By Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi
I consider it a rare honour to be called upon to review the Memoirs of so distinguished a Nigerian as Engr Vincent Bamidele Maduka. Even if I had other assignments today, the fear of being ‘mounted’ and punished by an outstanding old boy of undeniably the best secondary school in Nigeria was such that I was bound to accept to do this assignment! I had to be here! I had no choice in the matter!! So, you have to believe me, whether I mean it or not, when I say that the pleasure of being here with you this afternoon is entirely mine!!!
In its barest form, this four-hundred-plus paged book, Reel Life, is the story of Engr Maduka’s twenty-five-year public service career. The first sixteen years of that enviable and exceptional career were spent at the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation, WNTV-WNBS, while the other nine years (apart from a twelve-month interregnum in the Ministry of Communications) were spent at the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA.
When as a young 26-year-old, Engr Maduka arrived in Nigeria with a freshly-minted degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Leeds in England and joined the services of the WNTV-WNBS as a Broadcast Engineer in 1961, nobody would have thought, certainly not Maduka himself, that that seemingly modest beginning, would take him through a career path that would bring him to the pinnacle of a profession in broadcast journalism. And what a career it was!
Under the tutelage of his mentor and boss at the WNTV-WNBS, Engr Teju Oyeleye, to whom, by the way, this book is partly dedicated, Maduka threw himself at his first job at Ibadan with much enthusiasm and vigour, and in the process, picked up so much that fully equipped him for the more considerable challenges of his headship of NTA, Lagos, in 1977. And as I will show presently, that foundational training at Ibadan ultimately led to the transformation of TV broadcast journalism in Nigeria. So, if we start from the premise that Engr Oyeleye was, perhaps, the grandfather of TV broadcast journalism in Nigeria, Engr Maduka was certainly its father!
Written in parts rather than chapters, there are eighteen parts in the book, apart from an epilogue which attempts to summarise the book and drive home, whether intended or not, a greater import to the book’s title. While the REEL in the book’s title comes from a camera reel, that cylinder on which film can be wound, the title is understandably a clever play on the homophones REEL and REAL. Suddenly, Maduka’s reel life, a life given to the production of films, is juxtaposed with his real, ordinary daily life, where he had to face challenges to survive! I think it’s also proper to add at this stage that the book comes with a copious body of relevant appendices, much of which, in my view, should have been incorporated into the book’s main text.
For review purposes, even at the risk of an oversimplification, since the book’s storyline dispenses with strict chronology, I think it’s better to break the eighteen parts of the book into FOUR sections. The first section, which is much of part one, covers the author’s early years at Ibadan, where as I said earlier, he learnt the ropes under the watchful eyes of his mentor, Engr Oyeleye, while the second section, which I have dubbed his first coming to NTA, will include all of part two through to part nine. My section three is a stand-alone part ten, the author’s limbo year in the wilderness of the Ministry of Communications, while the final section, that is, parts twelve through to eighteen, would cover his second coming to NTA, plus his retirement in 1986 at the young age of 51!
The first section, as short as it seems, is crucial because it tells the story of the beginning of television in Nigeria; how Chief Obafemi Awolowo took umbrage at the denial of his right to reply to an attack on a radio broadcast from the Central colonial government and decided that the regional government would set up its own television and sound radio station as a tool for education and entertainment.
After a series of bureaucratic and ‘ethnic’ twists and turns in his career at Ibadan, one that included a traumatic experience in the days leading up to the Nigerian civil war and the race for the position of General Manager of the organisation, following Mr Oyeleye’s retirement in May 1973, Engr Maduka emerged as General Manager of WNTV-WNBS at the end of 1973.
