Elite Advertisement in Nigeria - Beginning

Beginning

The roots of the newspaper business in Nigeria can be traced to the middle of the nineteenth century. The primary goal of newspapers then was to influence the literacy rate of the population. Foreign owned newspapers quickly emerged as an avenue for readers to self educate themselves and also as a tool of the mercantile traders to read about trade related ads or to advertise their goods. The success of the early newspapers was linked to the competence of its writers and editors, political appeal, patronage by local administrators and the financial purse of the owners. However, fluctuating subscriber revenues by the 1920s led to a greater dependency on advertisement, with about 50-70% of pages devoted to ads but most of it was related to merchandise goods. By 1943, a strategy to increase revenues led to the introduction of classified ads mostly covering one page. It wasn't until the establishment of two politically inspired newspapers, the West African Pilot in 1937 and the Nigerian Tribune in 1949, did newspapers began to devote more space to personality profiles.

In the 1950s, the Nigerian government established a number of newspapers, television and radio outlets. But access to government patronage in later years and increase in political activity led to an emerging space consuming and conspicuous political motivated ads in many of the government owned newspapers. But by the mid 1980s, a bust in government revenues arose following an oil boom sparked by large increases in the price of oil in the 1970s, the revenues accrued by the government began to precipitate downwards leading to cuts in budgetary subvention to many government owned outlets. The revenue shortfall is believed to have created the impetus for many media operators to court and promote congratulatory and obituaries advertisement in their T.V or radio stations. In the 1980s, solicitation was sometimes done through field agents who receive a commission of about 5-15% of the paid advert. Rivalry between field agents led to discount in groups messages or a ceremonial ads celebrating the crowning of a new communal chief, some of the discount were also extended to paid birthdays or welcoming messages for a new president. In 1989, the Nigerian Daily Times, a government owned newspaper published an average of 7 obituaries daily, with majority of it devoted to ads taking one quarter of a page. During the same period, the Nigerian Daily Sketch on the other hand, published about 2 pages of obituary ads.