Borno State Governor, Kashim Shettima, has made a

strong appeal to the Nigerian Guild of Editors, NGE, to set up an

endowment fund to provide financial and other support to families

of deceased editors with a take-off of ten million naira which the

Governor announced as donation for the fund.

Shettima made the appeal at when he

had an interactive session with editors of newspapers and senior

broadcast journalists in Lagos.

The Governor’s suggestion to the editors was

based on a story he took time to narrate regarding his experience

with the family of a late editor, whom he said, happened to be his

friend years before he (Shettima) assumed the office of Governor in

1. Shettima begged to conceal the identity of the deceased

editor while making his narration, a step the Governor explained,

was meant to respect the memory of the dead.

“Before I go into this interactive session,

there is something that has been troubling my mind for a very long

time, I don’t know if this is the right moment to say my mind

but I crave your indulgence to tolerate me so i pour out my

mind. I had a friend that died years ago, he was an editor of

a Newspaper in this country, sorry, I want to conceal the identity

of that person, I won’t tell you the number of years or give

you clear clues, you editors are extremely smart with analytical

minds, you can guess the person if I give too much clue and I want

to respect the memory of that friend of mine. Like I said, that my

friend was an editor of a Newspaper in one part of this country. We

were close while I was in banking sector. He worked with

extraordinary devotion to duties, he was always passionate about

work, he took his Newspaper like an only child, very protective and

very competitive and promotional before he retired and died. In one

of my visits to his family some years ago while I was a

commissioner before I became a Governor, I was shocked to see that

some of his children had dropped out of school because his widowed

wife couldn’t afford the private secondary schools the children

were attending, she had to sacrifice the future of two of the kids

for their elders, so the younger ones had to drop out of school for

the two seniors to remain in school. That friend of mine was the

bread winner of his extended family, he lived in a

rented house somewhere in Nigeria. His Newspaper

paid his entitlements as it should, but we all know that such

couldn’t have gone anywhere given what we all know about the

salary structure of the Nigerian Media Industry and even the civil

service generally except for some Government corporate

establishments. So, I became very disturbed when I learnt that my

friend’s children were out of school, funny enough, I was a

commissioner for education, so we adopted the education of the

children, paying the fees. As God would have it, the eldest of the

children passed WAEC with seven distinctions including Mathematics

and English, so I reached out to a commissioner of education in one

State because the young man wasn’t from Borno and luckily, the

then commissioner of education in that State was a very good man

and we were close too, he assisted and that my friend’s son was

secured University, graduated and completed his youths service last

year and we have gotten him a job in the bank where I know best as

a former banker” he noted.

Explaining the basis of his narrative to the

editors, Governor Shettima said, “now, the reason I gave this

story which I had never told anyone before now is to offer a

suggestion to the Nigerian Guild of Editors and thank God, my very

good brother and friend, President Femi Adesina will get my

suggestion and all of you make up the Guild. You see, the editor is

an unsung hero, he is the masquerade, he is the fixer, the panel

beater of whatever the reporter files yet the reporter gets all the

credit and the editor bears the risk if the reporter happens to get

his or her facts wrong. Some editors are known only when they pen

columns but most often, the reporters are those known, hence they

are with the most goodwill. If you mention The Nation Newspapers

for instance, one of the names that will easily come to my mind is

Yusuf Ali because he is a prolific reporter of my area of News

interest, the north, since interest in news is sometimes about

proximity, what concerns the reader most. My friend Omotosho is the

man behind Yusuf Ali’s popularity. My sister Ijeoma who is

about the only woman that edits a top flight Newspaper in Nigeria

is the lady behind many popular reporters in THISDAY and the same

applies to all of you here in your respective media houses whether

print or broadcast. You build the reporters, bring them to

limelight but you get the lesser goodwill and that is a natural

thing because people read the reporters or watch them on TV so they

get more goodwill, this is why most times, those appointed by

Governors to take charge of media management are those who report

and then out your magnanimity, you editors also support your

reporters and help them succeed as media managers. So, I have a lot

of respect for you. So, I have a suggestion that you come up

welfare programme for editors who pass on. Nobody wants to die, we

all don’t but the fact is that, death is a sad change of event

that is a permanent in our existence as mortals. My advice is that

you come up with something you might call FALLEN GATE-KEEPERS

ENDOWMENT FUND or FALLEN EDITORS ENDOWMENT FUND which you can

launch to attract support and possibly invest whatever is raised

through a group of Trustees so that such funds can be used to

support families of editors who pass on, to ensure their children

feed, continue their education, get jobs after school, help in

managing issues that might affect their welfare and all that so

that we support the families of whoever is gone amongst us” he

noted.

Adding, he said “we have lost Dimba Igwe. The

late Suleiman Bisalla of New Telegraph had interviewed me twice

when I was a commissioner before he was killed this year when a

suicide bomber attacked a plaza in Abuja. I had met the managing

editor of Daily Trust, Suleiman Mohammed on board a flight from

Abuja to Lagos about ten years ago when he was associate editor for

south, then he was based here in Lagos and I was on my way to

University of Ibadan where I had done a Masters Degree, I was

returning there with considerations of starting a PHD before events

overtook my plan. So, we have to always remember those we worked

with and reach out to their families to support their families

while they are gone. We owe our fallen friends an obligation of

supporting their bereaved families. Sometimes, the support may not

even be about money, it might be moral, it might be about guidance

or even a fight where the families of our fallen editors are being

chanced or lacking access to certain rights and privileges whether

on admission to schools, access to deserved scholarship at so many

things. As per my suggestion of you establishing FALLEN

GATE-KEEPERS OR FALLEN EDITORS ENDOWMENT FUND or whatever name you

may choose, we will make a token donation of ten million naira

(N10m) for take-off of that fund. I am very passionate about

it,” the Governor said.