It is instructive to note that while there were nimble protests as to why a Vincent Ifeanyichukwu Maduka should occupy the position of General Manager in Ibadan, the newly-founded Television station of Mr Maduka’s supposedly ‘home’ state, mid-western region, had appointed him to the same position of General Manager a year before, a position he had turned down to enable him to remain in the region that had trained him and which, for him, was home. And then, by a curious twist of fate, the Military Governor of the old western region at the time, Colonel Wole Rotimi, whose lot it was to appoint a replacement for Engr Oyeleye after a detailed and comprehensive selection process, was a detribalised prominent old boy of King’s College, Lagos, where Maduka had himself been a student.
Incidentally, the other two contestants for the position of General Manager at Ibadan in 1973 were Ayo Ogunlade and Kunle Olasope. Then, four years after, fate reran its course! Just months before Engr Maduka assumed office as the first Director-General of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), the same Ayo Ogunlade was appointed Federal Minister of Information, the supervisory ministry of the new NTA!
With the military take-over of state television stations and their amalgamation with the old NBC-TV into a federal monopoly and the subsequent appointment of Engr Maduka two months after as Director-General of the new NTA, the story of the book Reel Life, as recounted by its author, picks up steam. The new DG hit the road running. Under the leadership of Alhaji Babatunde Jose as Chairman of a distinguished Board, with such names of Board members as Mrs. Folake Solanke, Dr. Garba Ashiwaju, Dr. Bala Usman and Dr. Galadanchi.
Engr Maduka worked assiduously to redefine the seemingly monstrous structure of the new NTA and, in the process, lay down a set of rules that have remained an integral part of TV culture in our country to date. In his attempt to quickly sort out the vexatious issues of the delineation of power in the NTA governance structure and institute objectivity and balance, he sent the Board a seminal paper entitled: “The Relationship Between Government and Board and Between Board and Management of Statutory Corporations.’ Here is how Maduka remembers the moment: ‘I tried to identify the key functions that would distinguish these three interacting parties involved in running a government company. They derived basically from what should obtain in any business enterprise between shareholders (owners), board and management. My experience from WNTV at Ibadan was that the government (officials) and the board tended, more often than not, to usurp the role of the lower rung, sometimes as if there were really no boundaries.’ Fortunately, Engr Maduka received the support of his Board for his reorganisation proposals.
Unfortunately, two years later, after the civilian administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari got into office and appointed a one-man ‘Board’ in the person of Chief Olu Adebanjo, who also doubled as Special Adviser to the President on Information, all the gains from the Jose board appeared to disintegrate.
Undeterred, Maduka trudged on. In between several brushes with obsequious and nauseatingly sycophantic politicians/bureaucrats and the support of some of the finest names in the history of Nigerian television, he set down even firmer parameters for the running of the organisation. Those who collaborated with him at this time included James Audu, John Chiahemen, Mohammed Ibrahim, and even Chris Anyanwu and Frank Olizie.
Without question, one of the more fascinating stories in the book is the story of the search for a substantive Director of Programmes for the organisation. The time it took and the energy expended in that search tell the story of committed leadership that was eminently focused. And when the DG finally found his dream catch for the job in the person of Dr Victoria Ezeokoli, it completely transformed the organisation. Barely days after she was appointed, Dr. Ezeokoli plunged head-on into the production of Cock Crow At Dawn. Working in close collaboration with Peter Igho, Grace Egbagbe and Cordelia Eke, the drama series was released and remained, in the words of Peter Igho, ‘the most defining programme of the NTA.’
Buoyed by the success of that production, the focus shifted strategically to raising production standards in the organisation. And as the DG puts it, ‘with regard to programme making, the programme department of NTA headquarters was charged with the role of driving growth and quality.’
For instance, in 1982, with the full support and encouragement of the DG, Dr. Ezeokili’s team organised a significant Retreat at the Oguta Lake in Anambra State where prominent Nigerian writers such as J P Clark, Zulu Sofola, Elechi Amadi, Cyprian Ekwensi and two British Resource persons, Victor Pemberton and David Spencer, brainstormed with the staff of NTA on the techniques for writing for television.
