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A routine advert placement has cost Delta State its promotional presence in Vanguard, one of Nigeria’s most widely read newspapers, after Governor Sheriff Oborevwori took his complaint over the page the advert appeared on all the way to the publisher of the paper, Sam Amuka, and left the conversation with a total ban on promotional publications about his state and his government, sources within the state government has revealed to SecretsReporters.
The advert placed by the governor appeared in Vanguard on an inner page of the newspaper. The governor had expected it on Page Two or Page Three. Those early pages carry a heavy price premium in Nigerian newspaper advertising, and banks, telecommunications companies and other corporate bodies pay steep surcharges to secure the front page and Pages Two, Three, Four and Five for their announcements and goodwill messages. Placement on the early pages is a commercial transaction governed by rate and availability, and the governor’s advert did not land on any of them.
Governor Oborevwori reacted with anger. He put a call through to the editor of Vanguard to protest the placement, and the editor stood his ground and called his bluff. The call ended without the governor getting the concession he demanded.
The governor allegedly then made the call that sealed the matter. He telephoned Sam Amuka, the publisher of Vanguard, known across the Nigerian media industry as Uncle Sam, and complained that despite all he had done for Vanguard, the newspaper was treating him badly. Amuka asked him a direct question in return. The publisher asked the governor to state what exactly he had done for Vanguard. Governor Oborevwori could not say.
The exchange touched the one subject the veteran publisher treats as untouchable. Amuka regards the independence of Vanguard, the newspaper he founded and has published for over four decades, as a matter of personal honour, and he received the governor’s complaint as an insult, a suggestion that his newspaper was in the governor’s debt and could be summoned and scolded like a contractor who had failed to deliver. The publisher felt highly insulted that a governor could speak to him in that manner and with that assumption.
His response was immediate and total. Amuka banned all promotional publications about Delta State and about Governor Oborevwori from the pages of Vanguard. The directive took effect at once, and the first casualty was a standing feature. The weekly publication on Delta State carried in Sunday Vanguard by governor chief press secretary (CPS), Festus Ahon, was stopped immediately on the publisher’s order, ending a weekly platform that had presented the state and its government to a national Sunday readership.
The ban covers the promotional content the Delta State Government had come to rely on in the newspaper, the sponsored features, goodwill placements and state publicity of the kind that runs outside the ordinary news reportage of the paper.
Source: …Secretsreporters