How I became a broadcast journalist, by Toyin Gbadebo

http://www.gatewaymail.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Toyin-Gbadebo...at-60..jpg

 

NIGERIA: PRINCE Toyin Gbadebo, who came into broadcasting by accident of fate, is a veteran in the Nigerian broadcasting landscape.  He ended being hooked and could not go back as he developed a robust career in the broadcasting world.  Gbadebo, often called Gbade, had seen it all in broadcasting, from the news to the current affairs division. He is the pioneer Producer of the Ogun State Broadcasting Corporation (OGBC) flagship programme “Sunday Morning Life On FM’’, which has run for 22 years.  Gbadebo, a Prince from the Laarun Ruling House of Egbaland, Ogun State, Nigeria, has bowed out of broadcasting into retirement after meritorious 35 years of service in the OGBC as Deputy General Manager (News).  In this encounter with him, Gbadebo, a father of three children from his wife, Oluwayemisi, told GatewayMail how he came into broadcasting and other salient issues in the broadcasting industry.  Excerpts:

By Waheed Ogunjobi (Abeokuta)

Q:  How did you find yourself in the broadcasting sector?

A: My own case is a little bit different because I majored in print, but during my service year, I was posted to Radio Kwara and I was opportuned to work in virtually all the departments in the news, current affairs and all that.  I even covered the House of Assembly.  Then, I was job hunting before the expiration of my service year.  So, I saw the advert in the newspaper that they are looking for Assistant News Editors at the Ogun State Broadcasting Corporation (OGBC).  So, I just came in to find out and I say let me even try.

Surprisingly I was invited for an interview.  I said surprisingly because usually the general impression among us was that all those interviews in the newspapers were mere formalities.  We had the impression that they must have done the interview secretly in-house and only people who have connections will get the job.  It was rife even among the youths then that if you don’t get connection you cannot get anything.

So, it was a surprise that I was invited for the interview.  I came down and had the interview and two weeks later I was given an appointment.  What I didn’t know was that they even published the names of those people they offered the job too.

So, I just kept the letter somewhere.  In those days as a young man, you always have this tall dream.  I attended the University of Lagos, so coming back to settle down in Abeokuta was off the radar, so that was why I kept the letter.  I did another one and I was offered appointment at the State Ministry of Information.  I put that aside too.

Later on, time was passing by and I was already staying too long at home.  A week after the publication of our name in the newspaper, my wife, who was my girl-friend then and was also a youth corps member, came for the weekend.  I went to the stadium to play squash.  When I came back, I saw a pot of stew and all sort of things and I asked what is happening.  I even ask myself “is it my birthday?”  Later, she came out and showed me the publication that she was only celebrating it for me because I had gotten an appointment.  I said I was just doing that to test the waters and she said, but you have got the letter and I said yes and she said where is it and I responded that it must be somewhere inside the room.

So, she searched for it and she just said I should sign and she posted that letter.  So, the appointment was waiting. So, when I got tired of sitting down at home, I reported here (OGBC) by August 5, 1981.

Really, it was not strange to me because of where I served.  But, then I still had my eyes on other places.

Can you re-enact your past in OGBC?

A: You see, coming in here, I was coming into an entirely new family. But, then we had orientation.  We spent about two days in every division so that you get to understand that broadcast is a chain. If you did not do your bit, we can’t get the best out to the people and broadcast is about audience.

So, I was given that opportunity to go round. The then head of admin who later became the General Manager of this place said what will I gain in the admin?  He told me that I will meet three sets of people in this place: those who want to work; those who do not want to work; and those who would not allow those who want to work work.  And, he said he would prefer that I will be one of those who want to work.

So, I was sent to the news division to spend three weeks learning the house style. Those days we had Associated

Press, we picked stories from it.  I met quite a lot of people.  Busayo Olaifa was a News Assistant then.  I met Diji Akinhanmi whom we share the same reggae stars.  Then, Mr. Funso Shogbanmu was our Senior Editor who took me under his wings as if I needed a guide and he became my guardian both at work and socially and virtually he was responsible for every major decisions in my life.  What I’m trying to say is that I came in into a new family; they accepted me and I found out that I was enjoying it.  So, in a short while I forgot about all those short dreams.  And, I love what I was doing in any case.

 What are you most challenging aspects of broadcasting?

