By IPS Correspondents
LAGOS, Mar 8 2001 (IPS)

Female journalists in Nigeria have a role model. She is Dupe Ajayi-Gbadebo, the Managing Director of the Sketch Newspaper Group in Ibadan, 120 kilometres north of Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.

Ajayi-Gbadebo is the first female managing director since the publishing group was established in 1964.

For the past nine months, Ajayi-Gbadebo, a lawyer, with a master’s degree in journalism, has had the challenging job of turning round the ailing organisation owned by five state governments.

“It is a nice feeling but it is also very, very tough with so many ramifications”, she said in an interview, granted during a recess from a crucial management meeting, on Tuesday.

“Most members of staff do not know how to relate to a female boss because they have been used to having males at the helm. It has been very challenging trying to resurrect an organisation that was almost dead mid last year”, she told IPS.

Sketch has 250 employees, said Ajayi-Gbadebo. “Some are indifferent to the fortunes of the paper, while some have loyalty to the paper”, published under four titles.

Ajayi-Gbadebo, who had worked for other three publications before joining the Sketch, said: “Our greatest challenge is lack of money, our machines are outmoded, we have very few computers and we depend on commercial printers.”

Despite the numerous problems faced by the group, demand for “our newspaper is five times higher than what we can manage to print”, she said.

Ajayi-Gbadebo, former editor of Nigeria’s Weekend Times, and a mother of a teenage daughter, wants to “encourage more women to join the newspaper group”. She admits that Nigeria’s vibrant media industry, with more than 94 newspapers and 39 magazine titles, 49 television and 39 radio stations, could do with more women. At the moment, Nigeria has only one female newspaper editor, and two female publishers.

“It is not easy to be a journalist with the tough job of reporting,” she said.

“It takes a special kind of a man to accept the demanding work of a journalist”, she said. “Unless a woman has a special thirst for justice and social responsibility that the mission of journalism demands, she will not opt for the profession. Here in Nigeria, journalism does not carry pension, insurance that other professions provide, so dedication is often difficult for those without the passion.”

Augusta Akparanta-Emenogu, a senior editor at the state-owned News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said the poor renumerations for journalists might not be the only reason for the low number of women in the Nigerian media.

“It’s a matter of the kitchen being too hot for the women so they continuously step aside,” Akparanta-Emenogu, a mother of three, told IPS this week.

She said “journalism is like politics in Nigeria. There are no rules for the game and when there are rules, the players don’t stick to them.”

Akparanta-Emenogu, who is the most senior female editorial staff at NAN, said “Women who are not used to walking the tight ropes, don’t make it in journalism.”

Yet women, who join journalism, come with “higher and better qualification than their male counterparts, but very few withstand the pressures of heading a desk or going on foreign postings.”

“I believe it takes much more than hard work to make a female journalist succeed in the profession, it needs a lot of luck,” she said.

James Bello, an assistant editor-in-chief at NAN, believes that the few Nigerian female journalists can manage it on their own anywhere in the world. “Most of them are more dedicated than their male counterparts”, he said.

Fortunately, the present crop of female journalists rarely suffer cultural barriers. “There is more awareness now that career women can also make very good wives and mothers,” he said.

Bello urged “the management of media establishments to give women more room to excel”.

“Women in the media must also do their best to enlighten the new comers”, he added.

The oppressive military regimes in Nigeria, which ended in May 1999, also played a major role in the poor showing of women in the media, argues Maxwell Kadiri, Legal Officer at the Media Rights Agenda, a non-governmental organisation (ngo).

Kadiri said “the environment under the military was hazardous. The travails during the period included incarceration of journalists, closure of newspapers and magazines as well as murders.”

Chris Anyanwu, publisher of a weekly magazine, was jailed for conspiracy to overthrow the late General Sani Abacha. Although she was later pardoned by the regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar, Anyanwu has been unable to re-open her publishing outfit.

Gbemiga Ogunleye, editor of Nigeria’s most popular newspaper Punch, urged “employers to create more friendly environments, such as the provision of creches, for female journalists.”

“If I have a chance, I will employ more female reporters”, Ogunleye told IPS. Women make up less than 10 per cent of Nigeria’s estimated 10,000 journalists.

Excerpt: