By Tunji Adegboyega
Although Chief Ajibola Ogunshola started out as an actuary, he has ended up being referred to more in terms of his achievements as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Punch Nigeria Ltd, a position he occupied for 24 solid years (February 1987 – April 2011), despite the significant successes he recorded in his chosen vocation.
I doff my hat for Chief Ogunshola. I was secretary of ‘The Punch’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) when he became chairman.
He was quick to realise that the company harboured a lot of deadwood and did not spare his long knife in cutting the workforce to size. True, no miracle could have brought ‘The Punch’ back to life without pruning the bloated workforce. What was significant was the fact that these included some of Ogunshola’s family members. This was one of the steps that saved the legacy of the founding chairman of the company, Chief James Olubunmi Aboderin.
Chief Aboderin may not be a believer in the true sense of the word, but his works are still speaking today, more than 40 years after his death in February, 1984.
His children and children’s children, some of who might not have known him in person, are enjoying the fruits of his labour today. That is part of the good inheritance that even some of those who profess to be believers have not been able to do for their children, not to talk of generations unborn.
But everyone enjoying ‘The Punch’s’ success today has first and foremost God Almighty to thank. Next is Chief Aboderin; then Chief Ogunshola, because there would not have been anything to revive if the newspaper had not been established in the first place.
Chief Ogunshola, like his elder brother, may also not be a believer; but God still chose him as the vessel to bring back the newspaper’s glory.
He made it abundantly clear when he became chairman of the company that part of his main ambitions was to make ‘The Punch’ one of the highest-salary paying newspapers in Nigeria, if not the highest-salary paying newspaper. This sounded like squeezing bread out of stone, considering the fact that the company was perpetually in salary arrears of between three or four months at any point in time then.
I remember how this promise almost led to friction between myself and one of our senior members of the staff then who wanted the union to “make things tough” for Ogunshola. The (then) young man thought that his promise was the height of deceit. You could hardly blame him: How could a company that could not pay salary regularly for years suddenly transform to the highest-paying newspaper? He asked me who was interested in highest salary. As far as my colleague was concerned, Chief Ogunshola should tell us how he would pay the peanut the company was paying then, rather than mesmerise us with the impossible.
I believed money was not the only challenge facing the company then; perhaps the bigger problem was the management of the resources. Too many leakages, a thing many of us knew even before Chief Ogunshola took over. That was why you would see those running the company then always running from pillar to post, looking for money. Meanwhile, they got some money a few days before.
Therefore, if many of us so acknowledged, why not give somebody who had a different view of not just throwing money at problems to try his own method, to revive the company?
The emeritus chairman eventually proved cynics wrong. It is to Chief Ogunshola’s credit that he was not only able to take the company out of the financial quagmire, he also bequeathed unto it an ultra-modern press and a befitting headquarters costing billions of Naira without borrowing a dime.
Part of the reasons ‘The Punch’ is where it is today is because Chief Ogunshola kept faith with his promise to transform the newspaper’s pay. There is no argument that it is the highest-salary paying newspaper in the country today. This was not by accident. It was by design and determination. I remember there were occasions when the company did salary review twice in a year.
I remember a particular occasion when at the management meeting we proposed a salary package that we were not sure the board would approve because it seemed outrageous. Only the then managing director, Mr Demola Osinubi, was optimistic it would be approved; of course he had a better idea of the inflows and outflows. Even then, that was not enough. That can only apply in a situation where the board chairman and members are not waiting in the wings to corner the revenue. Mercifully, ‘The Punch’ was not saddled with such board members.
At the end of the board meeting, the proposal was approved.
What I am saying is that the board under him seized every opportunity to review salaries. Sometimes significantly. Not many people would honour such promise. They would become something else when the money starts coming in. Ogunshola was not that kind of person.
Another strategy the company employed was to poach people from other organisations, sometimes with some of them earning more than their bosses when they joined the company. The board gave approval for such but the situation was subsequently corrected.
