Sam Nda Isaiah: A man of Incredible Valour

By Isiaq Ajibola

It was Winston Churchill, a war-time British Prime Minister, that was once asked about the length of a good speech. In a witty reply, he said: “A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject, and short enough to create interest.”

It is on this premise that I write a short tribute to my late friend, an indefatigable entrepreneur, a prolific columnist and consummate publisher, Sam Nda-Isaiah.

Fondly called ‘Sam’ by his intimate friends and associates, the late founder and publisher of Leadership newspapers group was a man endowed with an incredible valour.

In the period of about 20 years that I knew Sam as a professional colleague, there was never a time we got so intimately engaging than in the last six months prior to his death. During this period, we had regular discussions that bothered on his media operations and other business interests. That gave me the privileged insight into issues that may have triggered his sudden illness as he returned home from office on the night of Thursday, November 10, up to the time he died in the hospital at about 10pm the following day, Friday.

Truth is the week he died had been such a very stressful one. He had attended the AGM of Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN) in Lagos on Monday where he was elected an ex-Officio member of the association’s new executive. While in Lagos, he narrated how he was stuck in the suffocating Lagos traffic for not less than 10 hours. Again, in trying to fly out of Lagos he also experienced many hours of flight delay. He eventually returned to his Abuja home on Wednesday night totally exhausted.

Yet he would inaugurate the pioneer Board of Economists of the National Economy the following day where he had invited some Board members of the company. The National Economy, one of the publications he floated in 2019 to fulfil his mantra of ‘big idea’ dream, was aimed at focusing its editorial content on the public sector especially on the commanding heights of the Nigerian economy.

So, he had constituted the board of economists and probably had a compelling need to attend its inauguration on Thursday morning instead acceding to the need to rest and recover from lost grounds.

He indeed attended the maiden meeting at which he was very poignant in his arguments to drive home his points as usual.

It was that Thursday evening he took ill and when we spoke on phone at about 9pm he only managed to speak in husky tones. Not long afterwards, he was rushed to the hospital by his family and by the night of the following day, he had succumbed to the cold hands of death.

In the course of our regular chats, Sam had expressed the desire to revitalise his Business Processing Outsource (BPO) company. The business, which has mainly segments of HR outsourcing and a Call Centre unit, already has key government parastatals and a banks as its client. He had thought I could help him oversee the place as Vice Chairman with mandate to ensure good corporate governance practice for it. He believed that the company, which has huge infrastructure and facilities in Abuja and Lagos, has great potentials if I could spare time to mentor the management of the company. I recall telling him that I would do that but only on a part time with no strings attached. After some  arguments on my disposition, he agreed to let me do it my own way. After looking at the processes at the BPO company for about a month, I had wanted to share one important information with him on Thursday night when I called him on phone and he answered in such bad tone.

A man of large heart, Sam had surprised me with his comradeering posture in the past. At the public presentation of my book  titled “Journalism and Business: My Newspaper Odyssey” in 2016, Sam had publicly pledged a donation of N500,000 to launch the book.This was indeed an amount I considered awesome. However, when he wanted to redeem his pledged donation, he surprisingly transferred N1,000,000 into my account. He then followed it up with a call to explain that he actually desired to launch the book for one million but he didn’t want to announce any amount higher than the chairman of the occasion.

Yet he still bought copies for the use of Leadership library and encouraged his management staff to read it. At several other times, we shared ideas on many issues and he was always very supportive of any social course I was involved with.

Even though we had operated in two different newspapers in the same market and competing for market share, we had mutual respect that eliminated any unhealthy rivalry between our different media companies.

When I was managing director of Daily Trust he tried to learn from us in many ways as we were the pioneers especially in the northern market. I offered him the best advice possible and that further solidified our friendship.

A trained pharmacist, Sam started Journalism in a brazenly manner. After publishing the Leadership Confidential as a subscription-based newsletter, he started the Leadership with such a paltry financial outlay that no one would think the newspaper could survive. When he stopped writing the Monday back page column in Daily Trust, Sam had cut the reputation of a fearless columnist that readers could not ignore. His Monday column was incisive, lucid and generally scathing of political leaders. He had a regular sarcastic hit on President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government to the extent that many thought he disdained the man for primordial bigotry. I recall that during the regime there were speculations on alleged corrupt deals of Gbenga Obasanjo, the President’s son.

Sam it was who blew the lid on how Gbenga had allegedly taken a multi-billion-naira contract from an agency of his father’s government without executing the project. For the first time, President Obasanjo’s could not ignore that article and thereafter instituted a libel case of about one billion Naira at an Ibadan High Court against Sam and Daily Trust. For want of diligent prosecution, the case was eventually laid to rest after it was mentioned a few times.

It was with such courage and conviction that sam established the Leadership with no fuss about any known processes. For example, he often published many paginations of the paper without adverts. At that time, the numbers of adverts secured in a day determined the numbers of pagination in the Daily Trust.  But Leadership on the other hand sometimes published 48 pages of editorial content consistently without any advertisement except fillers for which Sam would later demand payments from the clients. His personality was as friendly as sometimes bullish. So he often collected the money for the advertisement after he had published them without approval. That way the paper weathered the storm and did not go burst after all.

During the hey days of high-volume barter deals between automobile companies and newspapers, his Leadership got many cars from major car dealers in exchange for advertisement slots in his paper. These cars were distributed to staff without any unassailable repayment plan.

It was such spirit of persistent optimism and go-getting attitude that made him develop a seeming punctilious disposition to his employees. That of course pitched him with many of his staff and was responsible for very high staff turnover in his Leadership group.

The newspaper thereafter went through turbulent times in terms of meeting its commitments.

However, when recently we reviewed the operations at Leadership newspaper in an informal discussion, Sam did not hide his joy that the paper has in the last one year regularly paid salaries to its workers. This feat was partly achieved, one hand, by the introduction of a new business solution software that captures every aspects of the operation and on the other, by the effort of the new management team that is very dynamic.

It is said in our holy books that every human has his own shortcomings. Sam definitely has some like many of us in different respects. Adieu my friend, Omokunrin!