Daily Times of Nigeria - Peak Years

Peak Years

In 1947 the London-based Daily Mirror Group, headed by Cecil King, bought the Daily Times, the Gold Coast Daily Graphic, the Accra Sunday Mirror and the Sierra Leone Daily Mail. King introduced the first privately-owned rotary printing press in Nigeria, plus photo-engraving, typesetting and typecasting plants. He imported skilled journalists but followed a deliberate Africanization policy. The Mirror Group introduced popular innovations such as short paragraphs and sentences, many illustrations and photos, and human interest stories. The paper's circulation rose from 25,000 daily in 1950 to 95,000 in 1959. During the 1950s the Nigerian Daily Times played an important role in the process that led to independence in 1960.

Ismail Babatunde Jose had joined the paper in 1941 as a technical trainee. He was soon promoted to reporter, then regional correspondent and eventually assistant editor. Cecil King appointed him editor in 1957. Jose became managing director in 1962 and chairman in 1968. He changed the name of the flagship newspaper to its present Daily Times of Nigeria on 30 May 1963. Jose was in charge at a time when the oil boom was starting in Nigeria and advertising revenue was plentiful. Jose hired young graduates and trained them to become self-confident, independent reporters and columnists. In 1965 he established the Times Journalism Institute, which was still training journalists forty years later.

In 1957 the newspaper sponsored the first beauty pageant in Nigeria, Miss Nigeria, and ran the pageant without competition for many years. Rosemary Anieze, Miss Nigeria of 1960, was named Miss Independence. She was one of the most publicized beauty queens in the history of Nigeria. In 1963 the Daily Times launched the magazines Modern Woman and the Flamingo. Starting in 1963, ownership of the paper was gradually transferred to Nigerians, a process that was completed by 31 March 1974. By the 1970s the paper dominated the Nigerian publishing industry with a string of related papers and magazines. By 1975 the Daily Times had grown to a circulation of 275,000 copies while the Sunday Times reached 400,000. No other Nigerian newspaper has achieved such levels apart from MKO Abiola's Daily Concord in the early 1990s.