Salisu Shuaibu, a 66-year-old newspaper vendor, stood for hours with his papers but no one to purchase from the bulk.
His skin darkens as the morning sun flashes, to make up the day.
Vehicle owners wheeze around him, and no one seems to care a hoot whether he stands to sell his papers or not.
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In his arm lies top brands of newspapers in Nigeria. Many have sold millions of copies in the past few years.
The business of selling hard copies of newspapers is crawling, but as it does, the online world booms as readers troop to generate massive traffic for the websites.
Salisu’s situation is getting worse as the clock ticks, and the papers he held have the stories already published online, feeding his patronisers on the net.
When interviewed by Daily News 24, he attributed the low sales and patronage to the emergence of the internet.
According to him, people who turn up at the newsstands merely glance or flip through the pages.
”When I asked them whether they want to buy, their response has been they read on the internet” the development which he said has put them out of business.
“We return unsold copies to the company since people don’t buy.” He exclaimed.
Continuing, he said: “People now relish reading stories from the internet than buying hard copies of our newspapers. The internet, I can tell, is a problem since it has affected my business.
“I have spent twenty-five years selling newspapers in Kano. In the past, our business booms. We enjoyed it.
”If we ask our customers, they will tell us they have read it on the net. We only take it to offices and banks where the elderly patronise us.
“We are only managing now. The coming to the online version of newspapers is not a welcome development to vendors like me.
Mr Salisu also hinted that, though online publication is a development, the gain goes to the owners, not vendors who struggle to keep body and soul.
Though he has been in the business for more than twenty-five years, he opts for a night security guard to fill the gap created by the emergence of the internet and or online publications.
As the 21st century progresses, online news fast becoming more popular than the print news.
While the benefits of online news do not necessarily outweigh the benefits of print news, the online medium is seen by many as better equipped to face the challenges that 21st-century users are faced with, and therefore will likely be the medium of choice for the majority of the population in the next few decades in Nigeria and beyond.
