Funke Egbemode is a household name when it comes to writing about relationships. Her weekly column, Intimate Affairs, is a must read for many. However, not much appears to be known about how she started writing the column, what drives her passion for the weekly thoughts and opinions that hold her numerous readers awestruck. In this interview by SAKIBU OLOKOJOBI, Egbemode speaks about the origin of her foray into column writing and the recipe for good column writing. She also speaks on other issues, including those bordering on the activities of the Nigeria Guild of Editors, NGE, of which she was a president before becoming the Commissioner for Information in Osun State under former Governor Adegboyega Oyetola. Excerpts:
You are a veteran in column writing in newspaper, so to say. What are the dos and don’ts of column writing, especially for those coming behind or anyone who may want to go that way?
First thing is to find your own niche – the area you are good at; the area you feel strongly about. This is because writing a column is what you want to keep up. It is not like you do a story in March and you don’t have to do another one till April. If it is a weekly column, it is a weekly column; so you need to find what you are good at and comfortable with. I know people who write columns on cooking. They come up with recipes that even they themselves created. So, you just need to find out what you are comfortable with. Secondly, over and above everything, a column means that you have to have a good command of the language. Keep it simple, be able to make people laugh. No matter what you are communicating, you must make people look forward to what you are writing. You should be able to carry your readers along; make them look forward to reading you every week. You must also read. To be able to write, you must read voraciously. I never boarded a plane until I have bought a book because being on the plane for one hour or 45 minutes between Lagos and Abuja meant that I was alone with the book. So, once I’ve checked in, I go to the airport bookshop, and buy a book. I like to hold my book. Although now, I’ve started doing e-book. I have an e-shelf now. I just carry my ipad. Travelling makes me read. To be able to write you must read voraciously. You must also develop a thick skin because if you are writing a column, it is largely about your opinion; yes, you will do research and it will be part of what you can relate with, but you are the one they will disagree with. Some readers can be very venomous about their own views. You need thick skin.
For now, I think everything is in journalism for me. I do not think any other profession would give me what journalism has given me
Try and keep your readers. When they send you messages, try and respond, respond to their mails despite the deluge. Just try and keep your community. Those who call, you can pick their calls, if it is text only, you can do that. You must have a god command of the language, you must do your background check on whatever topic you are writing on and keep an open mind; don’t be closed-minded about anything you are writing on. If you are writing about food you may come up with a recipe or improve on somebody else’s recipe; don’t think that someone else cannot come up with a different way of putting things together. If you write like me that believes that a woman should be able to determine when she has had enough children, and find ways to get her husband to agree… There had been men in the past when I express such opinion, they think I’m teaching their wives bad things. “How can you teach my wife how to do family planning?” But it’s a woman who is likely to die in the labour room that should take absolute responsibility so that she can live long to take care of the ones she has already. All of these things would make one a good columnist.
What about the discipline needed to maintain the regularity of the column?
That is why I said you must pick the area that you are comfortable with; the one you want to do regularly. It is not like I want to interview a governor in January, then in April, you will interview another. A column is not like that. You must pick what you are comfortable with. Once you are comfortable with it you look forward to doing it; it will become easy to do it week in, week out.
Has there been any nasty or pleasant experience that you will never forget as a result of your writing?
Yes. One day, I got a call out of the blue from a person that a highly placed Nigerian was going to call me and that he had given my number to him. I was shocked that that kind of person wanted to talk to me. The person just said he had been reading me for years, and then he spoke to one of his staff who said he knew me and he asked for my number, and he was given. He was very excited. I was very pleasantly surprised. Intimate Affairs opened that door. He is a very influential Nigerian in the business sector.
Would you want to mention the name?
No, no, no. He’s a very private person. He’s not a politician. Once in a while he still calls to say: Ah! You have shaken the table again! What was that that you were writing? And we may not talk for a whole year. We may not talk for three months. He may call again some other times to say, that was a beautiful piece. How do you come up with those things?! That was a pleasant one.
Being able to do some political commentaries also made me to take on resident doctors in Nigeria for years. What led to that? Joseph Sesebo, the Group Business Editor of Daily Independent died during one of the doctors’ strikes. I was very very upset and I just put pen to paper and poured my venom on the paper. They felt they could respond to me, not knowing that I was hurting badly. I took them on for weeks. Everytime they responded, I wrote. I told them that I was the one with the platform, theywould have to buy space to respond to me. What is happening in Nigeria now – brain drain in the medical sector – I know that some of those things that I wrote then, were not posted online, but I know they are still in the archive of the Independent. I told doctors in Nigeria that going on strike was not going to solve their problems, that they were just putting the lives of people in jeopardy. It wasn’t working for them, it wasn’t working for us. Now that there is heavy brain drain, I believe that my point has finally been made. Now, the government will as a matter of national urgency, listen to them. I’d always preached that if you don’t like a job, walk away. Now, they are walking away from jobs that do not work for them. As a nation, we will have to pay attention to them. I think that at the end of the day, the brain drain will improve the sector. We’ll start treating doctors better, treating nurses better now that we know they have a choice. Those are the two experiences, apart from writing a column during the military era and going into hiding a day or two to be sure that nobody was going to come after you.
