Former Director General of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Dr. Eddie Iroh
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Former Director General of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Dr. Eddie Iroh, in this interview with ADEOLA BALOGUN, recalls how he traversed different paths in the last 67 years
Since you left the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, it’s like you disappeared; is disappear the right word?
No, you can’t disappear when you are at a certain stage and a certain level in life. But as Igbo people would say, you don’t watch a masquerade from one spot. What happens in our country, sadly, the minute you have served in government, everybody thinks that you should leave and that it is the turn of others. And that is a loss to the nation. When people have served and if they have been able to do so with a measure of credibility and distinction, you should re-engage them for the service of the nation. Look at the United States, nobody who has served in government, sometimes in any level at all, is idle. They milk you, they drain you, they take the experience you had and the challenges you have faced and overcome and apply it to solving future problems for the benefit of the nation. We have not got that culture of engaging and reengaging in whatever capacity. It’s not about making money or making a living. It’s about giving back. If you came to a situation like the FRCN as it was when I came, it was desolate and derelict and somehow, we managed to put it back on its feet. Even the Lagos Business School should be saying Dr. Iroh, how did you achieve this; what were the tools you used? What was the input of people around you? How did you motivate them, inspire them to revive their enthusiasm for service? Were they not the same people who were there when things went to the ground? Sadly for our country, it’s not like that. To answer your question, I was recruited from the UK, that’s where my family are. I went back there and I was able to engage in other activities there like consultancy.
What of writing books which you were noted for, did you go back to that again?
Immediately I finished service, I did a sequel to Without a Silver Spoon and it was called Banana Leaves. I’m working now on a major book on Nigeria.
When your tenure was expiring and you knew you still had more to offer, why didn’t you put in a word, like what some people call lobbying?
I’m not good at that. When President Obasanjo recruited me from the UK, I probably knew no more than two people in the administration. At a point when they were looking for someone to do the job, probably one of them mentioned my name. I got a phone call and I came for discussion and flew back to the UK. Two weeks later, the announcement was made. I have this alien sense that we as a nation should have a data bank of our people who can do certain things in certain areas and do them well. If you ask me to go and clean the city of Abuja as the chief cleaner, I’m going to do it to the best of my ability. Having lived in the western world, I see how they run their nations and how they engage their first 11. A man who works for President Obama once told CNN that in the Situation Room in the White House, some of the best brains in America work there to serve every president. Decision making is a medley of ideas from different sources. That is what I like to see in our country’ pooling all our human resources together because this is a nation in search of its destiny and it requires us to engage our best and brightest, wherever they come from.
You said you met a desolate FRCN. What would you say worked for you when you got there?
The human factor; I have a theory of management which is not original. Lee Iacocca, the man who revived Chrysler, said, ‘treat human beings right, and they will give the best to the organisation’. When you neglect the human factor, there is no institution if there are no human beings. Immediately you make them the centre of your priority, they would make the business the centre of their own priority. And that was my approach. Some of the most important things we did did not cost us a penny; like taking the news bulletins and shredding them and having a new approach to news casting, a credible approach. I said to government, the first beneficiary of a credible Radio Nigeria is government; when people believe what we say, they believe what you say. But if we are seen as a mere megaphone, the master’s voice, whatever you say will not get through. I had a minister like Jerry Gana who empathised with that approach and we were able to balance our news presentation. To reflect all shades of opinion in a diverse nation like Nigeria, that was important. It cost us no money, to say we must be credible. The other thing we did was what we called impact news. If we said that government installed water pumps in a community, it was not just enough that we said it. It was important that the people who benefitted from the water supply were seen to come out to say it. One of the lessons we learnt in media school was that when the eyes and the ears clash, the eyes win. It is not enough to say it, people must see it and identify with it. And that is where credibility comes in. The other thing is interactive news, delving beyond the story. These are some of the things that elevated us to a credible status.
So it was possible not to make the various government-owned media a megaphone? How did you do that?
I just told you now. You have to explain it to government; you have to understand the psychology of government by telling them that this way of presenting news will not be beneficial to your administration. And I believe that anyone in power to whom such a presentation is made would see the point you are making. But some of us are afraid to explain; we assume that government wants us to do it this way. I found out that it wasn’t like that. Not once in my time did the minister say to me that government wanted us to say it this way. I want that to be to the credit of the government I served. Some of us censor ourselves; some of make decisions that impact on government adversely. In today’s world, we no longer have ministers of information but minister of communication. That is the approach that is working today. Look at countries like Britain, America, Germany and the major world powers, they don’t have a minister of information or communication but they get their message out. How do they do it? This is a model I think we should look at. Let us have a two-way communication. In FRCN, we had a staff forum where everybody was allowed to give an opinion and I guaranteed them that nobody would be victimised for speaking out. And that worked for us. I was able to say to the staff, write for me in your own words, what you do for Radio Nigeria. That gave me an insight into what everybody was doing. It’s important as a tool in understanding the manpower needs of an institution. We were able to go to what cost us money and we came in at a time when government reviewed salaries and that was very helpful. Government then went on to build a number of FM stations. But the most important thing is the human element. If you do the people right, they will treat the company right.
