Nigerian Tribune Nigerian Newspaper 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 programmes. It also played an important role in defending the interests of the Yoruba people in a period when different ethnic groups were struggling for ascendancy.From independence in 1960 until the 1990s most publications were government-owned, but private papers such as the Nigerian Tribune, The Punch, Vanguard and the Guardian continued to expose public and private scandals despite government attempts at suppression.General Ibrahim Babangida once said that of all the Nigerian newspapers he would only read and take seriously the Nigerian Tribune’s editorial column.
The book Leadership Failure and Nigeria’s Fading Hopes by Femi Okurounmu consists of excerpts from a weekly column in the Nigerian Tribune published between 2004 and 2009. The author, a patriotic Nigerian elder statesman, laments how the corruption and the selfishness of successive leaders has destroyed the hopes not just of Nigerians, but of the entire black race.
In December 2008 Segun Olatunji, managing director and Editor-in-Chief of Nigerian Tribune, resigned, and a few days later the editor, Rauf Abiodun, also resigned as part of a series of staff changes. Mrs. HID Awolowo, who is chairman of the Nigerian Tribune’s publisher African Newspapers of Nigeria Ltd, appointed Sam Adesua as the new managing director/editor-in-chief. Edward Dickson was appointed editor of the daily paper. The changes were said to be part of a move to modernize the paper and expand beyond narrow Yoruba partisan politics in the face of competition from The Westerner, The Nation and Nigerian Compass.
In January 2011 the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) reacted angrily to an editorial in the Nigerian Tribune that accused the ACN of imposing its candidates in the party primaries for the forthcoming national elections. An ACN spokesman called the paper a front for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). He said the paper was struggling since PDP governors had been removed from Osun and Ekiti states, causing the paper to lose advertising revenue directed to the Nigerian Tribune by the former governors.The ACN said the paper was bringing shame to the name of the founder, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