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Did being a journalist have any impact on your job as a Commissioner for Information in Osun State?
Yes it did because I have many friends and because all of you in the newsroom like me, you continued to pamper me. Seriously, because of that community that being a columnist has built for me, it meant that I have made a lot of friends in the newsroom and outside of the newsroom. It also meant that I knew how to handle people, handle my friends. One day, I can’t recollect what I said and the Chief of Staff (to former governor, Adegboyega Oyetola of Osun State) said: “Ah Funke, you’re charming. You’re getting everybody to do what you want.” It’s just because I think that you can’t make people like you if you don’t like them in return. I just felt everybody was my friend – from my staff, my management team, from my colleagues. I can make somebody frowning to smile.
There is the argument in the academia about who really fits into being the spokesman of a government between a public relations practitioner and a journalist. Based on your own experience who would say is better for the position of a spokesman for political office holders like the president or governors?
I think the personality of the person getting into public office matters a lot. Your experience and the networth of your network is very important. And if you are going to be dealing directly with the media, not marketing a product, I will advise any politician – president or governor – to always pick the spokesman from the newsroom. We are the people who had covered politics, we meet people, we know the politicians, we have documents and documents on political behaviours because we’ve written about them. And the people who are likely to come after your principal are in the newsrooms; those who will give you sleepless nights as media manager are in the newsrooms; they are not in the Public Relations sector. They are not in the Advertising sector. I will always advise that a pick from the newsroom will serve them better. From my experience, I think a journalist is their best bet. That is not because I think those from the PR sector should be left out. There are things they can also do and handle better than those in the mainstream newsroom. But when it comes to handling the media image of a politician, the newsroom is always the best pool to fish in.
Are there things that journalism gives you that you can’t get from politics and vice versa?
I’ve been in the newsroom for too long to think that I can get anything else from anywhere else apart from journalism. May be in another life, I would think that there is something else anywhere. For now, I think everything is in journalism for me. I do not think any other profession would give me what journalism has given me – the kind of doors that have opened for me; the kind of people it has brought my way; the kind of challenges it has brought and how I’ve been able to fix them. I’m proud to be a journalist. I can’t be anything else.
Journalism is generally believed to be a profession not given to the kind of wealth that is found in politics, at least, as far as the situation is in Nigeria. Against this backdrop, do you still want to say that there are things you can get in journalism that you can’t get in politics?
I hope you know that in politics, there are a lot of sacrifices you have to make. In journalism, it is just about hard work; it’s a profession. Politics is supposed to be service; it’s not something that you are supposed to do to enrich yourself. I think it’s the way that you handle journalism that would determine whether you are rich or poor. There are a whole lot of opportunities. You may not be very rich, but you can be very comfortable because there are doors you can keep opening as long as you have your mental capacity with you. I see myself getting something in the media as long as I can use my brain. I can get some things done. There are too many opportunities in journalism. In the media, now you have online radio… there are opportunities; you can write books, you can do all kinds of things. Politics is a lot of hard work; it’s too difficult for me. Coming from the newsroom, politics is too much hard work.
Do you see yourself going back into politics and at what level?
Was I even in politics? I served a politician; I actually believe that you can serve your people when you have reached a certain level. We all must give something back to the society that made us. Yes, we should do that. If the question is do I want to run for public office, I don’t know. It’s too much hard work. I don’t know if I want to run for public office. God owns tomorrow, but right now, I’m just comfortable offering service at whatever level I can, and I’m comfortable to do so.
You were once the president of the Nigerian Guild of Editors. What is the guild actually set up to achieve and would you say those goals have been achieved?
The Guild was set up to be an umbrella body for the final gatekeepers in the newsroom, be a peer review body; to improve quality of the profession at that level and make it trickle down. Also, it is about how to improve journalism in every way, to improve professionalism among editors and also in the entire business. I think the guild has served that purpose; it is serving that purpose and will continue to serve that purpose. I am happy that even now, the Nigerian Guild of Editors has continued to provide platforms for expression, for improvement; for professionalism. The guild was the first to start the engagement with those running for public offices, and I’m sure in the next election we will extend it. The guild will lead the pack in ensuring that we do the engagement at more levels than the presidential. We are work in progress because we are constantly evolving and responding to our environment.
NGE is accused of not being as independent as it should be, particularly based on the sponsorship it gets for some of its activities from those whom its members are supposed to hold accountable for their performances in office or service to the people.
