Bakari Steven Machumu (BSM) has left MCL with a great legacy in leadership, journalism, and creativity.
Well. My friend and fellow journalist, Bakari Steven Machumu who likes to abbreviate his name to three letters – BSM, has completed a journey of professional, journalistic and leadership glory in Mwananchi Communications Ltd (MCL).
Bakari or BSM as I like to call him, since we met in the news industry in 1998, he concludes his journey having successfully crossed almost all important professional levels in the newsroom.
He is leaving MCL having left an indelible mark and a legacy of example and the best in welfare, first for himself, secondly for the relevant company and thirdly in the field of the media profession, being probably the most successful journalist professionally than anyone else these days.
There is no doubt at all that, since he first held the position of Chief Executive Editor at MCL and later became the Executive Director, BSM succeeded in raising the company to become a leader in newspaper printing.
Gradually and because of the vision he had in cooperation with his fellow executives, he managed to make MCL stand firm, beating other newspaper companies in the market, including The Guardian Ltd, The Business Times Ltd, New Habari (2006) Ltd and Free Media Ltd which at different times they were loud and shook the world of national news.
When he arrived at MCL in 2004 from the Business Times, he found me working there for four years and being the editor of the Mwananchi Jumari newspaper.
Although he arrived there as the Business Editor of the English newspaper The Citizen and being three years younger than me, it did not take us long to build a friendship, while the main link in our closeness was another editor, Dennis Msacky, who already he and BSM were people. close for many years before.
BSM, who by nature is more of a listener than a speaker and when he says he is very careful in choosing the words to say, gradually he began to be trusted and soon after he became the Executive Editor of The Citizen newspaper.
Two years after working with BSM, I left and joined the company Free Media Ltd where I went to become the Editor-in-Chief and later its Executive Editor.
In an inexplicable way, our professional and intellectual closeness continued to be greater, I was drawing from him the knowledge of how to write commercial news while he was very interested in my analysis of political issues.
During all that time, BSM did not stop telling me the fact that he was closely following everything I was writing about politics, leadership and issues related to good governance and he would always like to have a wider understanding and understanding of these things.
It was at this stage that I began to realize how BSM was making a great effort to monitor political issues every time we stayed and I heard several times that he was accompanied by a team of fellow MCL editors in internal and open conversations with politicians of different backgrounds.
He did this at that time when he was closer professionally to his friend Msacky but he was also following sports issues through Frank Sanga who at that time was the editor of Mwanaspoti's best sports magazine.
The closeness of BSM, Msacky and Sanga brought them closer professionally to the former CEO of MCL at the time, Sam Shollei, and the three, led by Msacky, also joined me in an intellectual association outside the office.
On several occasions, I found myself in friendly gatherings with BSM and his three best professional friends and at one point they came very close to sending me back MCL to join them again.
Although I rejected that influence, that period was when I started to realize the great power of seeing things, thinking, acting and designing of BSM.
I can admit that it was only after the end of the General Election of 2010, when I started to see a shining star in the editorial and especially the leadership of BSM and I was not surprised at all when I heard that he was gradually climbing the ladder in MCL and more so building great respect for himself.
His quiet personality and his firm determination to remain at MCL, began to build him more credibility in the outskirts of the headquarters of MCL's parent company Nation Media Group (NMG) in Nairobi.
At different times as the Chairman of the Tanzania News Forum (TEF) between 2010 and 2016, I had several opportunities to travel with BSM in different places in the country and sometimes in Kenya and Turkey.
Internal and external trips further strengthened our professional and academic closeness and through him I was able to reap the abundance of his professional wisdom and knowledge, which in my opinion was greatly influenced by what they were learning in Nairobi and beyond.
When major technological and informational changes began to occur, BSM took quick steps to find an opportunity to gain more professional knowledge and joined the Master's Degree in Business at ESAMI college.
When he finished his education with great success, I saw a new BSM who had greater knowledge than the one I started to know in 1998.
During the great movement leading to the 2015 General Election, BSM was one of the few editors who refused to be caught in the trap of favoring a certain side of candidates or political parties and ensured that MCL newspapers, especially Mwananchi and The Citizen, took an editorial wing of non-alignment and neutral.
He not only managed that position in editing, because he was already the Chief Executive Editor of MCL, but it was consistent with his personality even outside the newsroom.
Great professional discipline and unwavering management in the values of journalism are the things that began to distinguish him as a stable leader who exceeded the knowledge of several of his friends.
At the same time, in a way that I probably failed to explain, BSM was very quick to first lead the Editorial Department he was leading in the digital transformation, continuing the work whose foundation began to be built by his predecessor, Theophil Makunga, whom many of us, including BSM, have passed in its formation and development.
When he saw the speed of change is great, BSM in consultation with his other best friend Sanga, decided to join the studies of another Master's degree in Leadership in Media and Innovation at the Aga Khan University, which he completed as a top student.
Today's citizen who is run in the way that large national and international commercial organizations are run is to a large extent the result of BSM's vision, influence, creativity and quickness to learn and lead.
