By Max Amuchie | The Sunday Stew

This fourth instalment of the Sundiata Post Model asks the inevitable question: What must a knowledge-producing newsroom do to survive, adapt and remain relevant across generations?

Also read: Sundiata Post Boss Max Amuchie Earns ScienceOpen Academic Appointment

That question is the gateway to what we call the Realm of the Long Term.

Every institution eventually enters the Realm of the Long Term. It is the stage at which immediate success gives way to enduring relevance, and where the central question is no longer whether an organisation can perform today, but whether it can continue creating public value across generations. Entering this realm requires more than ambition.

It demands governance, institutional memory, financial resilience, leadership succession, continuous learning and an unwavering commitment to trust. This is the realm in which institutions either become enduring or gradually disappear.

The Realm of the Long Term is the point at which management ceases to focus primarily on performance and begins to focus on long-term stewardship.

Decisions are evaluated not only by their immediate outcomes but by their contribution to the institution’s capacity to create enduring public value across generations.

Within the Sundiata Post Model the Realm of the Long Term rests on seven interdependent pillars: Financial Sustainability, Human Capital and Leadership, Knowledge Stewardship, Governance, Innovation and Adaptation, Trust and Reputation, and Mission Continuity.

Together, these pillars determine whether an institution merely survives the present or continues creating public value across generations.

Financial Sustainability

Financial Sustainability is the institution’s capacity to generate, diversify, steward and invest financial resources in ways that preserve its independence, strengthen its capabilities and enable it to pursue its mission across generations.

Financial Sustainability is the institution’s capacity to generate diverse, mission-aligned sources of income that preserve its independence while strengthening both its Media Operations Engine and its Knowledge Operations Engine over the long term.

No institution, however compelling its vision or noble its mission, can endure without the economic capacity to sustain its work. Institutions do not survive on ideas alone.

They survive because they deliberately create the financial resources that allow those ideas to mature into enduring public value.

Within the Sundiata Post Model, Financial Sustainability is understood differently from its conventional treatment in management literature. It is not simply about generating revenue, balancing budgets or maintaining profitability.

Rather, it is the strategic financing of a knowledge-producing institution. Its purpose is to preserve institutional independence while providing the resources required to sustain both the Media Operations Engine and the Knowledge Operations Engine over the long term.

The Media Operations Engine generates value through journalism and public engagement. Its financial ecosystem includes advertising, brand partnerships, digital marketing, content syndication, commercial publishing, multimedia production, conferences, annual lectures, policy dialogues, executive forums and other public-facing institutional activities.

These are not merely commercial ventures; they are mission-aligned enterprises that strengthen the institution’s capacity to produce independent journalism.

The Knowledge Operations Engine expands the institution’s financial horizon beyond the traditional economics of media.

As the institution generates original knowledge, it creates opportunities for research grants, commissioned studies, partnerships with universities, think tanks and research institutions, collaborative projects with international organisations, consultancy, executive education, policy research, book publishing, biographies, proprietary datasets and the licensing of analytical frameworks, indices and methodologies.

Knowledge itself becomes an institutional asset capable of creating both public value and sustainable income.
This represents a fundamental shift in how media organisations think about finance.

The Sundiata Post Model recognises that journalism and knowledge production are complementary economic activities.

The first generates public attention, civic engagement and commercial opportunities; the second generates intellectual capital, scholarly influence and knowledge-based revenue.

Together, they produce a diversified and resilient institutional economy capable of supporting long-term growth without compromising editorial independence or research integrity.
Financial Sustainability therefore extends beyond accounting. It encompasses the institution’s capacity to build strategic partnerships, secure collaborative projects, attract research funding, develop intellectual property and transform original ideas into enduring institutional assets.

In the Realm of the Long Term, Financial Sustainability is ultimately the stewardship of institutional resources in service of institutional purpose.

It is the first pillar because every other pillar depends upon it. Without sustainable financing, governance becomes fragile, knowledge production becomes intermittent, innovation slows, leadership development suffers and institutional memory gradually erodes.

2. Human Capital and Leadership

If Financial Sustainability provides the economic foundation of an enduring institution, Human Capital and Leadership provide its human foundation.

