By Sam EYOBOKA
TUESDAY, November 30 became a day of glory for Vanguard Media Limited as one of the world’s most influential individuals, Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye declared Vanguard Newspapers as one of his top choice newspapers in the country.

Speaking at the just concluded Vanguard Media Christian Fellow-ship end of the year prayer/thanksgiving service at the corporate headquarters of the com-pany in Apapa, Lagos, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Pastor Adeboye, one of the 50 most influential indivi-duals in the world, did not mince words when he declared that Vanguard is his top choice newspaper.

According to him, any-body wishing to read the truth about happenings in the country cannot ignore Vanguard Newspapers.

Preaching a sermon titled: ‘The Storm Is Over’ which was the theme of the end of year spiritual revival programme, the pastor who was accomp-anied on the visit by the Provincial Pastor of Lagos Province 23 of the church, Pastor Brown Oyitso, his personal secretary, Pastor Augustine Tokunbo Oloru-nnibe, his personal assist-ant, Pastor Adeboye among others, endorsed the Newspaper for its reportorial excellence.

Pastor Enoch Adeboye ministering

Taking a break from the theme of the sermon, an obviously excited Pastor Adeboye who presides over one of the fastest growing Pentecostal churches in the world, said he reads only three Nigerian newspapers on a daily basis and Vanguard is one of them.

In his own words: “Somebody once asked me the other day; ‘how many Nigerian newspapers do you read?’ I replied, ‘I read three Nigerian news-papers and Vanguard definitely is one of them.’ This is because if there is any news worth reading at all you find it in the Vanguard Newspapers.”

Continuing, the eminent cleric enjoined the execu-tive chairman/publisher, Mr. Sam Amuka and his team to always remain in the vanguard of disemina-ting the truth about the country, because, accord-ing to him some negative publications had painted the country in bad light overseas.

Good news is very imp-ortant. Some journalists asked me not too long ago: ‘What advice do you have for the government con-cerning the re-branding of Nigeria?’

I told them, ‘it is not the government who will re-brand Nigeria, it is the media.’
They said, ‘what do you mean by that?’

I said, ‘where I come from, in the olden days when you want to eat, you use a local plate called calabash, which the Yorubas call Igba. When the calabash is broken and can no longer be mended, you don’t use it to eat anymore. But you can still use it to carry garbage.

A broken calabash in Yoruba is called Akaragba. Yoruba elders say that if you call your Igba an akaragba, then people will help you to use it to carry garbage.

It is the image of Nigeria that we project in our news media that foreign-ers take up and use in determining what they think of our country.

By the grace of God, I travel to many parts of the world. The moment they see you as a Nigerian, they come to a conclusion that here comes an evil man.

I remember one occasion when I had to preach a sermon at the border before they could allow me in: I told them I am a Christian and a pastor. They said: ‘Ah, being a pastor even makes it worse.’

They said; ‘when was the last time you preach-ed.’ I told them. They said, ‘what did you preach upon?’ I said, ‘Five rea-sons why you should praise God.’ They said, ‘what text did you use?’I said ‘I Peter 2:9.’ They said, ‘quote it!’ I quoted it. They said, ‘preach the sermon.’ And I preached the sermon; the only thing was that they did not allow me to make an Altar call.

When I finished, they said, ‘forgive us. The im-pression we have of Niger-ian pastors is that you are evil.’
How did they get that impression? They have never left their country. What they read in our newspapers, what they hear on our radios and television stations give them the impression that Nigeria is made up of evil men, but I know that Nigerians are not evil.

The total number of evil people living in Nigeria, I can assure you, is less than 0.1 per cent of the country but we constantly publish evil things, which had made the people of the world  come to the conclusion that Nigeria is full of evil.

To illustrate what I am saying, there was a cart-oon in one of the Nigerian newspapers, thank God it is not Vanguard…they had a story that the gover-nment was wooing foreign investors. Then there was this cartoon: a man was carrying a gun and they wrote ‘armed robbery.’ Another one was carrying a weapon they declared ‘kidnapper.’

There was another man declared ‘419ner.’ And then, they wrote at the bottom: ‘A warm welcome awaits you.’
Here, the government was wooing foreign invest-ors and one of your  papers was saying ‘a warm welcome awaits you in the hands of armed robbers, kidnappers and scammers.’ If I had not come to your country be-fore I won’t try it.

I think that the Media can rebrand Nigeria if we can begin to begin to highlight good aspect of the country instead of the bad ones.

Some us will say; ‘are you saying we should not tell the truth?’ No! There is a way of reporting every incident in a positive manner. Let’s say that one of these luxurious buses is involved in a terrible accident, but God forbid, and we want to report it, we could say that this kind of accident was a rare occurrence. Anybody reading that will know that it was not a usual accident and those who want to travel in luxury buses will continue to travel.

Praying that Vanguard Newspapers will grow from strength to strength beyond the shores of the nation, Pastor Adeboye said responsible journal-ism is that which publish-es the truth in love.

“Let us say there was a plane crash; God forbid, it won’t happen in Nigeria again; if we want to report that, we could go ahead and say there was a plane crash but travelling by air remains the safest means of transportation because when you compare the number of planes that take off and land daily, all year round, it is more than a million.

If you really want, you can always find something good in every situation. There was a story that once a upon a time, the Lord Jesus Christ was travelling with his disci-ples and there was a dead dog by the highway that was stinking. The disci-ples closed their noses and were saying, hmm! hmm!! Jesus went close to the dog and said, ‘come and see something.’

They moved close to him and he opened its mouth and said, ‘look at the teeth, so white even in death.’ He saw something good even in the dead dog.