A: Challenges come in different hues and shades. Challenge, if you say academically challenging?  I want to talk about Current Affairs.  And, then “Meet The Press,” which was a flagship programme of OGBC. And, our current Chairman of the Board today, Chief Jare Dada, was a Senior Editor in charge of Current Affairs and he came one day and said ‘Toyin, I wants to interview Mr. Edwin Ewu. You know who that person is?’  And I said that was the Permanent Representative of Nigeria in the United Nations.  And, he said ‘okay can you give me five questions for him?’  And, I started writing because I know the man.

So, at a stage I asked Mr. Jare Dada “do you want just five questions” and he said I should write as many as possible.  So, I wrote about 12.   Out of the 12 he had seven already.  Later, he requested whether I would not mind following him and that was how I followed him.

So, we went and I was on that programme for about one hour and subsequently, I became a member of that team, very early in my sojourn here.  So, that’s the issue. For, instance if you need to conduct such a high magnitude interview, you need to do a lot of research and reading widely.  So, it tasked the brain more. But, on the desk more of your writing skill and news judgement is demanded on the desk.

All those reports are coming in trickles.  You are going to decide which one goes into the news and which one does not go, which angle to be used and which is not. So, that needs your writing skill more.  And, in reportorial, you know that is also tedious.  You must be able to think on the spot.  So, all of them have their peculiar challenges. But, to be a sound professional, you should be able to work in all the divisions.  And, you are trained for that anyway.

Can you compare broadcasting now and then?

A:  These days there have been improvement, but not as much as one would have wanted it to be.  There have been improvements on the part of the professionals. But, on the part of the owners, there have not been so much improvement.  So, virtually all broadcast organisations in Nigeria cannot meet up with the international standard.  But, talking about professionals themselves, there have been marked improvement in training, but there is no enough mentoring. This is perhaps due to the fact that the idea of private radio stations came suddenly.  The military government liberalised the sector and it brought some issues.

What are you views on the effect of proliferation of the broadcast stations?

A:  The new station owners cannot afford to pay those in the top echelon of the profession.  So, they take those who are not yet matured and are middle level managers.  Those are the one they raked and took away.  That was an advantage for the public broadcasting agency because the matured ones are still there. The very matured ones are still there and they train others. But, in private broadcast organisations, where a man who has, at worst, eight years of experience is the news manager, what is he going to give to the younger ones?  And, we cannot all train in the public broadcast organisation.  Some, of them would have to train their own. So, the professionals begin to thin out and at the end of the day we are celebrating mediocrity.

What are your opinions about standardization and about sanitising the broadcast industry?

A:   It is a real problem on standard generally.  You can’t give what you don’t have.   It is because you find things that should ordinarily not happen, happening. This is because when you find such people at the helms of affairs, they are the ones who will do the interview; they will be in charge of personnel sourcing.  Since they are not matured enough, they easily cave in to proprietarily influence.  The system can be abused.

We are all witnesses to too much blunders that come on air every now and then. Imagine someone referring to Internally Displaced Persons as inmates.  It is as bad as that sometimes.  So, little, little things like that will surely be rubbishing the radio station as well as the profession.

You see, in those good old days, anything heard on OGBC is the truth. The credibility was always there.  I will tell you that there is much that the industry can do.  The owners now, by owners I do not mean the government.  Government has done its part.  To give kudos to the National Broadcasting Commission, they’ve been doing fantastic job in terms of clamping down on some of the broadcast organisations in terms of fines here and there.  But on the part of the owners, there is no point in getting a radio licence.

For instance, you should know that before you transmit, you must get two transmitters and four power generating

sets because of the electricity generating situation of the country.  You now go and put up a station with one transmitter and one generating set and you start beating your chest that you are the number one. When the problem stars rolling in, whether through a thunder strike, that means you have to wait for a long time before you can get back on air.  And, when you lose one listener, to get it back, you will sweat. So, the industry pioneers who recommended two transmitters and four generating sets knew what they were doing.  If you change them over often and often, you will be able to rest the facilities. Some of these new broadcast stations are not doing that.

How about funding?

That is a major serious problem of public broadcasting. You said the stations are public properties and you asked the management to go and source for their recurrent expenditure and they’ve been doing it; even the capital expenditure you suppose to take charge of you are still not taking charge.  That is why most of the public broadcast stations cannot compete with very serious private ones. And, at the end of the day, you found out that even the government will go ahead and hire those private operators because they have refused to fund the government owned stations.  So, there are lots to do from the aspect of the owners. Government needs to fund public broadcast stations.  Being a creative industry, if it is well funded the people there will be able to concentrate on the creative aspect of the job such as programming and content sourcing and development and what have you.  They will be able to do more.