Buildings, technology, financial resources and even brilliant institutional designs do not create enduring organisations by themselves. Institutions ultimately rise or decline because of the quality of the people who lead them and the culture they cultivate.

Within the Sundiata Post Model, Human Capital extends beyond recruitment.

It encompasses the deliberate attraction, development, retention and continuous renewal of talented professionals who possess not only technical competence but also a commitment to the institution’s mission, values and standards.

An institution enters the Realm of the Long Term only when it begins to think beyond filling positions to building generations of capable people.

Leadership occupies a special place within this pillar. The true measure of leadership is not merely what is accomplished during a leader’s tenure, but what remains after that tenure has ended. Institutions become enduring when leadership is viewed as stewardship rather than ownership.

Every generation of leaders inherits an institution from those who came before and bears the responsibility of strengthening it for those who will come after.

This requires intentional investment in professional development, mentorship, succession planning and organisational culture.

Expertise must be cultivated. Institutional values must be transmitted. Leadership pipelines must be continuously renewed.

The departure of talented individuals should never threaten the continuity of the institution because knowledge, experience and responsibility lhave been systematically transferred to the next generation.

For a knowledge-producing institution, this responsibility becomes even greater. Journalists must continuously improve their craft.

Researchers must deepen their methodological competence. Editors must strengthen both editorial judgment and institutional leadership.

The objective is not merely to employ professionals but to cultivate an intellectual community capable of sustaining journalism, research and public service over the long term.

3. Knowledge Stewardship

Knowledge Stewardship is the deliberate creation, preservation, governance and transmission of institutional knowledge so that learning accumulates rather than disappears.

Every institution produces knowledge through its daily operations. Yet much of that knowledge is often lost through staff turnover, poor documentation or organisational neglect. The Sundiata Post Model rejects this waste.

It regards datasets, editorial experience, research outputs, methodologies, institutional records and accumulated expertise as strategic assets that must be governed, preserved and continuously enriched. Knowledge stewardship transforms experience into institutional capital.

4. Governance

Governance is the system of structures, principles and accountability through which an institution safeguards its mission, exercises authority responsibly and makes sound strategic decisions.

Strong institutions are not sustained by personalities alone but by systems that outlive individuals.

Effective governance establishes clear responsibilities, ethical standards, transparency, accountability and strategic oversight.

It protects institutional integrity during periods of growth, crisis and leadership transition. Within the Realm of the Long Term, governance provides stability without preventing innovation.

5. Innovation and Adaptation

Innovation and Adaptation are the institution’s capacity to respond intelligently to changing technological, economic and social environments while remaining faithful to its core mission.
Long-term institutions do not survive by resisting change.

They survive by adapting continuously without abandoning the principles that define them. Innovation therefore extends beyond technology.

It includes new products, new organisational practices, new revenue models, new research methods and new ways of engaging society. Adaptation ensures relevance; mission provides continuity.

6. Trust and Reputation

Trust and Reputation constitute an institution’s accumulated credibility, earned through consistent competence, integrity and public service over time.

Trust is not created by slogans or marketing campaigns. It is built gradually through countless decisions that demonstrate reliability, fairness and professionalism.

Reputation becomes one of an institution’s most valuable strategic assets because it influences public confidence, partnerships, talent recruitment and long-term legitimacy.

In the Sundiata Post Model, trust is not simply an ethical aspiration; it is an institutional resource that must be deliberately protected.

7. Mission Continuity

Mission Continuity is the institution’s ability to preserve its fundamental purpose while continually renewing its strategies, structures and methods.
Institutions that endure distinguish between mission and method. Their purpose remains constant even as the means of fulfilling that purpose evolve.

Mission continuity prevents organisations from losing their identity in response to short-term pressures while enabling them to adapt confidently to changing circumstances.

It provides the enduring direction that unites successive generations of leaders, professionals and stakeholders.

The seven pillars are mutually reinforcing. They are not independent compartments that can be strengthened or weakened in isolation.

The erosion of one inevitably affects the others, because institutions endure as integrated systems rather than as collections of separate functions.

