Lateef Jakande: The Man, His Journalism, His Politics

 By Felix Adenaike 

Speaking about Hadj Jakande is like trying to describe an elephant. You know an elephant when you see one, but attempting to describe it is a herculean, if fruitless, exercise! In other words, Hadj Jakande described himself. And I dare say that there is hardly anyone in this audience who would not recognize an elephant if or when he sees one! 

*Jakande

Born July 23, 1929, at Epetedo, Lagos Island, Lagos, Abdullateef Olukayode’s parents had migrated from Omu-Aran, in present Kwara State to Lagos. Young Lateef began his elementary education at the Enu Owa Public School, Lagos Island, from where he proceeded to the Banham Memorial Methodist School, Port Harcourt (1934-43).

And from there to the prestigious King’s College, Lagos. He could not finish his secondary school at the King’s College, Lagos, because of his brush with the colonial administration that did not find his activities as a student of King’s College amusing. He was, therefore, obliged to seek accommodation at the Ilesha Grammar School, Ilesha, now in Osun State.

It was at Ilesha Grammar School that Jakande began the process of cutting his journalistic teeth by editing the school’s Quarterly Mirror, a literary journal. From that rudimentary beginning in journalism, he migrated to full-blown print journalism, first at the Daily Express and later, at the Nigerian Tribune Group on the invitation of the founder, Chief Obafemi, Awolowo. And from reporter, then editor, he rose to the pinnacle of the journalism profession to become the Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of the Tribune Group until he quit in 1979 to become the first elected civilian Governor of Lagos State on October 1, 1979 on the platform of the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, led by Chief Awolowo.

In four short years and three months, Governor Jakande set unprecedented and phenomenal records in governance to the admiration, if envy, of his peers. Brother Governors, including from rival parties, visited Lagos to see for themselves what they had read, heard on radio, or watched on television. Governor Jakande blew and confounded the minds of fellow Lagosians and other Nigerians at home and abroad by his exploits in government! And appreciating the gigantic task ahead of his government, he launched himself head-on and full blast into implementing his party’s programmes of free education, free health service, gainful employment, and integrated rural development.

A self-driven governor Jakande knew full well that to motivate his Civil Service, he needed to bring them at par with their federal colleagues who were on grade level 17 at the time. He went about doing this by upping the salaries of Lagos permanent secretaries from grade level 16 to level 17 to be at par with their federal counterparts. This is because the governor argued that state civil servants had a greater span of control than their federal counterparts. There are two examples to cite here, namely: education and health. The state has far more schools and hospitals than the Federal Government, particularly given the state’s free education and health programmes of the UPN-controlled government of Lagos State.

If state employees worked harder and longer than their federal counterparts, there was no earthly reason why they should not be remunerated equally, if not better. But that did not register well with General Muhammad Buhari, who reversed the Lagos pay to the pre-Jakande era when he seized power in a military coup in December 1983. Buhari also abolished the light rail project between the Lagos State Government and the French contractors to the project.

Governor Jakande initiated the light rail project as part of his administration’s effort to decongest Lagos traffic through a tri-modal transport system of rail, road, and water. Buhari, as military head of state, stopped all that without any explanation to Lagosians and Nigerians. The contractors went to arbitration, and Nigeria was obliged to pay the full contract sum without an inch of rail track laid. The unkindest cut of the Lagos light rail project has been the commissioning of the new project by Buhari on the eve of the end of his administration recently, 40 years after the story first began!

Governor Jakande excelled in government as he had done in journalism, his first love. As a colleague of ours once wrote of LKJ: You can never be wrong if your motive is pure. He abolished the shift system in Lagos schools by building extra classrooms to accommodate the spillover of pupils from the three-shift system to the universally normal one shift. Although criticized by many who described his schools as “poultry sheds”, the fact remains that his government achieved the transition from the double shift school system to a single shift.

Lagos school kids attended school in the morning rather than both morning, afternoon, and in some cases in the evening and in the hot tropical heat in which they could hardly absorb anything from the teacher. More classrooms were built, and children enrolment more than doubled. Like another colleague of ours once said of LKJ’s education programme, in reaction to its being derided: a classroom can be as good as being in a three or four or five star hotel as where we are now, with zero knowledge driven! In Jakande’s case, school results improved considerably. Atop the educational system, he established a tertiary institution, the Lagos State University at Ijanikin, a Lagos suburb.

On health care, LK, as he was fondly referred to by his leader, Chief Awolowo, pursued implementation of his party’s free health programme, as others, with a single-minded dedication. He built primary health centres and more general hospitals to bring health care nearer to Lagosians. Hadj Jakande undertook massive low-cost housing schemes in the state to reduce housing deficit particularly, in Lagos City, which at the time doubled as Nigeria’s capital. Among others, he built mini waterworks located strategically around Lagos to make water available to residents because the Iju Waterworks established during the colonial era was not designed to supply water to any part of the mainland of Lagos but to Ikoyi, the abode of the colonial masters, to where the pipes bearing water from Iju were laid.

Reciting Governor Jakande’s accomplishments during his abridged tenure in Lagos is like reciting a litany of the saints. Instead of contestation by political spokespersons to detract from his achievements or blatantly credit them to others, the fact remains that nobody can take away anything from them. And LK came to Lagos, he saw and he conquered! He and his accomplishments live in the hearts of those he had been privileged to govern.

