If you were not a broadcaster, what else would you have loved to be?
(Laughs) I must tell you that this job has blessed me and I have been privileged in the sense that this job has taken me to over 70 countries around the world since I started out in my university days. So if I were to come back into this world, I would still want to be a journalist.
Your voice and diction projects you as an English man, but your colour says something different. How would you explain that?
I am a full blown Hausa-Fulani. I have the pigmentation of a Kanuri, but strictly speaking, I am a Hausa-Fulani. My early childhood toughened me. My father encouraged me and curiosity took me to the next level. However, I was taught by my early teachers that if you must speak English, you must speak it in a manner that the white man appreciates you and your country man understands you. It is however also not to sound like one is speaking English more than the Queen or to come up with funny phonetics to convey excellence in the language. Not at all. It is about making your flow to be understood by those who listen to you.
As a broadcaster, I make sure that I communicate with the layers in the family. That is, keep it simple, keep it real and keep it original. So I discovered that the art of communication also comes in three levels: you can acquire it, you can be naturally talented or you go to school and pick it up. Having the three as a journalist means the sky is not the limit, even the orbit is limitless.
Looking back now, to what extent has your background influenced the person that you are today?
I am a person of a modest background. I am not from the family of the rich but from a famous family because I have royal blood in me. I am from the Turaki ruling house in Bauchi, which is a very traditional house of the Bauchi Emirate. My upbringing influenced and tampered my professional career in many ways. At the time my parents passed on, we didn’t have a fridge or gas cooker in the family, though we had a television and I remember the excitement that came with it.
I didn’t grow up with the proverbial golden spoon, but I had the rare luck of having parents who were focused and dedicated in the upbringing of their children. My father was particularly tough. He toughened me, took me through the rounds of early childhood; through the tough learning curves of those days. For me to have what was considered then as koranic education, I was actually handed over to a Koranic mallam as an almajiri. I did that for a number of years. I fetched water, worked on the farm, went out with the herds of cattle, played the role of an apprentice herds man and, you won’t believe it, I begged for food. But that ended the day an uncle who went to watch a local wrestling match saw me in the house of his friend, chanting and begging for food. He went back to my dad and told him no more. So I was rescued from the Almajiri system.
But my dad did that with the best intention. He wanted me to be educated in Islam and learn some of the challenges of life early. That toughened me to face the realities of life today as we have it. So I didn’t have the luxury of nursery school and lunch box like it is today. It was a crass, local but original life. I was embedded in a strictly traditional if not regimented family system, with strong norms and values that are germane to the society where I was born into. That was my early life.
Did it cross your mind then that you could one day rise to the top of a career?
No, it didn’t. But I found my way through the normal primary school, to secondary education and then graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communication from Bayero University Kano. Whilst a student, I was actually working part-time with Bauchi Radio Corporation or NTA. I actually picked up a job with NTA in 1981. By the time I was a graduate, I was already a full grown broadcaster. The journey till this moment has been very tough.
If you asked me when I was growing up in the ancient city of Bauchi whether I would go past the four walls of that city, I would have told you no. But today, I am grateful to God for the very robust and roundly fulfilling professional career that looks to me a seamless dream. It has been a wonderful experience going through the ranks, not having the proverbial godfather, as obtainable in the Nigerian society, to have been so blessed to rise to the pinnacle of one’s professional career. I can only continue to glorify God, appreciate Him by the day and be grateful for the opportunity I’ve had in life and still enjoy.
Why broadcasting?
I think from the time I began to appreciate life in its dynamic form, probably when I was in class 3, I had an experience. My dad was an ardent radio listener. He was usually tuned to the Hausa broadcast from the BBC and other stations too. I had a curiosity about what was inside that box that had people’s voices in it. One day, after he left, I toyed with the radio to see if the people talking would really come out. I ended up messing up the box and I took the beating of my life. So childhood curiosity and the fact that my destiny is cast on the profession of broadcasting attracted me.