Without Financial Sustainability, you cannot recruit and retain the best people (Human Capital and Leadership).
Without capable people, Knowledge Stewardship deteriorates.

Without Knowledge Stewardship, Innovation and Adaptation becomes weak because there is little accumulated knowledge to build upon.

Weak Governance eventually damages Trust and Reputation.
Once trust declines, revenue suffers, weakening Financial Sustainability again.
Eventually, Mission Continuity is threatened.

The Global South

While the region has produced many outstanding newspapers and broadcasters, relatively few have demonstrated the kind of uninterrupted institutional continuity that characterises some of the world’s oldest media organisations.

Political instability, economic volatility, succession challenges, fragile governance structures and rapidly changing media economics have made institutional longevity the exception rather than the rule.

The Realm of the Long Term is therefore not merely about preserving an existing institution; it is about addressing one of the enduring structural weaknesses of media development in Africa and much of the Global South.

The ambition is to build media organisations that do not merely survive their founders, but continue to generate public value across generations.

However, there are few media institutions that have proved capable of surviving across generations.

In Nigeria, the Nigerian Tribune, founded in 1949 by Obafemi Awolowo, has endured for more than seven decades, surviving colonial rule, independence, military governments, democratic transitions and the digital revolution.

In South Asia, The Hindu in India, established in 1878, and Dawn in Pakistan, founded in 1941, have likewise sustained their institutional identities through profound political, economic and technological change.

In the developed world, organisations such as Reuters (founded in 1851), The Economist (established in 1843), The New York Times (founded in 1851) have demonstrated similar resilience over even longer periods.

The longevity of these institutions suggests that enduring media organisations share certain characteristics.

They invest in governance, preserve institutional memory, renew leadership, adapt to technological change, cultivate public trust and develop sustainable business models.

Their endurance is rarely accidental; it is the product of deliberate institutional choices sustained over decades.

The Sundiata Post Model seeks to identify, organise and systematise institutional principles that appear repeatedly among such media organisations. In that sense, it is both descriptive and prescriptive.

It draws lessons from enduring institutions while proposing a coherent framework for building the knowledge-producing newsroom of the twenty-first century.

Finally, history shows that ideas sometimes outgrow the domains in which they were first conceived. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War was written as a treatise on military strategy, yet its principles have since informed thinking on business, leadership and organisational management.

Likewise, while the Sundiata Post Model is proposed as a framework for twenty-first-century journalism, its underlying principles of knowledge production, institutional memory, governance and long-term stewardship may ultimately prove relevant to other knowledge-intensive organisations.

Also read: Sundiata Post Marks Milestone as Amuchie’s Theory Goes Global

Whether that broader applicability emerges is not for me, as its author, to determine, but for others—scholars, intellectuals, media executives, publishers, and management experts—to test, adapt, critique and refine through practice.

Trust is sacred. Stay seasoned

By Ikeddy ISIGUZO,

HIS Excellency Distinguished Senator Obong Dr. Godswill Obot Akpabio, Senate President, two-tenure Governor of Akwa Ibom State, former Minister of Niger Delta, supervising the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDCC, former PDP Senate Minority Leader, who is no longer of interest to EFCC since he joined APC, should explain to Nigerians how the national budget became a bizarre bazaar in a blizzard of hustlers, under his keen watch.

Also read: Oyo Assembly Clears Makinde’s Leave Request, Deputy Takes Over

This is not an allegation. It is a call for Akpabio, to in a clear voice, stripped of fake accents, devoid of derisive side remarks, to tell us how we thought we had a budget for the needs of Nigeria.

In the last few weeks, it is clearer that the scandals in the 2026 budget are competing for brazen awards.

Honourable Abdulmumin Jibrin, Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, exposed a major budget scandal in 2016 by accusing Speaker Yakubu Dogara, Deputy Speaker Yusuf Lasun, Chief Whip Alhassan Doguwa, and Minority Leader Leo Ogor of padding the 2016 budget. He claimed about 2,000 unauthorised and fictitious projects worth over ₦284 billion were smuggled into the budget.