I remember too an occasion when Chief Ogunshola brought a relation for employment. He insisted on me ensuring that the person did the mandatory test for journalists. I did. Unfortunately, the person failed. I didn’t know how to tell the chairman. After waiting for the result for several days, Chief Ogunshola came to my office in the evening one day. He asked me why I had not gotten back to him on the matter and I was stammering. When I eventually summed up courage to tell him the person performed badly, he asked for the examination script. I gave him. He couldn’t believe his eyes as he adjusted his glasses intermittently when reading through the script. I then suggested that we take the person in and put him/her (I can’t remember which) in circulation department or something. Chief Ogunshola refused. He said the person could not work anywhere in ‘The Punch’ of “my dream” with such result.
That was another good reason the paper is doing well in a market where others are struggling.
That is Chief Ogunshola for you. A man of conviction.
There was yet another important occasion when he demonstrated this conviction and courage. That was some years back when ‘The Punch’ engaged vendors in a fight of a lifetime. I had left the company then but was still worried because the vendors were tin gods that no one dared to step on their toes. I requested for a chat with Chief Ogunshola and we subsequently met at The Metropolitan Club on Lagos Island. We argued back and forth on the matter. He was confident of victory and eventually convinced me that, yes, it would be tough but not insurmountable. He thanked me after expressing appreciation for my worries and we parted. The company eventually succeeded in putting the vendors in their place. ‘The Punch’ is the better for it today as a substantial hole for waste was blocked by that courageous faceoff with them.
Sometimes when I look back and think of my Odyssey at ‘The Punch’, I marvel at how I became editor of the daily title. I marvel because I never went to Chief Ogunshola even when I was in Punch, uninvited. And I never put any frivolous call to him. Not even when I was editor and people would expect that you play some politics along that line. It is not just my nature. My goal was the general good of the company. Yet, Chief Ogunshola was magnanimous to see me emerge as editor.
Maybe that was what worked in my favour because I must acknowledge the roles played by him when I was promoted assistant editor, then acting editor and ultimately when I was made substantive editor of the daily title.
I cannot also forget his physical presence at the burial of my paternal grandmother in 1995. Not only did he come, I was more than happy that he also ate and drank at the Evans Square in Ebute-Metta, Lagos, where we had the social party. I am not sure this was a common thing with him then.
If he did this because I was the editor of his paper, what of 2015 when I lost my dad? Chief Ogunshola came to my father’s house in person on the day of the wake-keep. Unfortunately, I had gone out in connection with arrangements for the burial. He left a note and some money. He said he had to come because he would be travelling to Ado-Ekiti for a funeral the next day and so won’t be at my father’s burial. That was some 18 years after I had left ‘The Punch’. I know what he also gave me last year when I buried my mother. I am eternally grateful for all these kind deeds.
I always celebrate him on occasions like this so that people would understand that uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Sometimes you take decisions that are tough, even if inevitable. Again, with several shutdowns by different military regimes, the paper has more than paid its dues. How many newspapers are ready and willing to make the huge sacrifices that ‘The Punch’ has made?
Born on July 14, 1944, Chief Ogunshola attended Beiyerunka Native Authority School and Ibadan Native Authority School, Aperin, then on the outskirts of Ibadan, for his primary education. He proceeded to the prestigious Government College, Ibadan, in 1956. An exceptionally bright student in the secondary school, indeed, one of the best three then. He later did his Higher School Certificate and proceeded to The University of Ibadan where he bagged a BSc in Mathematics in 1967.
He later proceeded to London in 1967, became a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of England in July 1973, after completing the institute’s examination. He is the first black African to achieve this.
Chief Ogunshola had served in various capacities, including Managing Director, Niger Insurance Company from where he ventured into private business as a consulting actuary under the business name of Ajibola Ogunshola & Co. (Actuarial and Financial Consultants) in 1986. The company later merged with Chike Oyeka & Co. to become First Actuaries Nigeria Ltd. which was also later to merge with Alexander Forbes Consulting Actuaries Nigeria Ltd. where Ogunshola was chairman in non-executive capacity for years.
He had been Chairman, Committee of Actuaries which gives actuarial advice to the United Nations Staff Pension Fund; President, Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), among many other distinguished services and awards.
I wish the Baaroyin of Ibadan more glorious years on earth.