You said you were headhunted from Britain, did you at a time work full time here before you left?
Of course yes; we founded the Guardian newspaper. I was the first managing editor of the paper but before then, Stanley Macebuh recruited me from the NTA where I was a controller in charge of features and documentaries. With due modesty, I won an award as the best producer, director of documentary film in 1982 or 83 when NTA celebrated 25 years of broadcasting.
Why did you leave The Guardian?
I went to Europe as regional editor for Europe and North America. After being managing editor, I found that I was not doing core reporting while the managing aspect dominated my time. So, I had a word with my bosses and I was posted to London to cover Europe and North America which put me in mainstream journalism again. I was able to cover the UN in Geneva, which was good. I had a number of stringers and reporters working for us. I was filing reports for The Guardian and the African Guardian as well as writing a column, London Letter. That rejuvenated my journalistic instinct.
But you went to Chic magazine, a soft aspect of journalism. Why?
I knew that at some point, I would be asked to come back to Lagos, after having ‘enjoyed’ enough. And that was exactly what happened. Luckily, I was able to get a mortgage to buy a flat for me and my family. When they asked me to come back to Lagos, they didn’t say I should come and edit The Guardian, which I would have loved to do. To come back and be subservient was something I felt I had outgrown, with all due modesty. I resigned and moved to my own flat and went into publishing, doing some work for some media outfits in America and Britain. I became some kind of authority on Africa. At that time, the African magazine market was saturated. Travelling between Britain and America, I found out that there was a hunger for people who wanted to know what women of purpose were doing in the Black world. From Ebony and Essence, we read about a lot of what the black community was doing but they didn’t know anything about what we (Africans) were doing. Again, the publishers of Ebony and Essence were men and I felt that it was a niche that worth exploring and exploited. The good thing was that it received rave reviews in America and Europe but the business aspect of it posed a challenge. My colleague and I failed to realise that publishing a magazine was not like selling stock fish over the counter where you collect your money. You have to be patient and as Robert Maxwell once said, you have to be deep of pocket. I was not deep of pocket as my partner and therefore, expectation was instant. It didn’t work out that way.
Who was your partner?
Let me not talk about that but we are both Nigerians.
What was your childhood dream?
I wanted to read Political Science and be the secretary general of the United Nations. In the period of my political awareness, the UN was an institution that pulled all the world power together. The clashes at the UN were of global proportion. This was the era of the cold war and politics was at its best. The debates were vociferous and combustible and they called the attention of young people. The role that the UN played was very exciting for us young men and politically aware youths and you would want to be part of it. At that time, the UN was the centre of political activities. But that was a childhood fantasy but what I really wanted to be was to be a writer and journalist. When I was in Primary Four, I wrote a letter to my first cousin who was in Primary Six. Interestingly, I didn’t have a pen but we used to squeeze hibiscus flower into a bottle and use a sharpened piece of wood to write. I remember very well that I couldn’t spell ‘no more’, I wrote ‘nomo’. My cousin and his peers were so impressed that they gave me half a penny which could buy me moinmoin at the time. At that age, I earned my first royalty. That cousin had a role in my career choice because when he left to work in Aba, he bound the entire week’s editions of Britain’s Daily Mirror and sent them to me and I read them voraciously. My life again was transformed by the fact that at a young age, I worked for the British Council. They just threw me in the forest of books. I had always wanted to be a writer and a journalist besides being the UN secretary general.
How serious were you about your UN ambition?
I wanted to be secretary general of the UN because I became politically aware in the early sixties when the UN was literally the centre of the universe. The organisation was the battleground of the cold war that was raging at its peak at the time. The US and USSR were constantly at daggers drawn; the rhetoric and oratory were at their most inflammatory and infectious. At the centre of this centre of this universe was the Secretary General, the world’s number one diplomat. At that time, it was the Swede, Dag Hammerskjold. He later died in a plane crash in the course of seeking a settlement of the Congo crisis of the time. I wanted to read Political Science and international relations, take a doctorate degree and join the UN! But that was mere youthful fantasy. My true calling was writing. You know when we are young we all want to be everything that catches our fancy. In fact as a primary school child I wanted to be a priest. May be I should have. I think I would have made a good priest. Who knows?