The budget runs into thousands of page. The 2026 budget is in 2,790 pages, enough spaces for fake agencies and those endless solar street lights farmed out to government officials and agencies that have no relationship with street lights of any kind, to be inserted.

In 2016 Honourable Jibrin shouted until he was suspended with a lengthy absence beyond the law. Not one member of the House of Representatives spoke up in his defence though the accused prefaced the allegations with the admission that he was a beneficiary of the loot. He was suspended while the fat cats who he openly named stayed on their plum seats.

The award-winning anti-corruption Buhari administration said nothing. Its agencies followed the prompt.

Looting in this manner was called budget padding. If you have powers and adequate greed, you added whatever you wanted, often running into billions, and pulled it out as trappings of office. No questions.

The most we would hear are whimpers from those who were dealt with unfairly in the sharing of the loot.

Part of oversight functions became agencies being forced to execute “constituency projects” for legislature in parts far cast from their locations.

Have we forgotten that Federal College of Education, Umunze, Anambra State, was constructing roads in Surulere, Lagos State, 522 kilometres away? This was at a time the school considered its budget inadequate and its internal road were in a state – with no budget to fix them.

For fuller disclosure and perspective, Surulere was the constituency of the Honourable Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, now the Chief of Staff to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The construction board shamelessly announced, the project, with College of Education, Umunze, as the “client”.

Gbaja, as he is still fondly called, is not alone in this practice which persists and preceded his arrival at the headship of the House of Representatives.

The explanation from the Speaker’s Office deepened the mystery about the relationship between Umunze and Surulere.

“It is, therefore, crucial to inform the public that the Speaker did not divert or swap projects from the South East to South West, but that the legislature has a technical template for budgeting in which executing agencies of Federal Government, most time, are allotted jobs outside of their locations,” the statement clarified.

How does the College of Education, Umunze move from the “client” of the road project that was awarded to JRB Construction Limited, an Abuja-based company, to being the “executing agency” of its own project? Gbaja muddled up the explanation, if ever there was one.

The public only learnt “that the legislature has a technical template for budgeting in which executing agencies of Federal Government” were allocated projects outside their locations.

College of Education, Umunze did not bid for the project. It had no known competence in road construction. While the construction board stated that it was paying for the contract, it was also downgraded to an executing agency of a contract it supposedly awarded.

By the time the Auditor-General of the Federation audits the accounts of ministries and agencies fingers frequently point at the National Assembly as a promoter of opaque accounting practices.

The Auditor-General’s report forwarded to the National Assembly in 2025 exposed that in 2022, the Corporate Affairs Commission had N118.75 million undocumented spending, which CAC said it spent on Nigerian lawmakers on their frequent visits for oversight functions.

Will the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly look into these matters?Let us note that 2022 was also the year of College of Education, Umunze constructing roads in Surulere from the school’s annual budget.

It is in the midst of the abuse of budgets and budgeting processes – the building and renovating of palaces for traditional rulers, churches and mosques getting funding – that Akpabio made a most tepid statement that hinted at his timid determination to punish a contractor who he alleged embarrassed the National Assembly and Nigeria. Both can be merged to read Akpabio.

According to Akpabio, he was embarrassed while addressing the House of Representatives when he discovered that the microphones were not working well. He warned the contractor and said he had issued earlier warnings about shoddy maintenance jobs.

Why was Akpabio bringing his troubles with microphones to the attention of the public? What did he say that we needed microphones to hear?

Of all the issues buffeting Nigerians from all sides, he chose to intervene over malfunctioning microphones. It would be recorded for him among his many achievements.

The national budget is being frittered away. Funds, mostly borrowed, are being shared to individual interests that are in conflict with national interests. Akpabio is silent in a great example of absent leadership.

Akpabio will not do anything. Akpabio cannot do anything. His grovelling even in public before the President leaves little to wonder about what happens in private.

Turning up at the National Assembly proudly donnng the Tinubu cap, marked the beginning of his submission of the National Assembly to Tinubu.

When at the launching of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, renamed Tinubu Coastal Highway only last week, Akpabio broke into the “On your mandate we shall stand” song, stopping mid stanza on discovering that his croaky voice was the only one nauseating the public.