By dint of hard work, Hadj Jakande reached the top of his chosen profession of journalism. And he demanded hard work from his staff as he worked round the clock himself. The evidence of one of his reporters, who later served as his Press Secretary, is handy here: Here Bayo Osiyemi out: “As a thorough-bred journalist, he endeavoured to make an all-round reporter of all his staff. To him, the fact that you were designated an airport correspondent did not mean you couldn’t be assigned to cover court proceedings for the newspaper.

 “I recall with nostalgia, my personal experience one day that he came down to the editorial room from his top floor office on Broad Street in Lagos and met me alone there. Seeing that the Labour reporter, Augustine Diagi, was not around at the time, he directed me, as Sports writer, to immediately proceed to the Railway headquarters, at Iddo on the Mainland to cover an ongoing Press conference called by a Labour leader, Alhaji H.P Adebola, on behalf of Railway workers. He didn’t care how I’d get there’, as no mobilization was provided. 

All he cared about was to get the job done anyhow and make your transport claims later.” 

Prince Osiyemi continued his narration: “Because his word was law, which could be disobeyed at one’s professional peril, and because of my own decision to make a career and a success of the job, I had to trek from Broad Street through Ebute Ero and Carter Bridge at Idumota to reach the Railway office at Iddo. I returned to the office to file a report of the press conference, which I transmitted through the telephone to our Ibadan press for publication in the next day’s newspaper. He noted my effort and got me compensated for it eventually.”

Hadj Jakande was skilled in editorial craftsmanship such that when away from his desk, he would write daily editorials in advance for publication in the newspapers. He did that to maintain editorial quality and to set standards for his subordinates. Editorial writing was his forte, and those in government and authority looked forward to it and feared it at the same time. One of the two classic editorials he wrote on one of the governors of the Western States was to describe him as having an “insatiable appetite for real estate”. The governor in question was so piqued by the editorial that he severed all business dealings, including government advertisement, between his government and the newspaper.

The second, which got the newspaper editors arrested and detained with their newspaper houses shut, was on the crisis that erupted over cocoa prices during the military administration of then Colonel Robert Adeyinka Adebayo in the West in the early 70s. I recall some lines in that particular editorial comment: ‘There is no shortage of flatterers for any ruler in Nigeria, be he civilian or military. They are ready to lick the sputum of any ruler who happens to be in power. And when he falls, as he must, due to his bunglings which they aided and abetted, these flatterers will be the first to transfer their allegiance to the new occupier of the Government House. Colonel Adebayo is in the same predicament as his predecessors.’ 

Tribune’s position in the editorial opinion, authored by LKJ, was to warn of likely consequence of being indifferent to the agitation of cocoa farmers in the West for an upward review of cocoa prices, opposed and canvassed against, by his commissioner for justice, Mr Richard Akinjide. The likely consequence the editorial predicted, eventually manifested in the massive crisis that soon erupted from the farmers militant group known as ‘Agbekoya’, which made governance impossible in the West with extensive destruction of lives and properties across the region, in spite of the clampdown by the Police and the Army. 

The resort to supernatural means, which led to inexplicable deaths of the police and military personnel sent to quell the uprising, forced the boastful military regime to eat the humble pie and sought the Yoruba leader, Chief Awolowo’s intervention to help calm the restive farmers group before normalcy returned to the region.

Undaunted, LK, and his newspapers did not relent in their oversight function of monitoring government and public corporations with biting, if not ascorbic, editorials, which made the government uncomfortable most of the time. Hadj Jakande excelled in journalism at home and abroad. The Nigeria Institute of Journalism, NIJ, the Newspapers' Proprietors Association of Nigeria, NPAN, the Nigeria Press Organisation, NPO, incorporating the broadcast and print media, all bear the imprimatur of Hadj Jakande. He chaired the Executive Committee of the International Press Institute, IPI, the global network of journalists and senior editors who work to uphold freedom of the Press worldwide. In that capacity, he won a hosting right for the General Assembly and World Congress of the IPI to be held in Nigeria in the Summer of 1975 ‘and the first time in Africa.

The initiative was, however, aborted by the military government of General Yakubu Gowon, who refused a visa to Raymond Loew, an anti-apartheid South African journalist. Mr Loew’s membership has been mischaracterised to mean that the Republic of South Africa wanted to attend the General Assembly and World Council of IPI, disguised as Mr Loew. Nothing could be farther from the truth because only individuals could be members of the IPI and not states. IPI moved the Congress to Vienna, its headquarters. It was not until 2018 that Nigeria got a hosting right, though it hosted the board meeting at Abuja in December 1999.

You would be grossly mistaken to judge the man by his unsmiling disposition. He was simply not amused by the ordinary things that turned others on to laugh. He was too serious-minded to be smiling and laughing at will because others were doing so. He was a modest, humble man of affairs. And a good listener at that. And because God gave him two ears and one mouth, like all of us humans, he preferred listening twice as much as he spoke. LK was adept at conducting meetings. He would hear everybody out and make a summary of the proceedings, which assisted in reaching conclusions.

He was an expert in drafting communiques of political meetings. Because he had had the meeting agenda, LK would figure out what the conclusions would be and produce the draft communique usually adopted by the meeting with little or no amendments. He was meticulous as he mastered details. It is fitting and appropriate that Hadj Jakande, the pioneer Guild president, has been considered worthy of… honour by the leadership of the NGE.

As part of nurturing a culture of “appreciation, the NGE is instituting an annual lecture in honour of Alhaji Jakande, which will interrogate developments affecting the media and society”.

*Being a speech delivered by Adenaike, FNGE, at the Annual Memorial Lecture of the Nigerian Guild of Editors in Honour of Alhaji Lateef Jakande in Lagos