Travel blog: Ibadan trip

- July 04, 2022

As part of the activities slated for the 2022 AMCOS week, a field trip to Ibadan was marked as the third event for the week. It was a trip to Ibadan to see the first TV station in Nigeria ( however unsuccessful) and to see the oldest privately owned newspaper publisher in the country, African Newspapers of Nigeria LTD (Nigerian Tribune).

This is a detailed report on the activities that went on that day, from pictures to details on the tours and the experts we spoke to.

Leaving school:

We met at the front of the main faculty building by 7:30 am on a chilly Wednesday morning to assemble ourselves into two 17-seater omnibuses and a headcount by our staff advisor; Mr. Tosin Adesile.

Having taken the necessary instructions that ought to guide us during the trip we took off from school with both buses. Leaving Illara-Mokin to Ibadan required us to pass the following towns in the 3hr journey, Ikeji, Erin Ijesha, Ilesa, Ikire & Ode.

Arriving at Ibadan:

The trip to Ibadan was unique for me as I have always harbored the idea of living in the rustic city at some point in my life but I have never been to the ancient city.

Ibadan is the capital and most populous city of Oyo State, in Nigeria. It is the third-largest city by population in Nigeria after Lagos and Kano, with a total population of 3,649,000 as of 2021, and over 6 million people within its metropolitan area. It is the country's largest city by geographical area.

NTA Ibadan;

Ibadan was where it all started in 1959 with the name Western Nigerian Government Broadcasting Corporation (WNTV), the first TV station in Africa and as it began to grow, it merged with a couple of stations in parts of Nigeria like RKTV (Radio-Television Kaduna), NBC (Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation), which was a federal government-owned TV station, which was also established in 1962, the same year

RKTV was established in Kaduna. In 1977, all regional TV stations were rebranded to NTV (Nigerian Television) and later NTA (Nigerian Television Authority).

The NTA Ibadan trip was unsuccessful as they were not ready to host us and stalled for the better part of our arrival at the place, however, we took a few pictures there.

African Newspapers of Nigeria (Nigerian Tribune):

The Nigerian Tribune is an English-language newspaper published in Ibadan in Nigeria. It was established in 1949 by Obafemi Awolowo and is the oldest surviving private Nigerian newspaper. In the colonial era, the newspaper served as the mouthpiece for Awolowo's populist welfare programs.

Today the Nigerian Tribune has evolved into a hybrid news media platform as it still prints newspapers but now has a significant online presence. This is extremely important as it shows what the modern trajectory of news media companies created during the traditional era.

We went on a tour around the Nigerian Tribune facility from the Library to the Editors' office to the Printing press to the Online publishing dept.

The library:

This section of the building has a massive archive of newspapers from 1949 to date. Some of the papers here were from defunct newspapers like the Daily Sketch, Concord, and West African Pilot. These papers are preserved in binders, one for the annual publication on a specific paper or magazine.

The Editor office:

This is where all the line editors begin work on assembling the pages of the next paper as according to the pieces approved by the Chief editor (stories gotten from the correspondents or reporters). Here the stories are assembled as to how they would fit and look on the newspaper before it's sent to the printing press.

Printing press:

This room consists of a set of machines one storey tall. With which the paper is printed. The" printer" consists of a feeder which rolls the paper into the two colour towers and one assembler which cuts and assembles the final paper. An additional to this printer is an ink feed which does all the necessary calculations as to how much ink would be fed to the machine and in what mixes (as it has three primary colours with which all other colours are derived, Cyan, Magenta & yellow). All the components of the printing process are controlled from a module which has a set of screens and consoles with which all operations are given commands by the print manager.

Online publications:

Here we got into a conference room and had a session with a staff on what the operations of the online publications were, from how news gets to them, the vetting process, the uploading process and how the online publication become profitable.