You know some people just like to speak English (giggles). What do they mean by the guild is not independent? National Independent Electoral Commission, INEC, does not mint money. It gets its money from the federal government; the Central Bank is supposed to be an independent agency of the government but it is an agency of the government because it does not print money just to pay the salary of its workers. All these talks about independence is… So, if we want to go to a particular state and the governor is providing security and picking up some bills… Are we not adding any value to that state? Are we not providing platform for expression in different ways? I do not see anything wrong in getting sponsorship and if we have to stop getting sponsorship, it is a gradual thing. We can do it; but to say because a state has sponsored the Nigerian Guild of Editors’ conference we would not be able to report anything bad in that state… I would love for anybody to cite specific example of any particular state in the federation that we have not reported if something bad is happening there. How do you get all the editors in Nigeria to sit and decide that they are not going to report that there’s flood or kidnapping in a particular state? That has not happened and it will not happen. But we’ll continue to improve on our professionalism and ensure that we do not allow pecuniary reasons to interfere with our professionalism.
Having been away for some time, have you had the opportunity to look back and see certain lacuna or lapses in the structure or workings of the media in Nigeria to make you think if you have the opportunity, you would want certain things to be corrected or changed regarding journalism and the practitioners?
There is no industry that is not improving or evolving. There are a lot of things that had happened to the media that had shown that we are hit like the other sectors had been hit. I don’t think we have done badly considering the way the economy has dealt with us. The print sector is disappearing, and is there anything that we have done to stop it? It’s a world-wide event, the disappearing thing with the print industry. There are things that we will continue to improve on, whether it is the banking sector or the media sector. We’ll continue to improve. I didn’t really look back and thought I would have run a particular media organisation differently. They were all responding to the environment in which they found themselves. There was a time a media organisation could afford to have 700 staff, now they found that they can do with 300 or 250 or even less. There was a time we used to close copy at midnight, and now we found that that it is absolutely unnecessary to close copy at midnight because whatever you are reporting at midnight will be on all the platforms at that midnight. I think we are just responding to whatever environment we found ourselves and whatever hand the economy deals us.
Are there similarities between politics and journalism and if yes, what are they?
Yes. Both of them ordinarily are supposed to be about service. Politics touches people’s lives directly. Journalism does the same. The way that the politician can get on the rostrum and spark a riot, is the way headline or a news item can also spark riot or also improve things. The two of them are about service and being responsible. If you are not responsible as a journalist, there will be consequences on the society; where you have politicians that are irresponsible, the society also suffers. I think that is where I find the line merging. The two of them can influence the course of event; how tomorrow will look like can be determined by both the media and politics.
I am back for as long as I can manage, and I hope that the Intimate Affairs will grow into something than just a weekly column. I am hopeful that it will grow into something bigger.
As the MD of a national newspaper, you had at different times organised awards with politicians or public office holders as beneficiaries. Some hold the view that that is not proper, but I want to find out how financially rewarding those awards you give is to your organisation?
I operated as the MD/Editor in Chief as a business person. What we sold were not the awards but products of the New Telegraph. And all we were able to sell were our publications. I came from The Sun stable and we were very thorough in picking who won what. I knew for instance that we had announced somebody for a particular award and we withdrew it before the day of the event. We withdrew it when fresh facts showed up that the person was unworthy. For me, having been a member of that board that picked the awards and the awardees, I learnt from that. You must have something for us to advertise. So, if we are going to publish your achievements, you will have to pay because we’ll have to buy newsprint. That was how we made our money. Well, if anybody was getting award and was happy, and says “well done” or “thank you”, we are not going to turn down the “well done” or “thank you”. However, we never gave an award that we could not defend. And I also think that instead of being fastidious about being independent, we shouldn’t run the organisation down; we should not fire our reporters, we should not owe them salary. We need to also, professionally, find ways of making money for our own organisation without denting anybody’s image. We do not have to bend the rules. In New Telegraph, we now find the Governor of the year in Education because you find out that that a governor has done well in Education and not in Commerce. He didn’t do well in Tourism. So, we will not have a governor and say that he is good in all areas when he is not. We eventually narrowed it down to somebody who has done well in a particular area. We never gave those awards without spending time in those states, working with the correspondent in that state. So, it is not the Commissioner for Information feeding us with stories. We’ll send a team from Lagos to check those things out. They don’t just send us photos that we can’t defend. I think we all can benefit from having business friends in addition to writing great English.
What would be you last line for those who have been reading your column?
I want to say thank you to those who have encouraged me over the years to write. I want to appreciate my mentors over the years; those who noticed or saw that I could write and helped me build on it – From Tokunbo Francis to Azu Ishiekwene, and to all those who read me. The people who make my weekly offerings worthwhile, their comments, their corrections, their congratulations, their appreciation every week, I appreciate them. I am back for as long as I can manage, and I hope that the Intimate Affairs will grow into something than just a weekly column. I am hopeful that it will grow into something bigger.
*Concluded.
