ENCYCLOPAEDIA EXPRESS IS 10 YEARS OLD!!!!!
BY ABDULMUMINI ADEKU...
Sometimes in September,2005,The Board and management of The
Comet Newspapers of Lagos,Nigeria
decided not to engage me on a permanent basis for very strange reasons.
The staff that was asked to give me a letter for probation asked
why i was on probation as i was one of the company's most valued staff and i
recall telling her that only the management can tell.
she told me that she formed he opinion on my performance on
the back of the weekly Agricultural Page that i edited
She asked that i plead with the Managing Director Acting at
the Time ,Mr Gbenga Omotosho for mercy so that i will have my appointment
confirmed and at this i rejected the idea.
i told my friend that i will rather resign my job than beg
Mr Omotosho as there was no sane reason why he was doing what he was doing
other than filthy news room politics which he cannot defend publicly.
And so i resigned and it was at this rather difficult and
uncertain times of my life in 2005 that
i saw the future in my head.
So i went to the
accounts department and collected what they claimed was the remainder of my
severance package ,i think it was around N4,000 or N5,000 ,am not so sure now
as this took place about 14 years ago .
i asked 2 of my colleagues to join hands with me:Toluwabori
Ojo and Alhaji Dauda Oluwakemi, interestingly the former is now a Christian
clergy in the United states of America .
I tried to convince them with no money in my pocket that i
had a media blueprint that could shake the
entire world to its foundations and i tried to tell them how i was so convinced
inside of me the project would work out.
Amazingly ,they turned me down as they cited what they
needed to feed on to support their immediate families as reasons for their decision
despite the news room camaraderie and to which i respected for their honesty
despite the irreconcilable difference.
So i thanked them and wished them well in their future
professional voyage and with no hard feelings i bided them good bye.
That same year a report i had asked Dauda Oluwakemi to
sought at the OKo-Oba Abattoir earlier on in the year to which he actually had
his identity card seized by some security agents was adjudged the best
agricultural report in the land.
Before then,You did not have to be a seer to know which
newspaper in the country had the best Agricultural Pages ,Prince Femi Kusa, Editorial
Director and perhaps with all due respects to several others one of the best
professionals i have ever worked with ensured that.
So armed with the N5,000 or so and another N5,000 i got as a
gift from the Then Deputy Governor of
Oshun State of Nigeria ,Erelu Mojisola Obada during an official assignment to
her office in Oshogbo,Osun state and a desk top computer which i got as a
parting gift from a Lagos based public relations outfit,JSP Corporate
Communications Consulting ,we launched out on empty stomach.
It's being pretty tough but an interesting journey ,which
has seen us become a pacesetter in the practice of the profession not in
Niigeria,Africa but globally courtesy of the powers of the social media.
i could recall that during a family parley ,Mrs Rekia Raji
Ahutu ,who ironically is my eldest sibling in a strong immediate family field
of 10 had jokingly observed in 2010 that she had never seen a man who continued
to insist that there was a door inside what appeared to her a wall.
i thank the heavens that what appeared or was supposed to be
a wall to the naked eye is what the whole world is passing through for
solutions to all of planet earth's main problems.
We have not made profits in liquid cash and this is what
Nigerians respect but without a doubt we are the custodians of the news and
information trade globally even if we appear to struggle.
From the lawns of the White House in Washngton D.C,offices
of the F.B.I.,C.I.A in Langley ,Virginia,Buckingham Palace,10 Downing
Street,Westminster in London ,United States Congress,Elysee Palace in Paris,The
French Parliament,European Union and its Parliament,The United
Nations,ECOWAS,A.U.The Commonwealth ,Sinn Fein,World
Bank,I.M.F.,Kremlin,Russian Duma,Pyongyang,New
Delhi,Riyadh,Cairo,Abuja,Lagos,JOhannesburg,Canberra and the list is endless
and to think that this was supposed to be a wall without any form of
doors:PAEDIA EXPRESS IS A MIRACLE!!!
Movies have been inspired by our success stories in
China,Hollywood,Nollywood to celebrate this brand ideals in veils,an example is
Meet Dave by Eddie Murphy and if you do not believe me ask any of my siblings
on Facebook whether our cousin Frank Abdulwahab Usman Obaro,a Port Harcourt
business man looks like Eddir Murphy.
Musical artistes have waxed local songs in veil tribute to this brand's astronomical
rise:Uya Meyah by Teniola is an Ebira swag and not a Yoruba word to the best
of knowledge and if you doubt this then
you can ask any Ebira man nearest to you.
Due to the treachery of the system and the deep seated
hatred for the person of Otcherhiwhegh Abdulmumini ireyi Adeku,a popular
newspaper in Abuja who out of guilty conscience wanted to name him the person of the year for his show of resilience
despite adversity but eventually made it open by making it an all comers affair
so as to escape possible reprisals had the Nigerian Army clamping down hard on
them sometimes in January,2019 but a different story was given to Nigerians to
divert attention.
Yet ,i will be foolish to think that we have gotten to where
i envisioned at the start as the brand has yet to fully start i mean let's look
at the drift this way ,we do not have liquid profit,we are perennial tax
debtors,our newspaper arm is a periodical and not a daily,weekly or monthly.
So we are still a long way off from fulfilling our actual
mandate .
Today,our professional media works have been interpreted in such
tongueslike
German,English,Spanish,French,Italian,Dutch,Portuguese,Arabic,HIndi,Mandarin
due to its influence globally as it reports have being read in Asia,The
Americas,Europe,Australia,Africa,Polar regions of the world,with Not less than
200,000 people globally inter phasing with our reports at one time or the other
in over 100 nations and still counting
for a wall with no doors.
i could recall that sometimes in the year 2007,we were in
the press to produce an edition of the E.N.M. Business and Economy Newspapers
but we had no single dime on us just as always.
All i had was my God given ability,names,blood and sweat,so
i told my long time friend and comrade,Stephen Akonti to borrow me a sum of
N30,000 ,which later formed the fulcrum of his own equity in the group and
despite his own personal challenges he did not hold back this cash but gave it
to the company .
A friend who was the production manager of one of the
newspaper firms in the country gave us reels of newsprints based on a
groundswell of goodwill that i had built up over the years.
i was able to buy a lot of plates for production and other
materials but could not buy the photographic films due to low cash in the firms
purse.
So i used a groundnut oil on a clean white sheets of paper
which instantly became translucent like a photographic film thus reducing our overheads even if the edition did not come
out 100 percent sharp at least it came
out 70 percent.
This has being the hallmark of our history ,i doubt looking
back now and very much with good reasons if we could have being able to do so
wellwith all the liquidity in the world even though this will be vital and
strategic for the next phase of our growth as a brand.
We plead with all corporate partners,associates who have
done business with us so far and new one's who want to join the train to
continue to believe in this house which only Almighty God is interested in but which mortal men have
been waging war to destroy.
SIGNED:Otcherhiwhegh Abdulmumini I.Adeku.
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