When it comes to business, Nigerians have a herd mentality. One person sets up something and it appears successful and soon you find everyone else fast tracking their way to that kind of business. For instance, it was once the in-thing to set-up garbage disposal business whereby someone gets a decrepit truck or two and emblazons the body with the letters ‘Clean Town’ or some such evocative sounding name and proceeds to pick-up garbage – for a fee – from private residences or business. But like most things in Nigeria including the tailoring fad that saw graduates setting up shop as tailors it soon petered out.

Time was also when the only game in town was to set up a bank.This was during the Babangida era when a so-called liberalization of the economy dramatized this country’s infinite capacity for excess. Then banks sprouted all over the place bearing every conceivable name derived from the four cardinal points or the names of the zodiac. Such was the number of banks that promoters were in danger of running out of names.

A reflection of the casino economy of the period and which largely subsists till this day, it is no surprise that many of these banks crashed taking many hapless depositors’ money with them. The ones that limped along did not survive the Soludo Big Bang when banks were forced to achieve a minimum capitalization of 25billion naira.

But for as long as the party lasted, major shareholders in banks could strut the stage and indulge themselves as important players in the economy. They of course took good care of themselves as directors awarding to themselves all manner of perks and allowances that, were there full disclosure, could have provoked a revolt by other shareholders or even a visit from the regulatory authorities.

Today, the big business is the media. Few media practitioners will tell you there is much money in it. In fact you would need to pay your dues and undergo many heartaches to even smell a whiff of money. If there really is no money in it and you have to have very deep pockets to sustain it, why is there a rush to set up newspapers in particular?

At the last count what are billed to be four major newspapers are in the offing, with The Compass which had loudly proclaimed its impending arrival, entering into the market with a whimper only some days ago and appropriating NewAge’s marketing punch-line, ‘a different kind of newspaper’.

The reason for the influx has to do surely with the political era we are in. Politicians thrive, even survive on the oxygen of publicity. And what better way to guarantee that publicity than to own a newspaper or other media house.

There are also those who imagine that the media confers some sort of power and respectability on the owners . This may be so. Otherwise how would anyone imagine former Delta State governor James Ibori turning up at the Aso Rock Villa as a newspaper publisher?

Also in a society where appearances often count more than substance, people who want to be in the public eye would do anything including suborning the poor journalists on the field to have their pictures or stories given some prominence. Such people would hold successful publishers in some awe.

But as anyone who is in this business will tell you credibility is everything – credibility of the practitioners, credibility of the owners. The public sees through all the gimmickry and would be loathe to sustain a medium owned by a brigand unless of course it in no way reflects the values and agenda of the owner.Even then it would be a rough road. At the end of the day newspapers fall on the credibility question. If this quality is lacking not even the deepest pocket can sustain a newspaper.