26th May, 2019
Lanre Babalola
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Mr. Bayo Onanuga has opened up on his achievements at the agency in the face of concocted allegations of corruption levelled against him by the NAN Joint Union, an illegal creation of the four unions in the agency.
To counter the false allegations, Onanuga listed his achievements in the agency since he was appointed.
A SUMMARY OF MY STEWARDSHIP AND REFORMS EXECUTED AS MANAGING DIRECTOR, NEWS AGENCY OF NIGERIA (2016
INTRODUCTION
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) will celebrate its 41st anniversary on October 2, 2019 as Africa’s foremost wire service.
It has been quietly undergoing re-engineering to reposition it for the challenges of the 21st century and be compliant with world’s best practices.
Even in the most trying times, largely occasioned by dearth of funds, the reform embarked upon by my Management has permeated all the departments, most especially The Editorial Department, our core business.
ACHIEVEMENTS
• Ended the Anonymous Journalism being practised by NAN journalists for decades. News stories and features now carry bye-lines.
• Strengthened staff competence and skills by organizing various training programmes, including training by Google, Code for Africa, National Bureau of Statistics, Premium Times, FAAPA etc.
• The various training sessions have enabled the agency set up Infographics & Data Unit. We now do data journalism hitherto unknown to the agency.
• NAN used to have one omnibus website for subscribers and free readers, which made the agency’s news accessed free. My management has separated this: we now have www.nan.ng for free readers and www.newsroom.nan.ng for subscribers.
• The effort has boosted subscription and revenue has increased from N120 million to N154 million in 2018, despite the difficult environment.
• My management also galvanized the agency into Multimedia Production. A full fledged Multimedia Unit, well equipped both in Abuja and Lagos now churns out video and audio for subscribers.
• In addition, we have created a website for photographs (multimedia.nan.ng) through which subscribers now access our photos. In the past, subscribers got photos via e-mail.
Our plan is to integrate videos, infographics in the portal to enhance revenue. We believe the Agency’s future lies here and that we are moving towards harvest.
SMS SERVICE: Our agency ran an SMS News Alert Service before my arrival. Now we are expanding the service, with the target of reaching over 500,000 subscribers and vastly improve the revenue of the agency. We are on course to achieving this goal.
NAN PRWIRE WEBSITE: This is also the creation of Management. It is a website that aggregates press releases and statements of organisations, government and private. The service is paid for by corporate subscribers.
NOTE: Management created several websites in line with global best practices and to generate fund.
INTERNET
Galaxy Backbone – Management through the Presidential intervention fund expanded its internet bandwidth this year. Abuja office bandwidth was expanded from 5 MBPS up and down to 30 MBPS up and down. Lagos too was expanded from 1 MBPS up and down to 10 MBPS up and down. This has improved the speed of internet connectivity and made journalists’ work seamless.
STATE OFFICES
• Relocation of state offices to federal and state secretariats to cut rental costs. This has been done in Rivers, Nasarawa and Gombe.
• Commercialisation of state offices in Lagos, Makurdi, Kano, Enugu to reduce our expenditure on running and maintenance costs.
YOLA OFFICE
Management reconstructed the Yola office in 2017 and paid N20 million to acquire the land from its original owner. The case had lingered for more than 20 years until our resolution. We are hoping to build a Media Centre here.
EXTERNAL OFFICES AND HOUSES
My Management just completed the renting out of the Agency’s houses in Abidjan (Cote d’Ivore) and Johannesburg (South Africa). The houses were lying fallow for several years following the closure of foreign operations except in New York.
NAN MEDIA CENTRE
We just completed the renovation of an all-purpose event centre in Lagos. It is run by a business arm of the Agency, NAN BIZCOM.
NANBIZCOM
NAN Bizcom is a subsidiary of the Agency set up about 10 years ago to generate much needed funds for the Agency. It runs the media centre in Lagos and properties of the Agency that are commercialised. NAN Bizcom has just been re-organised with the appointment of a new General Manager with a fresh mandate to embark on various business development initiatives.
We are about recruiting from within the complement of staff to realise the management’s vision. The results are already showing as the renovated centre is attracting more patronage and bringing in more revenue.
NAN MUSEUM
Management has set up a museum. The museum is to showcase the telecommunication equipment dating back to when NAN started operation 41 years ago.
The Managing Director’s passage way was converted to house the museum.
The equipment recovered from states have been put in place. The commissioning is scheduled for June.
The museum, a place of history will attract visitors to NAN.
PUBLICATIONS UNITS
This is a new creation. It is charged with publication of NAN Magazine, special projects, research into inventions, year book, etc. It is headed by a Director. The unit aims at making money for the Agency. And it will interface with the NAN BIZCOM and the
Marketing department.
VEHICLES/MOBILITY
Management has provided new Peugeot cars as utility vehicles, courtesy of presidential intervention fund. Fifteen of such were purchased and distributed to all the departments and zonal offices.
The old KIA brands bought in 2014 were, except two (one Rio with NANBizcom and CERATO with Finance and Accounts) have been auctioned to save the agency costs of maintenance.
TOOLS
Management has distributed laptops and recorders, tablets thrice to staff, mainly in editorial department since 2016, with the latest being the distribution of 100 laptops and 140 ipads and Samsung tabs.
ICT/TECHNICAL SERVICES
The department plays crucial support role in the operations of the Agency. It created and now runs the NANPRwire website.
The Agency is fully dependent on Galaxy Backbone as Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Abuja, Lagos, Enugu, Ibadan and many parts of the country.
Galaxy backbone recently upgraded the Agency’s internet capacity in Abuja and Lagos. Abuja was upgraded from 5MBPS to 30MBPS up and down while that of Lagos was upgraded from 1MBPS to 5 MBPS. This cost the Agency N21 million. We were able to pay for the upgrade, courtesy of a presidential intervention fund.
TRAINING
This shall be a major focus of my Management under a new term. We hope to give our staff a new orientation to see their jobs beyond the vistas of the civil service. The training of staff is a continuous process because management is aware of the critical need for manpower development.
Reporters and Editors, key functionaries are being continuously exposed to various training in the use of modern ICT multimedia tools.
Management facilitated training on data journalism, Analytical and fact check training Google and Code for Africa. NTA is about to commence training of multimedia staff on video recording and editing. We are also in talks with the federal government owned
training schools to secure training for other staff.