Indeed, one of the stars of that period, Cordelia Eke, deserves to be quoted extensively from her incisive recollections of those memorable years:
The doors of the Authority were thrown open to actively engage performing artists within and without, with viable national programme proposals in the process of programming. In the documentary cadre, programmes like Horizon, Kings and Kingdoms, featuring Nigerian cities, ancient kingdoms, heroes like Queen Amina of Zaria, King Jaja of Opobo, etc, were produced. Those projects were presented on network in close collaboration with intellectual icons like Professor Ade Ajayi of the University of Ibadan and Professor Alagoa of the University of Port Harcourt….In Entertainment programmes, the Authority encouraged, through collaborations and outright commissioning, music productions like the Bala Miller Show, Sam Akpabot Show, Nelly Uchendu, Gloria Usang, and Sonny Oti musicals to promote the growth of artists in this field….In drama, Basie & Co, by Ken Saro-Wiwa (with its catchphrase, ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’), Winds against my Soul by Laolu Ogunniyi, and Mirror in the Sun, by Lola Fani-Kayode were parts of the production actively executed in collaboration with artists outside the Authority to encourage creative endeavours in the television industry.
Those were NTA’s finest moments; nothing has come close to those years. And as the author himself notes, ‘by 1982, the Authority had over 7,000 employees, 21 production centres and 40 Transmitting stations.’
Then, suddenly in January 1983, Engr Maduka was removed as Director-General.
Unable, presumably, to contain his leadership style, the Shagari government transferred him to the Ministry of Communications as Technical Adviser. Indeed, considering the harassment that he went through during the first four years of the Shagari administration, it was a miracle that he was not ‘sacked’ before 1983!
But a few months after that transfer, a military coup d’etat toppled the Shagari government, and the Buhari administration brought him back as DG of NTA.
On his return to NTA, Maduka immediately revisited his desire to professionalise NTA’s flagship, the NTA News. Convinced that the premier position occupied by news was explorable, he devoted his energy to redefining NTA News and shaking off its preponderance ‘for hand-out stories in the form of government and political party releases.’ By relying, among other services, on the NBC Training School at Oshodi, in Lagos, a lot was put into effective speech training that led to a new generation of newscasters who were not only celebrities in their own right but who also took their work quite seriously.
Those were the glorious days of NTA News, the days of such stars as Bode Alalade, Taiwo Obileye, and later, Sola Omole and John Momoh. And although Mike Enahoro and Joe Ebuwa had been at NTA before Engr Maduka, they were also veritable members of that dream team. The ladies of those glorious years included Joan O’Dwyer, Bimbo Oloyede, Sienne Allwell-Brown, Ruth Beniemesia, Ronke Ayuba and Sola Adelehin (later Mrs Sola John-Momoh).
There’s what I consider a digression here, from this phase of the author’s career, that I should comment on briefly, essentially because I was involved in bits of the episode that the author recalls in part 12 of the book. In the section sub-titled ‘War between NTA and the Print media,’ the author asserts that ‘the Guardian (newspapers) had been hammering away at NTA as being a government media tool and a handmaid of military dictatorship.’
Looking back now, as a senior member of the management of the Guardian newspapers at that time, I do not recall anything personal about the newspaper’s position in respect of NTA in 1984. But I remember that the national public mood was heavily weighted against the Buhari administration when Engr Maduka returned to NTA.
Two factors were at play. First was the fact that the after-effect of the deplorable role played by the NTA in relaying the 1983 election results remained a sore point in the collective memory of the Nigerian people. And even the author himself acknowledges that when he says on page 277 that ‘NTA’s reputation among the discerning public had plummeted drastically over its recent coverage of the 1983 general elections with its report of landslide victories for the governing party and such partisan broadcasts.’
The NTA that Engr Maduka had so proudly built up between 1977-1983 had virtually gone under by the time he returned in 1984.