While in secondary school, I was already asking my teachers the subjects to take to become a broadcaster. They told me English and English literature; that I must read lots and lots of books and novels. So, in those days, we read all the James Hadley Chase novels. We tried to get our act right, so we equipped ourselves in the classroom. We did a lot of classroom debates, sometimes reading in front of the mirror, trying to sound like the likes of Bode Alalade of that period. I grew up with an insatiable volume of incurable and irresistible desire to become a journalist. Although my dad wanted me to read Islamic Studies, I implored my uncles to persuade him before he agreed. I became educated on it and appreciated the profession the more later. I felt I could use broadcasting, the media generally, to impact on my society and to be a net contributor in the development of my town. Later on, the dream grew bigger to my state and later on still, I found myself with the rare privilege of being a broadcaster on a national level. It was a dream not only coming true but also the positive realities coming into being and making me appreciate the profession every day in spite of the challenges. I have literally seen it all. We are still young in it even at the age of 53.
Your diction is quite impressive and it makes one to wonder about the reading culture you just talked about and the classroom debates you used to have. Did all that happen in the supposed less privileged north?
Of course, it happened in Bauchi. I am just an ordinary Bauchi boy. I remember the first time we saw a taxi; that was after the civil war. We knew then that a war was going on, but we didn’t really understand what it was really about. But then, after the frayed nerves of national challenge calmed down and the society began to pick up on modernization and nationalism, the first time a taxi came into Bauchi, some of us felt that it was a car that was going around collecting tax (laughs). We didn’t know it was a car meant to people to their destinations for a payment. That was in 1972. We were boys about town, tinkering about life and it clicked as I found a romance with broadcasting which opened doors of privileges.
Northern Nigeria is believed to be backward educationally compared to other parts of the country. But the impression you are giving now is that education has been generating much interest and followership in the north for long.
Absolutely! I think that there has been a stereotype stigma as regards that because of the barrier of ethnicity and the barrier of politics and the trappings of nationalism. A lot of people had different perceptions about each other’s regions. A lot of people believe that then and probably now, there is a dearth of education in the north. Yes, to some extent. But then also, it is not entirely so. Education, if we define it within the content and context of western education, it means so. But if you take education as the art of reading and learning and communicating, you can equally say that the Arabic education, which is very prominent in the north, is a form of communicating and learning.
There are people today who are Hausa, Fulani and even Yoruba in the north who speak so fluently the Arabic language that you will never believe that they are Africans or Nigerians. So education is dependent on the content and context that one looks at it. We believe in the north that education is the art of learning, writing, communicating, translating and transliterating, commentary, analyses and so on. It does not really stop at western education. That is the point. And in terms of western education, the north is fast doing a catching up game, make no mistake about that. If you take the enrolment figures in Imo State at one time, it is more than the enrolment figures in primary schools in half of the northern states.
What is your impression of the almajiri system?
In the north, like I told you, in the beginning, I was an almajiri. We are still battling with that problem in the north. In Imo State, it is unlawful for a kid to be in the market or at the shop, or mechanic garage or do any form of trading between 7.30 am and 1.30 pm. If such a kid is caught, there is a law in place to punish or sanction the parents. But not so in the north, and that is why you find that you cannot have your cake and eat it. That is why some of us have been advocating silently without necessarily coming to the pages of newspapers or other mass media, but speaking to governors and other such leaders to take such actions regarding education. We are silently pleading with our leaders in the north to give education a priority.
I didn’t have the privilege of watching Sesame Street and cartoons in my time, or carry lunch box to school. But then, I have had that rare privilege from God to learn and appreciate and acquire knowledge through reading and through meeting and association with people who are knowledgeable.
You said you rose through the ranks…
Yes I did. I found myself moving to another level every other year. I started as a News Assistant with Bauchi Radio Corporation. I remember the first time I read the news, I felt like somebody had put a nine inch block on my neck. At the time I came out, I was sweating profusely. I asked my producer how it went, and he said that I did very well. I didn’t know whether he said that to encourage me, but from there, I found my rhythm and picked up my lines. And I probably did every other programme you can think of on radiorequest, musical, news with translation in Hausa, features and so on. The only ones I didn’t do were those programmes in local languages that I never spoke.
