•Tells City People Why He Wrote The 804 Page Book
Mike Awoyinfa is a big name in Journalism. If you call him a veteran you will be right. If you say he is a seasoned journalist you will still be on point. This is because since 1977 when he left UNILAG where he studied Mass Communications, along with other great names, he has been practicing Journalism and he rose from being a Reporter to the very top of his career. He rose to become the pioneer editor of Weekend Concord, the popular Saturday newspaper from the Concord Newspaper stable. He was Pioneer Editor of The SUN newspaper. He is also one of the longest running columinists in Nigeria. He writes on the back page of the The SUN Newspaper every Saturday.
A few year back, he went into Book Publishing, along with his colleague and best friend, Dimgba Igwe, who died a few years ago. And both had published very many books before Dimgba died.
The big news is that Mike Awoyinfa who is in his 60s has just published a definitive book on business. He spoke to City People Magazine Publisher, Seye KEHINDE about the book. Below are excerpts of the 2 part interview.
Over the last few years, veteran journalist Mike Awoyinfa has written several articles about diverse topics like Sports, Economy, Politics, Leadership, Entertainment, Religion, Fashion, Beauty, Health and many more. He has written about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly side of life. He has travelled round the world interviewing news makers in the various fields. And he has a way of humanising and simplifying complex issues and topics like Medicine, flying, academia. He takes abstract topics and breaks them down for his readers. That is why he has a multitude of readers who have followed him religiously for over 3 decades.
His love of adventure made him dabble into the corporate world to do a big book on 50 boardroom players in Nigeria’s corporate world. What was the attraction, we asked him. “I just wanted to look into that area and show readers, through interviews of the CEOs, what goes on in the Board room. As journalists we are equipped to write about anything.”
“As a journalist and a reporter, I believe our job is like an actors job. It is easier for Journalists to delve into any area, whether it is engineering or even Astronomy.
All you have to go and do is to go and ask questions. So it is very easy. All you need to do is go out there and ask questions, ask them relevant questions.”
“We have been writing books. When I say we, I mean late Dimgba Igwe and myself. The first book we started with was The Art Of Feature Writing. That was when we were in Sunday Concord. It’s a Journalism book. From there we wrote a book on 50 Nigerian Corporate Strategists. That was in the 90s. The book sold very well. We wrote Nigeria’s Marketing Memoirs. That is another book. We believe there are so many highly educated and well experienced Nigeria corporate brains and management gurus in Nigeria, who do not have the time to write their stories. We believe there is a dearth of knowledge in Nigeria which should be explored. They can’t write it, but we can write it for them. We, the journalists can write it. We saw this niche and we have been writing a whole lot of corporate books.
So we created a company called Corporate Biographers to be writing these kind of books. Before now it was a 2 man game, until September 4th 2015 that I lost my friend, Dimgba Igwe. He was my friend and business partner. It was a very big shock.
He was my soul brother. He was my twin-brother, my everything. I was wondering how I would be able to cope without Dimgba. His death really brought me a whole lot of grief. This book came as a Catharsis. I was wondering what book will help me turn my grief into something productive? What book can I write that Dimgba Igwe would like, wherever he is? It just struck me that Dimgba likes Boardroom activities. He is a core Boardroom man. Me, I am not. Me, I am not a meeting type. When you see Dimgba Igwe in the boardroom, he is always in his element. So, I thought why I don’t write a book he will like, a book on the Boardroom. That is the origin of it”
When did this idea of writing a book occur to him?
“It was shortly after Dimgba Igwe died. I was devastated. Then after a while I had to snap out of grief to say life must go on. What can I do to keep his memory alive? I looked around and I said to myself, what is it that we would have done together were he to be alive?
It then occurred to me to do something on the issue of Boards and Boardroom. Nobody has written this kind of book in Nigeria. I have googgled to check globally. I have not seen a book where Board Chairmen all came together to share their experiences and all the stories about the board in a bookform. That motivated me. I had to sit down and ask questions like what is the Board? What does the Board do? What is the function of a board? How do you recruit board members? What is the function of the Chairman of the board? What will the business look like without a board? Those are the question I started reflecting on. I had to go round looking for the best boardroom gurus in Nigeria. There are 50 of them in this book. People like Micheal Omolayole, who used to be the Chairman of Lever Brothers, now Unilever. People like Dr. Christopher Kolade who used to be the Chairman of Cadbury. People like Chief Olusegun Osunkeye, who used to be the Chairman of Nestle.
We are talking about Corporate icons, Nigeria’s corporate icons in the Boardroom. This book is about their memoirs. The Board is the engine room of every company. It is a collection of highly experienced men and women who have worked in a place. They become the think tank of every company. They advice the Management. They teach and give them strategic direction. They will tell you this is where the company should go. This is what the company should be doing. If there is anything that will endanger the business it is the board that warns. That is what they call risk management role. It’s the duty of the board to keep drawing the attention of the management to dangers that lie ahead. It is the role of the board to employ the CEO of the company.
The chairman of the board is the primus inter pares. The first among equals in the Boardroom.”
How easy or challenging was it for him to get all these top corporate giants to talk to him?
“It was very very difficult. But you know we journalists, we are trained to squeeze water out of stone. There is nothing that should stand on your way when it comes to looking for news. I had to use every trick in journalism to get what I wanted. Once you get one big name, you will use him to get to the next.
Once you get the top 6, others will agree”
How many years did it take him to write this book? “It took me about 3 to 4 years to write. I have been at it since the death of my friend, Dimgba Igwe. I brought in a young man called Jibril Musa. I am his mentor I have been mentoring him. So I brought him along to join me. He is a journalist like me. He was with me at Entertainment Express. From Entertainment Express to SUN. He will follow me, I will be asking the questions and he will go back to transcribe and then turn it into a chapter. I was mentoring him. He did the transcribing of the interview.
He has more knowledge about the book more than me. The boy is good.
This book is a book that really, really makes me proud. My friend Dimgba Igwe wherever he is, he will be very happy. I deliberately included his name in this book. I dedicated the book to him because I know if it had happened to me too, that’s what he would have done. My mission is to make the name Dimgba Igwe stay on for as long as I live. As long as I live, every book I write Dimgba Igwes name must be there, because he didn’t want to die. It wasn’t his fault that he died. He is always writing. Even in his grave, he is also writing. He is inspiring me. He is praying for me to be able to hold out.