I GO CARRY A PRINTED NEWSPAPER TO HEAVEN – DIMGBA IGWE

As part of events to mark the 10th anniversary of The Sun Publishing Limited, SHOLA OSHUNKEYE, BEIFOH OSEWELE and TOPE ADEBOBOYE, spoke with Pastor Dimgba

Igwe, founding Deputy Managing Director in the presence of Mr. Mike Awoyinfa, pioneer Managing Director, on the success story of the newspaper. We serve excerpts from that encounter: 

Sir, considering what you did at The Concord, did you have any fears when you were tilling the ground for The Sun?

I don’t think there was fear as such, because you know Weekend Concord was such a big, successful and, I dare say, monstrous brand. One of the biggest brands you could see. A lot of people that know us don’t even know us about The Sun; they know us about Weekend Concord or about Concord. So, because it was such a huge brand, when it died, it was also obvious that it was not the Weekend Concord that died, it was the Concord family that died. And there is something about brand equity. The brand equity was still there and strong. And you’ll notice also that when we were setting up Weekend Concord, it wasn’t as much as big money. Mike would tell you that the only money that Concord gave him to set up Weekend Concord was N800. Mike wanted N1,000 to buy foreign magazines. When Mike was called to start Weekend Concord, the natural thing was to ask, what do you need and all that.
And Mike now made a request, and he said he needed N1, 000 to buy foreign magazines. And they said, “Ah, there is no money in the system.” So they cut it to N800. You know that’s the typical shakara of a manager. You don’t just approve. You create the impression that money is just not there for the asking. She cut it to N800. So, by way of direct investment at that point, that was all. But you know, of course, that Weekend Concord was such a big brand, and so if there was any other investment the company made, it was by way of natural organic extension in the context of what the company was doing. So because the goodwill was there, when we started doing McDee, we were carried on by the force of that goodwill.
Everywhere we went, people were always talking about Mike’s column, Press Clips. Our headlines were the issues. Because of that, we always knew that the brand was still there. We then knew that it was just a question of time, having the resources to start a newspaper. In fact, that was why when we were about starting a newspaper, we insisted that, that brand value must be recognised. But the investors were saying no, we can give you 20, 30 per cent.” But we said “no” we must have 51 per cent.” That was why we didn’t succeed.
McDee was supposed to be an ideal. We were supposed to raise money so that we could have something on our own with our own seed money at the little scale and then go the whole hog to succeed. But when the publisher came with the pressure for us to go into this, a point came and we had to deal with the concept of, would you rather be a big fish in a small pond, or would you rather be a smaller fish in an ocean? So we saw what led to The Sun project as a big ocean, so we didn’t mind if we had a minimal equity base provided we were going for something big.
Prior to this stage, we learnt that the publisher had been talking to some people – Tunji Bello, Gbenga Adefaye, Victor Ifijeh – about starting a newspaper called The Republic.
There was a project we were doing, and he was supposed to sign a proposal that we were doing. He was a governor. And he knew we needed this thing badly. So, when he wanted to sign, he said, ‘Ah, Dimgba, this newspaper o.’ I told you, you people are refusing. So, he just held his biro. I was waiting for him to sign, but he refused to sign. So Mike said, “Is it newspaper? We would do.” He said, ‘Eh, you mean it?” He said, ‘then this thing is approved.’ So he now took us to the dining room, gave us a paper and said, “Oya, do organogram.” At that time, we were insisting on doing our own paper, which we were to call Mirror. We had registered the company to do a paper called Mirror. So, he gave us a paper to do organogram, and I was holding the sheet of paper and wondering, what’s this organogram thing? Then I wrote Mike, MD, Dimgba, deputy MD. I gave him the sheet of paper with those names. Then he said, what about the others”? I said “Yes, they can take a cue from there.”
He said he would talk to the other team members. So we had a meeting with some of those team members.
At first we were meeting at the Slok office in Apapa. Then subsequently, we started meeting at 43 Osolo Way at McDee office. It was when the paper was about to take off that we moved to The Sun office in Kirikiri.
What did you have against the New Republic?
There was one thing that stood out against New Republic. You know when you are choosing the name of a newspaper, you allow it to sink into you like music. You want to listen to the voice of the name on a television. Is this what you want to hear? You want to visualise it on a billboard. Is this what you want to see? Is it sharp? Does it have energy? Is it aggressive? Now, all these elements and these components, we were not seeing in the New Republic. Chief Ajayi did a newspaper called The Republic, which collapsed. Now if you were coming with something new, you must never be identified with failure. In fact, one of the things we’ve always guarded against all our lives, because we know we have this brand equity is, don’t be associated with failure, because once your brand starts failing, then you’re gone. And brand is capital; it was the only thing we had.
That was why we didn’t want that name. And you now need to look: is there a vacancy in the market? That was a market where you already had The Guardian dominant, ThisDay, dominant. So we had to ask ourselves, like Mike said, where is our core strength? And we had always done newspapers