Somehow, a culture of subservience to power had crept into the organisation on a scale that Engr Maduka was probably unaware of. It was that incipient culture of subservience that was of concern to us in the print media.
But even more fundamentally, the Buhari/Idiagbon government was one of the most repressive governments in the history of our country, at least up until 1984. As I have written elsewhere, that government embarked on a frenetic corrective measure that unleashed terror and fear on the Nigerian people on an unprecedented scale. No one was spared. From Tai Solarin to Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti, Beko’s brother, Fela and hordes of politicians; they were all imprisoned and handed humongous prison sentences. It was also a period of grisly public executions under a bizarre retroactive Drug Trafficking Decree which prescribed death by firing squad, even if the drug trafficking crimes were committed before the decree came into force! Those executions were publicly televised.
Then, to cap it all, the same government promulgated an obnoxious press law called Decree 4 that targeted the print media. Decree 4 was designed to punish authors of supposedly ‘false’ statements that exposed the administration or its officials to ridicule or contempt, even if the reports were accurate! And before we knew it, two of our senior journalists, Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson, were detained and tried before a tribunal and imprisoned under this terrible law. Understandably, the print media was literally at war with that government.
That was the country’s mood when Engr Maduka returned to NTA as DG in 1984.
And in all this time, NTA (as an institution) enjoyed a cosy and ‘very cordial’ relationship with this government. Again, we have Engr Maduka’s word to prove this, when, talking of the Buhari government, he says: ‘we were happy to enjoy a freedom to be objective for a change and do not recall any pressure on us to dance to the tune of the government.’ ‘That was the state of affairs,’ he continues, ‘that we wanted very much and had not had under the previous civilian administration.’
I certainly can’t speak for the entire print media at that time. But for us at the Guardian newspapers, this was not simply the case of a friend to an enemy becoming an enemy! It was a little bit more than that. Under the leadership of Dr Stanley Macebuh and in the best traditions of print journalism, we were committed to holding the government, any government, to account. And in our view, media organisations that remained silent in the face of tyranny by any government were considered vicariously guilty of the misdeeds of that government!
Ironically, in his attempt to infuse the NTA with intellectual depth, Engr Maduka turned to the print media for help.
According to him, ‘I called the Daily Times Managing Director, Dr. Dele Cole, who had recently hired some smart people, notably from America, and asked him how he came to find people like Dr. Stanley Macebuh!’
Similarly, in his search for models to guide him in the revamping of NTA, Engr Maduka also turned to the print media, to the Al Ahram of Egypt, the Times of London and, curiously, the New Nigerian. These print media outfits he admired stood out because, to use Maduka’s words, they commanded ‘credibility and authority.’ But as we all know, credibility and authority do not come from cosiness with any government, certainly not with a military dictatorship, but rather from a position of studied combativeness that speaks truth to power. And the longest serving editor of the Al Haram, Muhammed Heikel, adumbrated this point so brilliantly in his Memoirs, The Road to Ramadan. So, the Guardian’s position was undoubtedly never a personal thing on the leadership of NTA at the time.
Dr Macebuh, who was the Guardian’s Managing Director at the time, and who, (by the way), was also a distinguished King’s College old boy like the author, was far too polished to indulge in mudslinging and muckraking. Stanley knew only too well how not to treat a more senior and highly respected Kingsman!
But to bring this digression to a close on a lighter note, I suspect that, somehow, between the author and print journalists, there was no love lost! Just listen here to the sweeping aspersion that Engr Maduka casts on print journalists in a tangential reference to them: ‘In the main, newspaper people in Nigeria were not known for any high pretensions to good spoken English and so, NBC came to rely more on actors, than on writers, to deliver the news!’ Haba, Oga!! It’s like saying that engineers can’t write good English!! Yet, before us, here is one of the most lucid pieces of writing I have read in a long time, written not by a graduate of English Literature but by an Electrical Engineer!!! Oga, you don’t like print journalists! Period!! But there’s God!!!
