The Senior Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, has called on media houses in Nigeria to synergize in order to enhance their news contents, reduce cost of operation as well as attract more revenue.
Onanuga stated this on Friday in Abuja while playing host to a delegation of Association of Corporate Online Editors, ACOE, who paid him a courtesy visit.
He said, “The media space has changed very dramatically. There are so many spaces we didn’t know exist. Every journalist who works with a mainstream media, before you know it, you would hear he now has his own. The media space is large that we cannot but to welcome everybody, and so you are also most welcome”, he told ACOE members.
“Just as you are so many, there is the need for synergy. I am glad that you people are collapsing your structures to form two or three, just like in the past when Chief MKO Abiola set up Concord Bus to solve the problem of distribution of newspapers in Nigeria.
“At that time most newspapers would buy pick-up vans for distribution of their copies, and if you check what they are carrying to Onitsha or Benin; very few copies, and you wonder the business sense there.
“The man said lets come together, he had the money, he set up buses and said bring your papers we would deliver for you. The experiment collapsed, and at the end of the day, it is the industry that suffered for it”.
Onanuga wondered why every newspaper house in Nigeria would have web machine and instead of concentrating on contents, they would be taking care of machines.
He said “Look at printing, every newspaper would buy web machine, but you don’t need it. Like the one Punch has in Ogun State, it can print for all the papers in Nigeria.
“That is what they do in UK, but in this country every newspaper must have its own printing machine, and at the end of the day, instead of focusing on the content, you are focusing on machine; you are not printers, you are publishers”.
He said there was 6 need for online publishers to come together, because they would do a lot of things together and their content would be richer than what they can do individually.
“Advertisement would be coming, because if your content is good, it would attract traffic and people would know that what you doing is good”, the president’s aide advised.
Earlier in his speech, the President president of Association of Corporate Online Editors, Mr. Martins Odiete said the purpose of the visit was to seek synergy with the office of the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy in order to enhance their activities with the federal government.
He mentioned criteria for registration of members in their association. “Before we accept someone as our member, he must be a registered member with the Nigerian Union of Journalists, NUJ, his organization must also be registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission”.
Odiete also added that the group emphasized the need for their members to be paying taxes to the government, and most importantly must be publishing on daily basis.
“We are here to engage you on a subject of immense importance to us, which is collaboration of Association of Corporate Online Editors and your office. In an age where information flows across digital platform, this synergy is pivotal to us for accurate information dissemination”, he stated.
On ACOE delegation at the meeting were Martins Odiete (President), Ignatius Ushie (Vice President), Sola Akingboye (Secretary), Ebelechukwu Ibeneme (Treasurer) and Khadijat Ibrahim (Financial Secretary).
Others included; Nnamdi Okosieme, Fred Idehai, Queen Kunde, Saminu Ibrahim and Moses Okorie.