With or without microphone, Akpabio should address Nigerians on his silent role in the dispersal of our national resources through the imprimatur of the National Assembly which he controls. Could this be what standing on Tinubu’s mandate means?

Finally…
.FOR over three years Governor Hope Uzodinma has overseen the South-East like a viceroy accountable to Tinubu. He spoke for South-East or decided not to speak at all.

The summary of his speeches – the South-East is lucky to have Tinubu as President and in gratitude should vote him for another tortuous tenure.

The wider belief is that Tinubu has the South-East’s five Governors in his pocket. Alex Otti says Uzodinma cannot speak for other Governors and that they did not endorse Tinubu.

But when you listen to Otti speak about Tinubu, it is more than an endorsement. Otti possibly wants to endorse Tinubu directly not through a proxy.

NIGERIA’S football is of low capacity, riddled with administrative incapacity, technical incompetence, and corruption is a given.

It cannot survive without a major surgery to kick life into it. Any investment in our football today is a waste unless the shackles on our football are broken. First move would be dismantling the NFF which a Federal High Court declared illegal in 2012: the judgement subsists 14 years on.

The planned election should be on hold until the obstacles to inclusiveness, accountability, governance are rested. Let us organise our football, that should be a priority over who attends the next FIFA Congress or who lugs the next meaningless titles. More next week.

MRS Oluremi Tinubu has just donated N2 billion to be invested in reviving the production of Akwete fabrics in Abia State. Nice one, though I keep wondering about the source of the money she donates.

WE should be grateful to whoever or whatever got Senator David Nweze Umahi quiet in the past week.

Could it be this? The Incorporated Trustees of the Southern Kaduna Peoples’ United Association, SOKAPU, has instituted a suit against Umahi before the Federal High Court in Kaduna against the Minister of Works, David Umahi, over the death of Mary Habila on June 27 at the minister’s residence.

SOKAPU is seeking an order compelling the conduct of an autopsy on the deceased to establish the cause of death and is also claiming N20 billion in damages against Umahi over the alleged loss of life arising from what it described as a breach of duty of care while the deceased was under his custody.

Also read: Oyo Assembly Clears Makinde’s Leave Request, Deputy Takes Over

Umahi was 63 yesterday and the President hailed him as “one of my outstanding, hardworking ministers, with passion, dedication to duty, and deep sense of patriotism”.

By Azu Ishiekwene

It was painful to watch him outside No.10 on Monday. Despite his immaculate suit and well-groomed hair, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer looked like he was facing a public execution.

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The bespoke podium, which had been in use since David Cameron’s tenure, looked more like a stake, and Starmer’s valedictory like a miserere before the bullets would be discharged.

The carnage that British politics has become has just claimed its sixth prime minister in a decade. Britain is not doing as badly as Italy – yet – which had 50 governments and 15 prime ministers between 1946 and 1994, but at the current rate, it’s not doing badly at becoming Europe’s next Britaly, as The Economist once described it.

Which is all difficult to understand, given that for the two-and-a-half years of his premiership, Starmer never failed to remind voters that he came to power in one of the largest electoral landslides in recent British history.

Not entirely untrue. Labour won 411 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, a majority of 174 seats over all other parties combined. Starmer’s Labour was the largest party in England, Scotland and Wales, and the first government since 2010 to end 14 years of Conservative rule.

Landslide, backslide

So, what happened? Boris Johnson, who had a chaotic and scandal-ridden premiership, has suggested that Starmer won because the Conservatives collapsed rather than due to voter enthusiasm for Labour.

He told Sky News that Starmer lost because he was a stumbling block who stood in the way instead of providing vision and leadership, virtues that I’m not sure Johnson would recognise, even in plain sight.

He was being half-clear. He conveniently forgot that his wrong-headed decision to remove Britain from the European Union is part of the price his successors, including Starmer, have had to pay. Starmer’s successor, Andy Burnham, will also be paying for it.

A study by researchers affiliated with institutions including the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Bank of England estimated that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by between six and eight per cent relative to a non-Brexit scenario.

Business investment was down nearly 18 per cent, while productivity and employment also went down.

