By Chinwendu Agoha (Governance/Media Reporter)
The management of one Nigeria's leading digital news media, TheNewsGuru (TNG), has announced the appointment of a select eminent scholars, media veterans and other distinguished Nigerians as members of Board of Directors/Advisors of the news company.
The appointments were contained in a release at the weekend by the Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of TheNewsGuru (TNG), and TNG Investigations, Mr Mideno Bayagbon.
Those appointed into the Board are renowned scholar and media guru, Dr Chidi Amuta, along with Professors Charles Okigbo, Muhammed Musa, Ladi Sandra Adamu, Mrs Judith Ufford and Mrs Cordelia Onu, two of the most decorated female journalists in NIgeria with diverse experiences, as well as Dr Alim Abubakar, a United Kingdom based erudite scholar and entrepreneur.
Judith Ufford and Cordelia Onu were former editors in Vanguard and Champion Newspapers. While Judith, a keen activist on Human and Gender based Rights & Reproductive Health, etc, brings her expertise for advocacy, networking, training, investigation and reporting to the Board, Mrs Cordelia Onu, on the other hand, is a trainer in media usage and mass mobilisation techniques. She is a permanent fellow of the World Press Institute and a visiting Media Fellow at Dewitt Wallace Centre for Communication and Journalism.
Other appointees are Matt Aikhionbare, the suave former private secretary to both Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan and who was also a Secretary to the Government (SSG) of Edo state in the Chief Lucky Igbinedion Administration. Also included is a topnotch Dublin, Ireland based legal practitioner, Waheed Mudah, who brings his wealth of legal knowledge to the board as Secretary.
According to the release by Bayagbon, the new Board is chaired by Dr Chidi Amuta a well known author, academic, celebrated columnist and media mogul. He is a visiting Fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Boston and at Cambridge University. Amuta is one of Nigeria’s most respected public intellectuals and media commentators. He combines an active media career with engagement in serious scholarship while also running the multi-billion naira firm: Wilson & Weizmann Associates.
Professor Sandra Ladi Adamu is the first professor of broadcasting in Northern NIgeria and is currently a lecturer at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, in Kaduna State. She was at various times a Deputy Editor of the Democrat newspapers, and News Editor at the NTA Jos, Plateau state.
Dr Abubakar who is also on the advisory board of London Business School Africa Club, is the founder and non-executive chair of These Executive Minds (TEXEM), which has trained thousand of A-List Nigerians in some of the world’s leading and best universities.
Professor Charles Okigbo, on his part, is like a Professor of Professors with wide academic belts across the globe before becoming a Professor Emeritus of Strategic Communication at North Dakota University. He was a former Registrar of APCON and Coordinator of ACCE.
Professor Muhammed Musa is a Professor of Communication at the Department of Media and Creative Industries, United Arab Emirates University, Dubai. He is a serially published author whose teaching and research interests are in the political economy of the media, journalism studies, new media and social change.
Others equally on the Board membership of TheNewsGuru, include Jewell Dafinone, Group Managing Editor of TheNewsGuru (TNG) and Mideno Bayagbon, Publisher of TheNewsGuru (TNG), and TNG Investigations. NNL.