When managers of such stations are tasked unnecessarily and left with the problem of running helter skelter to get money to survive, they can hardly be creative.  You see, the human resources are there, they only need to be provided the right and enabling environment to operate and function well.  In other words funding is a major handicap to the growth of public broadcasting system.  In fact, there is no public broadcasting system in Nigeria that is well funded.

Give us your views on Sunday Morning life on FM and its philosophy?

A: You see, the idea of Sunday Morning Life on FM was brought to OGBC through the then General Manager, Chief Elegbede, who was one time Director of News and Current Affairs. He brought the idea and it was presented to the management. The idea was that when you go through the daily on a Monday morning from A-Z, everybody was doing the same thing and relaying church programme and gospel music.   And, some people came up to think it out that not everybody is a Christian.  Besides, not everybody wants to hear about sermons on a Sunday like that.  So, it was designed as an interface programme to be different from all other on the dial.  But, they now said that they want public participation in the interview.  We now do a 15 minutes preamble to set the stage and members of the public will take charge at that instance.  So, that was the idea and it took off with a bang because of the resources and the time and the rigour put to it.

The management really wanted it and they devoted a lot of resources to it.  I was assigned to pioneer the programme and I gave them conditions that the programme cannot be run successfully if it does not have its own resources.  I requested for a personal car to run the programme and it was provided. I also requested for accommodation for my guest which was also provided.  On the presentation, I said I needed an anchor person who can add colour and flesh to the presentation in a conversational way.  So, I was looking for a fantastic presenter.

I started off with Femi Sowoolu.  We got Femi, who did the first five editions.  Thereafter, we tried some other presenters. I saw Peter Okodua on ground and I knew he could do it better, but I decided to let him be because he had so much work load.  But, when push comes to shove I had to make a request that the station must drop some of the tasks assigned to Peter Okodua and allow him to present the programme in order not to drop the ball.

When, we started the programme, our Chairman then, Yemisi Shyllon, was the Managing Director of Nigerite Limited.  They got the sponsor for the whole year. We started April, 1994.  And, since that time up till today, NIgerite is still sponsoring it.  It is well over 22 years now.  It was a great challenge because even the theme music and other accompanying pep were creatively done in the News and Current Affairs Division with a team headed by myself.

 Now, what are your pieces of advice to the upcoming broadcasters?

I will say to be a graduate of Mass Communication who worth its salt the first basic thing is the mastery of the language of communication, which is English.  To be special, be sure that you are also well grounded in your local language, which will be an advantage.  Then, you must be able to write and write well and be able to think critically.  So, you think and re-think.  Then, you must always have a presence of mind in all that you do.  If not, it will affect your productivity. You should allow your thought to be organised so that when you write it will flow.  And, another thing is that the rule stipulates that anything you will say in broadcasting, you must write it down, even all those big presenters you see.

People believe that it is a mark of professionalism when you speak extempore.  No, it must be written down as a script. That is the rule.  You might not need to go through it all over, but it must be written down as a guide.

Then, you must just be serious and take what they tell you seriously.  Most of what they will tell you may look unserious, but meaningful.  For instance, when I was in the university, one Dr. Nnora was teaching us about fax machine.  At that time, fax machine was still very new at that time and I found it difficult to believe that there is a machine that can perform such task. Many years later, I later had the opportunity of apologising to the man.  Also, for instance, Dr. Olatunji Dare was teaching us news writing and the man was saying that because you can write copious news you wake up early and listen to BBC, VOA and then come down to your local station.

I was looking at it at that time that it was a rigour, but actually, it is really the ideal thing.  Knowledge, they say, is power.  So, you need to be updated.  If you are updated, you talk from a position of strength. And, you cannot know except you read widely and watch all sorts of programmes.  But, at the same time, you should also socialise. You must always try to balance it.  And, for goodness sake, please read.  Just ensure that you read.  You must be out going.  You must be able to relate with people of all strata. Remember, you must know everything about something and something about everything.

 Now, can you give our readers your background?

I am Prince Toyin Gbadebo.  I was born and bred in Abeokuta from the Ake Royal family, Laarun Ruling House.  I attended African Church Primary School, Oke-Egunya. From there, I went to Abeokuta Grammar School. From Abeokuta Grammar School, I proceeded to The Polytechnic, Ibadan for my A level.   Then to UNILAG for my first degree in Mass Communication and UI for my Masters.  I got married in 1983 to my wife that we met at the service and I have three kids who are all graduates.  I will be 35 years in service by August 5. That is when I will bow out of service.  And, I will call you in less than a month after to celebrate my 60^th birthday.