Post-Brexit, the British economy has been fragile, and the cost-of-living crisis has taken a toll on the middle class and pensioners. Young British adults are poorer than their parents were.

Complications, complications

Yet, none of this should have come as a surprise to Starmer. He knew that the economy was fragile, that the cost of living was rising, and public services were stretched when he campaigned to provide economic stability, fiscal discipline and a competent government.

When he positioned himself as everything to everyone, that strategic ambivalence helped him to win; it couldn’t keep him in power.

He not only knew the mess that Brexit had left the country in, but he also knew that the country was yet to fully recover from the COVID-19 supply chain disruptions and massive payouts, which added billions of pounds to the national debt, apart from the losses to fraud, estimated by a Reuters report at £10.9 billion.

The US-Israel war on Iran has piled on the chaotic fallouts of the Russia-Ukraine war, raising food prices and energy costs around the world and forcing many UK households to deal with levels of inflation that they had not experienced for years.

Every UK prime minister after Johnson – from Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak and Starmer – has had to contend with the economic legacy of three successive shocks: Brexit, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and now, the Middle East crisis.

Politics, poetry and prose

Yet, when politicians campaign, their poetry distorts our common sense, and we’re seduced by the hope that perhaps, just perhaps, it might be different this time.

But Starmer knew there was not much he could do. When he said before the election that Labour would not increase taxes, for example, he knew he would not find the money to plug the hole. So, he was forced to make a U-turn.

When he promised welfare reforms and fiscal discipline, he knew he was speaking with both sides of his mouth. But that was what his voters, especially his base and the campaign groups, wanted to hear.

And when he promised a clean, competent government – a departure from the sleaze years – Peter Mandelson was smiling, waiting to snooker him. The outcome was a shambles for the government’s reputation.

And when Starmer was boasting about a landslide, he knew that the result of the election that brought him to power was more nuanced. It was a victory by default.

While Tony Blair, for example, won 43.2 per cent of the popular vote share in 1997, Starmer won only 33.7 per cent, reflecting a far narrower popular mandate than he cared to admit publicly.

According to a YouGov Poll, among the people who voted Labour in 2024 and then participated in the 2026 local elections, only 46 per cent remained with Labour.

About 22 per cent moved to the Greens, 16 per cent to the Liberal Democrats, while 6 per cent moved to Reform UK.

With a drastic decline in public trust of politicians and public institutions, it’s not surprising that Starmer’s landslide fizzled before he could fully milk it.

The palace coup that forced out the Prime Minister was not because Labour MPs loved him less, but because they love themselves more.

Wheeling in Burnham from the shadows to No.10 was a move by the Backbenchers to buy time and fend off the lunacy of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party.

Talking big

Burnham has started by announcing big, obviously more left-wing Labour policies, from removing VAT on domestic electricity bills for six months to restoring the £2 cap on single bus fares across England, and from expanded housebuilding to greater public investment outside London.

He has also talked about increasing defence spending, while whispers of “nationalisation” have even been heard.

But it won’t be long before he might stumble on the question that has snagged his six predecessors: where will the money come from? Once upon a United Kingdom, when the country was at the peak of its powers, it controlled nearly 20 per cent of the world’s manufacturing output, which, of course, was after it robbed India, among others, of its pre-industrial manufacturing dominance and converted it into a primary producing country.

At the height of Britain’s influence, one-quarter of the earth’s surface was its farmland. Those days are gone.

Copying Italy?

The world has changed since Britannia ruled the waves. While Britain remains one of the world’s leading economies, its current sunset phase has taken a heavy toll on its prosperity.

Strong alignment with NATO and the European Community, which later became the EU, helped Italy navigate its turbulent years. Unfortunately, Britain chose to leave the EU when it needed it most.

The last thing the country needs is a premier who sells hope at a high price. Burnham positioned himself as a beacon for his stranded Labour Party.

Also read: Governor Dauda Lawal Signs Landmark Education Reform Orders, Rolls Out National Curriculum in Schools

Yet his record in Manchester urges caution. Already, he is making expensive, even extravagant promises that may come back to bite him. At this rate, he may well not be the last prime minister before the general election in 2029.