Chairman and publisher of the Nigeria’s heritage newspaper, The Daily Times, Mr. Fidelis Anosike, has said that the regular payment of staff salaries and general welfare remains a major priority to any successful businessman across the world.
Anosike said this while attending to questions from journalists on Tuesday in Abuja, preparatory to the forthcoming 91st anniversary of The Daily Times.
According to the publisher, issues that involve in the management of publishing newspaper is something that everybody should be educated of and that of The Daily Times should not be different from others.
He remarked that the survival of businesses in the Nigerian society presently under the economic situation must be taken into consideration.
His words: “I do not care what people say about me. I do not care what people think that I do. What I know is that I am a business man and I knew at what point I picked The Daily Times and I also know at what point we are now. It all involved having the possible knowledge of business entrepreneurship.
I must tell you that no business man who wishes to grow wishes to owe his staff who are his foot soldiers. I knew the financial status of the publishing organisation when we picked it and its present state now”.
Further stressing, the publisher noted that his leadership shall as a matter of responsibility pay all the backlog of salaries owed to all staff, adding “should the financial status of the organisation improve tremendously, then the organisation would not hesitate to offset backlog because we are working towards that and soon it will happen”.
“What I am saying in a simple term is that we have the passion for business and what makes a good business man grow is the positive contribution of his staff and should also be paid for. We are working towards increasing our financial base and with an enabling environment being created for the private sectors like us to have access to money, a company like The Daily Times would have the confidence to invite staff being owed both those presently working with us and those who have left the organisation to quickly come over and have their money.
We have that in our mind and as business men, we are just building financial base of the organisation and within 24 months the newspaper company will take back its original place as the leading publishing house in Nigeria,” Anosike added.
Also commenting on the survival of the media industry in Nigeria, Anosike lamented of lack of coordination among the media organisations in Nigeria, stressing that this has been the bane of its survival.
He, however, revealed that efforts have been made by him to alert the publishing houses of the need to speak with one voice for the possible survival of the industry.
He also advised that Government should make a rethink on the full implementation of Freedom of Information Act, which is the accessibility of official documents by the media as enlisted in the Act than passing rigorous means before having access to it.
Source – Daily Times
