Daily Times publisher sacks editor

Reports reaching NEWSVERGE reveal that The Daily Times publisher, Fidelis Anosike, has sacked the title Editor of the paper, Biodun Durojaiye, for complaining over unpaid staff salaries.

It was reliably gathered that the company owes salaries in batches from May to date, while some staff still have staggered salaries from January 2016.

Durojaiye, was appointed in December 2015, to replace Yinka Olujimi, who was recalled and made the Managing Editor after the paper clocked one year last year. However, Olujimi left the organisation again in protest over unpaid staff salaries.

It was learnt that Durojaiye wrote to the Group General Manager, Olisa Egbunike, complaining about staff poor attitude to work, pleading that for staff salaries to be paid, at worst in batches. When Egbunike forwarded the mail to the Publisher. Anosike immediately ordered the sack of the editor.

The development, we gather, has left the staff perplexed with many wondering what their fate would be since there is no one to speak for them any longer.

When our correspondent visited the paper’s office at Agindingbi, Ikeja in Lagos, members of the editorial staff were discussing the development in hushed tones.

A pioneer line editor of the paper, who spoke in confidence said “it is a sad development; like a bad story repeating all over again. It is when salaries are due for payment that they begin to call for endless meetings where everything else is discussed except the wages.”

It would be recalled that the paper which had slashed staff salaries several times in the short period of its return to the news stand, wrote off three months of staff wages without notice and without explanation to the staff.

Meanwhile, the business world which seems to be getting used to the idea that The Daily Times has come to stay after several attempts in the past that were aborted within months may be disappointed as the graphic artists, we learnt, are not ready to work without pay.