I found myself crossing to television by default. As an ardent tennis player, on a fateful day, the gentleman that was to read the news but for one reason or another did not turn up. There was no other person in the newsroom to take the news. Somebody remembered seeing me at the lawn tennis court playing tennis. I was working with Bauchi Radio Corporation then. So they came to me with a request that I take the news. I said why not? So I went in my knickers, they gave me a big gown and then a hat on and I sat down to read the news with Mr Andy Iheme who now works with the Open University in Calabar. When he saw me the next day, he asked me where I am from. I told him and he encouraged me. Till date, we call and joke about it. That was how I found myself on television. It was crass, pure interest that led me on.
Let’s look at your work as the DG of FRCN. Has it been fun?
It is very challenging, exciting, demanding and exceptionally tasking. FRCN, from the outside, looks easy. But I can assure you from my experience that you will need a lot of tonic to work and succeed as the CEO. I am grateful to God who has given me committed people in the management who buy into my vision and mission to help take FRCN to the next level. So it has been challenging but also rewarding.
Would you say that you have made improvement on its status from the point that your predecessors left it?
I do not want to sound egotistic, and I do not want to be seen as beating my drum. But to be honest, I think we have made some modest strides. For my generation, a task with an opportunity to lead an organization is very rare. A lot of considerations are given in the appointment of chief executive officers, so you rarely find hard core professionals in the commanding heights of affairs of parastatals. So I consider myself exceptionally lucky.
So for me, taking FRCN to the next level was a race against time. So when I got into the helm of affairs of FRCN a little under two years ago, I discovered that the organisation must move in line with global best practices. We must prepare technology, information and communication, facilitate and digitize our audio platform and ensure that our working environment becomes less stressful, more user friendly to give the corporation both character and direction.
When I got into FRCN, all our studios were in the main building, the tall 12-storey building of Radio House in Abuja. The network newsroom and the programmes sections were all on the 11th floor. Then I discovered that there was a whole studio complex with 22 studios with three huge conference rooms by the side of the building uncompleted but under lock and key for 31 years! When I saw the choked up studios that the staff were using, I went to my office and prayed to God that I would remain grateful for the priviledge to serve, that God should prepare this organization for me just as He prepared me for the job. That is because the challenges were so enormous despite the fact that we had a professional, capable, excited work force with passion for the job.
So what did you perceive as the problem?
There was hardly a platform for them to showcase their worth. So I decided to open up the studios. I gathered the management and we looked at it together but saw that the work to be done was huge and scary. But we started bit by bit. Right now, all our 22 studios are housed in studio complexes with the exception of Kapital FM, mainly because the studio we got for that is a bit smaller. It was better to leave them where they are. But in the 22 new studio complexes, we have the most modern newsroom complex in this country with the most modern computers, with the requisite software for editing with online news operation.
We have networked our studios. We did the recent election coverage from these studios. We fitted them with new equipment and our news and programmes section has also migrated from the main building to the new studio complex. We did all that in less than eight months. These have also brought a great difference into our system of operations.
We are also into a huge project presently. We want to build a 24-hour radio Nigeria network channel that you can tune to wherever you are in this country all through the day; a channel that will feature everything from news to features, interviews and so on. Barring budgetary considerations, we are looking at starting that from October in Lagos and Abuja before expanding to Kaduna and Port Harcourt, Bauchi and Enugu, then Kano and Ibadan, Sokoto and Ilorin, Calabar and Jos and eventually expanding all over the country in the next 18 months in which time we should have coverage of the whole of this country. When we say we are the largest radio organization in the continent, we must be seen to be exactly that.
Does that mean new employment windows?
Well right now, we have capable staff to man our new ideas. We have enough manpower except for a few FM stations
