–Author’s Note: This piece was originally written and published by the author in August 2003 as a tribute to Malam Wada Maida following his retirement from the services of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
The piece is being reproduced with minor polishing to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the passing of Malam Wada on August 17, 2020.
By Lawal Sale
“No bird soars too high provided it soars with its own wings – keep on flying, my friend!”. These were the exact words used by Mal. Wada Maida, the immediate past Chief Executive Officer of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), while congratulating his bosom friend, Alhaji Ibrahim Ida, on the occasion of his turbaning as ‘Danmajen Katsina’.
In quoting William Blake, Mal. Wada deserves no less, given his antecedents in journalism, his chosen career. Mal. Wada cut his teeth in journalism and administration in the mid-sixties during his secondary school days when he edited an in-house magazine, the ‘Katsina Career,’ at Government College Katsina, which was being sold at one penny to both the school community and the public.
Perhaps that was what inspired him to choose journalism as his career! In furtherance of achieving his goals, Wada subsequently attended journalism schools in Nigeria, the UK, and India. In the course of climbing to the zenith of his career in journalism, he had a stint with the New Nigeria Newspapers as a reporter before moving to serve as an information officer in the Ministry of Information of the old Kaduna State.
Therefore, he transferred his services to the News Agency of Nigeria soon after it was established in 1978 as one of its pioneer staff. He started as an editor and zonal manager in charge of the North-Western states in Kaduna. It was in recognition of his dedication to duty that the agency deployed him to the United Kingdom, where he served in London as its first Western Europe correspondent.
Need we recall that it was while he was serving in that capacity that General Muhammadu Buhari’s administration recalled him to take a political appointment as Chief Press Secretary?
After his sojourn at the State House, Wada came back to NAN to serve in a higher capacity as Editor-in-Chief for the next nine years, beginning in 1985. Wada’s achievements as an astute journalist and a seasoned administrator were crowned with his appointment as Managing Director/CEO of the agency in 1994, where he held forth for nine years and four months.
When Wada took over the mantle of leadership as the third CEO of the agency, he sprang into action with a vision to reposition and reform the agency into a vibrant one. He started by confronting head-on the threats of obsolete equipment bedevilling the agency, vice-versa the challenges of new technology, by replacing those obsolete and technologically backward machines.
Wada was the one who introduced the Data Broadcasting Receiving System (DBRS), which is satellite-based, to enable clients to receive bulletins via satellite on computers installed by the agency.
Courtesy of Wada’s vision to satellize NAN services to hundreds of clients cutting across both print and broadcast media organizations in Nigeria, the agency became more relevant to the media industry in Nigeria and beyond because of the package being received by clients uninterrupted for 24 hours, and complemented with photo services.
His vision, savoir-faire, and determination not only made the agency more relevant but took it to greater heights, particularly in international media fora; it saw the signing of bilateral agreements with major international news agencies such as Reuters, AFP, DPA, Bernama, Radiobras, and sustained the news exchange cooperation with agency’s like Xinhua News Agency.
Wada’s determination to make NAN internationally relevant saw the reopening of the Abidjan and Johannesburg offices, which had been closed due to a paucity of funds, just as he continued to maintain the New York and London offices which he inherited.
At the time he left NAN, approval, albeit without cash backing, had been granted for the opening of other offices, including that in Cairo.
Other notable legacies Wada bequeathed to his successor include the five-story marble edifice, which houses the agency’s headquarters, and an all-inclusive NAN Vision 2005. There is no gainsaying the fact that Wada bequeathed a legion of legacies and left the agency better than he met it.
He also succeeded in relocating the agency’s headquarters from Lagos, firstly to a modest apartment-turned-office accommodation he built at Garki, Area 1, and later to the five-story marble edifice to house the army of staff from the Lagos office in 1995. It is also on record that he built 20 units of two- and three-bedroom flats at Kubwa and 12 units of room-and-parlour apartments at Mararaba, both in the suburbs of Abuja, to accommodate staff of the agency.
— Sale is former Personal Assistant to late NAN MD, Wada Maida