Dr. MUMINI ALAO GMD Complete Communications Ltd Explains
What’s your view of the Media industry today when you take a look back now at the evolution of the industry over time vis-a-vis where we are today?
Well, I think the major transition that we’ve had is the coming of the internet and now social media has followed. That’s been the major evolution and it’s been a game changer. We are stuck with it and it has come with a lot of positives. I mean, with media plurality now enabled by the internet, everybody is a publisher, a broadcaster, an editor. It’s good. There’s feedom of expression. Everybody can say what they want to say. But I think the world is paying a big price for that as well. A very big price which unfortunately, I think the world is stuck with. As media professionals, we were trained as gatekeepers. And gatekeeping means ensuring that what is not supposed to get into the public domain does not get there. In terms of sustaining morality, societal values and so on and so forth. All that has been thrown overboard by the all-comers affair that we have on the internet and on social media. I don’t see how it can be stopped. That’s why I said the world is stuck with it. Except, of course, if each country decides to take their destiny in their hands, like I know quite a number of countries are doing, in terms of putting controls. Just a few days ago, I read that Australia was going to ban young people from having access to some social media handles. Outright ban. Otherwise, morality in their society will go to the dogs. But when some of us make these arguments, people think, oh, you’re just trying to protect your industry. You don’t want people to come in there. Now everything is open. It’s all well and good. But the society is already paying the price and will continue to pay that price unless the government decides to step in and put some control. Control the use or misuse of these media technologies. They come with a lot of positives, but we need to also be able to try to control the negatives.
How do you also feel about sports development in Nigeria? Especially when you look back at the journey we’ve made so far. Because I know how pained you are that perhaps we are not where we are supposed to be as a nation. Do you think that anything will change? Do you think talking about it will change anything?
We have to keep talking about it because, considering the kind of endowments that Nigeria has in sports in terms of natural talents, we are not where we are supposed to be. I give people the example of France when they won the FIFA World Cup. When France won the World Cup the first time in 1998 and again more recently, not less than 60-70% of their players were of black origin. And what is the population of France? Nigeria is the biggest black nation in the world. So we can multiply the number of black players that France were able to line up to win that World Cup. We can triple that number easily here in Nigeria. So, if we do the proper things that France have done, if we are able to replicate it here, we can also win the World Cup. What has France done? They have provided infrastructure, organization, planning, investments. If Nigeria did all of those, Nigeria would be world champions in football. If Nigeria did all of those, Nigeria would be the one producing the Usain Bolts of athletics. We can see what our basketballers, and Nigerian/born sportsmen and women are doing in the diaspora. They are able to achieve all of those successes in the diaspora because of the infrastructure, the facilities, the training, the encouragement and all those factors that they have access to. All the sporting talents are right here in Nigeria. But unfortunately, we don’t have the infrastructure, we don’t have the training facilities, we don’t have the coaching, we don’t have so many other factors that will allow these natural talents to blossom. Occasionally, we have shown what we can achieve. I think the biggest occasion was in 1996 when we won that Olympics gold medal in football. So occasionally, we have these flashes of success, you know. Very recently, the Super Falcons won the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations for the 10th time. For me, these are occasional demonstrations of our capacity. These are things we should be doing consistently if we had those other structures, those other inputs in place. So, I see us as a country of missed opportunities, you know, in terms of what could have been achieved in sports. But what makes it even worse is the fact that I can’t see, you know, sometimes when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, that encourages you to continue on the journey. I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel just yet. We can only hope that the light will come. Otherwise, Nigeria should be conquering the world in sports. At least the sports where we have the natural advantage like football, athletics, boxing. All the power sports like power lifting, weight lifting, wrestling, combat sports, we are naturally endowed in these sports. Even basketball. If you go to the United States, who plays basketball? It’s the blacks mostly that play basketball. We have millions of the blacks here in Nigeria, which means we should be dominating basketball if we have the kind of structures that the Americans have in place for basketball.
Let’s talk about what you do now. I mean, I know that you’ve done so many things, you write books. What’s your area of concentration now?
Yes, part of the reason I went back to school to do my PhD is because my plan is to teach, My plan is to teach, transfer some of my modest knowledge and experiences to upcoming journalists, particularly sports journalists. I’ve had a couple of offers, but I didn’t take them because they were not convenient for me, so hopefully something convenient will crop up. I’ve got used to commuting short distances from my home to my office. It’s just 5-10 minutes. Now, this is not the time for me to be travelling long distances to work places. So I’m looking for something close by. Apart from that, I do a bit of consultancy work to put food on the table. And then again, I’ve started a golf website. That’s a sport that I’ve always followed, and I think now I want to promote it more. It’s a sport that is under-reported in Nigeria and I want to change that. For now, those are some of the things that occupy my time.
How about the Daily Edition of Complete Sports? I know it still comes out.
Yes, the daily edition of Complete Sports is fully online now. We stopped the print version because it became unsustainable. There have been lots of challenges facing the newspaper industry in Nigeria, even globally, since the advent of the internet and social media. I think it’s the print media that was first hit. We were the first to be hit, and we are still the ones to be hit the most. Broadcast organizations were able to adapt quicker, but we are having to go and join them in carrying cameras around now and stuff like that. So we had to stop the print version of Complete Sports because it wasn’t adding up anymore. The business model was no longer profitable so we stopped it. Now we are fully online, and it is profitable. That’s why all other things that I’m doing now is online. I said earlier that yes, the internet is an enabler. There are a lot of positives, but then it comes with its downsides as well.
So, do you think the end of the print media has come or do you still see it being extended?
Well, it depends on the genre, and also the context….that is the country. In our country, I would think that because we have this culture of celebrations, people will always celebrate their birthdays in the newspapers, they will congratulate each other on chieftaincy titles, government officials will mark this and mark that. So I think newspapers in politics will always find their customers. But those of us in sports, we can’t publish birthday parties, chieftaincy titles snd obituaries, and those are the bread and butter of publishing in Nigeria plus, of course, government patronage. Those of us in sports, we’ve never been part of that bonanza. So it was easy for the internet to knock us off the table because we are primarily a reader-centric publication. So, for those who still have access to those opportunities, I think their life span might be extended for as long as the patronage continues to come. I’m sure definitely no newspaper can survive anymore on copy sales alone. It’s not possible. We did it at Complete Sports for a number of years. We survived only on readership patronage because we didn’t have advertisements for quite a long time. But it’s not possible anymore. Globally too, we know that quite a number of major publications have closed shop, particularly regional publications. And those that are surviving now, it’s because they already established some followership on the internet and have paying subscribers.
At the time you took that decision to stop the print version of Complete Spirts, how painful was it?
It wasn’t painful because we planned for it. In fact, we started the planning in 2018 and we finally terminated it in 2022. So that was four years. So, it was a planned exit. The transition was smooth. In fact, the last edition was published the day after the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals in Qatar. We planned that we would report the final match of Qatar 2022 and that would be the end of Complete Sports as a print operation. Before then, the online version was already doing very well. So, we just moved on from there.