In ending, let me state again that this is a lovely book.
It’s a must-read for those who wish to familiarise themselves with the growth and development of TV broadcast journalism in our country and with snapshots of our contemporary history. For instance, the author’s account of the several military coup d’etats he witnessed in the country and how they impacted his life provide invaluable insights into his thoughts and mind.
Yet, brilliant as it is, the book suffers from a minor structural problem.
Like an engineering structure constructed from different interrelated parts with a fixed location, usually on the ground, a Memoir works better and is easier to read if the other interlinked parts of the story are put together in a chronology. True, chronology is not everything and can be dispensed with in memoirs, but it’s usually at the risk of some repetition of material, especially if the book’s writing extends over a long period.
And to drive my point home, I refer to a remarkably tortuous story of how the author took a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Leeds.
This is the fascinating story of a young, twenty-one-year-old who, after securing admission to Leeds and a government scholarship to study abroad, was disappointingly told that the scholarship was tenable only at the new Nigerian College of Technology, Zaria, which offered only diplomas at that time; and how the young Maduka persisted and insisted that he would go abroad! And what does the young man do? He travels to Ibadan to see the Minister of Education. When he fails to see the Education Minister, this daring twenty-one-year-old literally badges his way into the office of the Minister of Home Affairs, Chief Anthony Enahoro, flashes his school tie at the minister’s impertinent expatriate secretary and insists on seeing the prominent old boy of his school! Of course, he is allowed to see Chief Enahoro, following which his foreign scholarship is restored on its merit.
But the young man’s tribulations do not end there. When he arrives in the UK, some fastidious official at the Western Nigeria Regional office tries to hoodwink him into accepting a place at the lower-ranking Woolwich Polytechnic instead of his place at Leeds University. Again, armed with his admission papers to Leeds, the young, audacious man puts his foot down and insists on going to Leeds University. In the end, he gets his way and heads out to Leeds.
Now, this captivating story, an inspiring study of human perseverance that is told in lucid prose and, in my view, should have been in the opening sections of this book to prepare you for what to expect, is tucked away at the end of the book! The story comes across alright. But it would, in my view, have been more effective as part of the book’s opening sections. That’s the point I make about chronology and its benefits.
There are also a few minor typographical errors in the book, which I am sure will be cleaned up if, and when a second edition is published. There’s also a wrong picture caption of a former Chairman of the Daily Times of Nigeria, Alhaji Turi Muhammadu, which carries Mamman Daura’s name, which I am sure will also be corrected in future. And as I said earlier, the appendices in this book are a trove of information that deserves to be accorded as much time and attention as the book’s main text.
But these do not detract from the enduring value of this book. Memoirs have historical importance. They give us a sense of continuity, offer us potential solutions to contemporary problems, and even guide us in our effort to solve them. There are many lessons to learn from Maduka’s skills in handling overbearing government bureaucrats in rather tricky situations. His recollections of how he related to successive Ministers of Information and overzealous government spokespersons who always wanted you to jump when they sneezed brought back memories of my own encounters with a particular Information Minister during my time as Managing Director of the Nigerian Daily Times.
And yet, even in his recall of these problematic moments with ill-tempered and, sometimes, ill-mannered officials, there was not a trace of guile or bitterness in Engr Maduka’s writing; just frank recollections that contained even admissions of his own shortcomings in places. That’s rare in a country where we are quick to apportion blame and eager to take credit for everything.
I think we should all commend Engr Maduka for writing this book. The times we live in call for inspiring works like Reel Life, works by distinguished Nigerians who have given so much to our country and got nothing literally in return. At a time when much of our contemporary political space has been taken over by all kinds of scammers and misfits, Memoirs like this that recall outstanding public service and love for country serve as reminders of not only where we came from but where we should be heading as a country.
Thank you for listening.
Yemi Ogunbiyi
October 2022
