
The adverts asked readers, “Will you allow history to repeat itself? Enough of the state burials”.
Literacy factor
National newspapers are available only in cities and urban areas, so the focus is basically on the elite.
A report by UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics said “59 per cent of all adults in sub-Saharan Africa are literate compared to 70 per cent of the youth.
“Thirty seven per cent of the population lives in urban areas, most of them in informal settlements such as Kibera in Nairobi, Sodom and Gomorrah in Accra and Makoko in Lagos.
“In Nigeria, 46 per cent of the population lives in urban areas. World Bank figures suggest that more than 50 per cent of the people on the continent lives on less than $2 per day.”
Internet shift
The huge audience traffic online makes advertisers to gradually move to online platforms. The print media have more competition for the limited adverts available.
Advertisers used to find it attractive to buy local and network space but with new technologies, the online channel is cheaper for reaching audiences, wide or specific.
The Ericsson Mobility Research report of June 2014 noted that “Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have the most mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa.”
Online editions
Online editions of most newspapers in Nigeria merely replicate the pint editions with little or no creativity in content style and presentation.
Many fail to enjoy the benefits of multimedia content online platform offers, especially for video advertising.
Surviving the internet age
Ted Iwere, Managing Director of Independent Newspapers, delivered a lecture on the state of Nigerian newspapers and offered a prospects for the future on July 30 at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos.
He delivered the lecture, entitled Today’s Newsroom, Tomorrow’s Newspaper: How to Survive and Thrive in the Internet Age, to mark the birthday of Sam Amuka Pemu, publisher of Vanguard.
The internet should not be perceived as “posing a dangerous threat to the survival and prosperity of newspapers, but a development with advantages and drawbacks which require a creative adaptation by newspaper managers,” Iwere said.
“Such adaptations will include re-tooling reporters to be media convergence compliant – being multimedia, multitask competent, writing news reports for hard and online versions of newspapers, editing savvy and photo/video.
“This implies that newspapers must engage in capacity building for the versatile journalist available for multiple tasks.
“If the Sunday Times, with Gbolabo Ogunsanwo as editor, had a circulation of 500,000 in the mid-70s while the combined circulation of Nigerian newspapers today is less than 200,000 we need to ask: What went wrong?
“Nigerian newspapers are not going to die, killed by the internet. Nigerian newspapers must adapt to the internet, or face the danger of imminent death!”
Famous brands
There are currently about 150 dailies in Nigeria, and most suffer from advert revenue drought.
The top 10 in 2009 – The Guardian, The Punch, The Nation, Daily Sun, Vanguard, ThisDay, Daily Trust, Nigerian Tribune, Champion, and Compass (now rested) – accounted for over 95 per cent of daily circulation, according to a survey conducted for the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN).
Some national daily newspapers are powerful brands that command substantial audiences. Most readers are loyal to a particular brand and are not ready to see the potential in others, and this makes advertisers choosy.
Thinking outside the box
Catherine W. explained in her paper entitled The Challenges Facing Independent Newspapers in Sub-Saharan Africa that “Newspaper firms should also be financially viable and capable of paying competitive salaries to their journalists.
“And as far as the new media technologies are concerned, media houses on the continent can learn from the West where the demise of the newspaper as a mass medium is seen as a foregone conclusion, and avoid such missteps as ignoring the opportunities presented by these technologies.”
The BBC reported earlier this year that “The Financial Times, which launched in 1888, has a combined paid print and digital circulation of 720,000, but 70 per cent of its readership is generated through its website.
“The newspaper’s digital subscriptions overtook print circulation in 2012, while tablets and smartphones account for about half of traffic to the website.”
In Gujbawu’s view, “advertisements constitute the largest source of revenue to any commercially minded media organisation. Without a solid advert revenue base it is absolutely perilous for any media outfit to set sail.
“In order to remain afloat, news organisations should fine tune their survival strategies such as paying attention to every small opportunities, increasing their marketing activities, engaging more agents, and virtually considering the political arena as infertile ground.”
Ganiu Okunnu, a lecturer in the department of mass communication at Crescent University, Abeokuta, said “first, it is very crucial to point out that the current economic situation in the country cannot be wholly attributed to Buhari’s government.
“Rather, it is a fallout of the inefficiency and bad management of the last administration.
“Also, it is an obvious fact that sequel to every general election in Nigeria; the economy takes initial downturn for nearly four to five months.
“This has often been attributed to reckless political campaigns by political actors (especially the incumbent government) who divert public funds for electioneering activities.”
He also pointed out that Buhari’s anti-corruption campaign “provides constant warning to political actors to desist from reckless political advertisements, in form of congratulatory messages, a development that has characterised our political atmosphere.
“All these factors may be responsible for the decline in advertisement and its resultant effect on newspaper business.
“This development in turn will have adverse effects on the economy and of particular note, the media, which depends on advertisements for survival.”
Crescent University head of the department mass communication, Kola Adesina, added that “apart from loss of revenue and its resultant effect on business sustainability, the decline in advertisements will in the long run lead to increase in unemployment, as media establishments will resort to staff retrenchment to remain in business.”
He advised newspaper organisations to be creative in packaging news content, and align their skills with those of new digital competitors like facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, SnapChat, and YouTube which has a significant mass audience to match their expectations.
Focus on SMEs, workhorse of growth
Newspapers in Nigeria have set the pace in African journalism and can still create a niche in this critical situation.
Gujbawu said there are both positive and negative consequences.
“Positive in the sense that it brings out the geniuses in them and makes them creative in austere times. It makes them self reliant by focusing attention somewhere else instead of relying on the political scene to survive.
“Negative in the sense that it may lead to dwindling revenue base, hence possibility of retrenchment or right sizing or both.
He enthused that the current anti-corruption crusade, “if executed vigorously and with sincere commitment”, will facilitate a return to better management of national resources which will lead to better economic fortunes.
He said the anti-corruption crusade is aimed at corrupt political actors and their business partners, and it is to facilitate equitable re-distribution of national resources that would fast track economic development.
“To navigate through this critical phase, the media should increase their focus and reportage on development of small and medium scale businesses.
“A functioning SMEs, according to economic and development experts, is a surest route to a nation’s economic development.
“Hence the media should be more developmental in their reporting and encourage the development of local small and medium scale businesses that will in turn increase the economic revenue of the nation, and in the shortest possible time increase their publicity activities (advertising and other promotional communication activities).”
Okunnu also urged the media to be more critical in news gathering and reportage that will, in collaboration with other factors, increase media audience as well as increase revenue from newspaper sale.
“In its glorious days, the circulation of Daily Times was more than the total circulation of all present newspapers combined.”