But you went on to read film and television?
Well, print journalism came naturally to me. I was able to read anything I laid my hands on and I found out that it worked for most writers. The late Nkem Nwankwo, the author of My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours, I saw him in Biafra as a young boy. He would go to a waste paper basket and pick out things that other people had thrown away. He was an incredible versatile reader, a termite with books and all written materials. As I say to people, you can study mass communication and not be a good journalist. Print journalism came to me naturally by my exposure and background but my major was film and television.
You mentioned Biafra just now, how would you describe your experience during the war?
I wrote three books on Biafra. Biafra made me a man; we were young and not old enough to fight even though I trained in the militia. But there was a certain idealism that was fired in you; that sense of inconquerability. In the final analysis, it made you a far better person. I can handle difficulties and hardship better because I had seen hardship at a young age. The best lesson I took away from Biafra was self-discipline and self denial; when you had to queue in line for food rations from the Red Cross and sometimes by the time it got to your turn, it was finished. When you had to use old tyres for sandals and when you had to beg for a clean shirt. It was an exciting thing to see people wearing new shirts then. Then, you learnt to discipline yourself, your desire and your appetite and that was a great lesson for me. I could have died in Biafra but I survived by the grace of God. For my generation, the Biafran war represented a coming of age for youths that had known no challenge to their idealism of getting a good education, a good job, and in my case fulfil my dream of being someone famous. It was a baptism of fire. But from that experience came a very valuable lesson in discipline and personal growth.
Where were your parents during the war?
As a gifted young man, I was in the War Information Bereau and able to coordinate reports. Dr. Mike Echeruo was the head of the bureau and we put the reports in bulletins that went to Radio Biafra; war reports and that was very interesting. When I got paid, of course, I sent money to my parents. But when things got difficult, nothing was enough and the money became useless; that was where discipline came in. I remember the first time I got my salary, my stepmother had a baby and was stuck in a maternity in my village. I took the small motorbike, a mobilette belonging to the bereau, I still remember its registration number, GRB 678. My boss allowed me to ride it to my home in Imo to go and give my first salary to my parents during the war. On the way, I ran out of petrol; I was arrested for riding a government motorcycle, even though I showed them papers. Luckily when I was arrested, the late Emeka Omeruah was driving by and he said he knew me; that I worked for Dr. Emeka Echeruo and they let me go. Of course, I ran out of petrol and I had to drag the machine uphill for more than seven miles. That is the discipline I’m talking about. How many Nigerians in their early 20s could do so today and in the rain? I think everybody has been spoiled by the availability of oil and gas. If you are looking for the problem of Nigeria, you have to trace it to oil and gas. When we were dealing with cash crops like cocoa, groundnut, palm oil, there was none of this nonsense. People worked hard, corruption was at its barest minimum and transparency was an achievable objective. Honesty was a tool that people actually applied. I once asked my friend, Dr. Pat Utomi, to place for me in terms of a timeline where Nigeria missed the road and he said the convergence of oil and military rule. It’s not even the civil war. Oil and military rule created a different ethos, a different appetite for wealth, a different level of greed. He didn’t say all this, he simply said it was the convergence of military rule and the discovery of oil.
You were telling us how you were dragging the machine.
I was pushing the mobilette uphill in the rain and it was getting dark; just to go and give my first salary to bail out my step mum from the hospital. The sense of satisfaction that I was going to give my first salary to my parents was worth the trouble. These are some of the things we won’t do any more; of course things have changed. But these are lessons I took from Biafra.
So it was after the war that you went to Britain to study?
Not even immediately. As my father was not a rich man, I worked to save money before I left in 1975. I worked with the British Council and to them, I owe an enormous debt. Their sense of humanity, ethics, ethos shaped the way I approach work. At their desk, it is work and when it is free time, it’s free time. They can be as compassionate as you do not expect anybody to be but they can also be very strict with work. Some people say I am a man of the two extremes. I could see an FRCN member of staff at the corridor cowering because the DG was coming. I would want to know what was wrong with him and if he said he was sick and that Admin said he was not entitled to medical treatment, I made sure that changed as the chief executive. When the rules and the human interest clashed, I took the side of human interest. I would say if the guy died, we would buy a coffin, send money for burial and all that; so, why didn’t we take care of him instead of talking about what the rules said? That was how I worked at the FRCN.
After your training, were did you start working?
I started with the ECBS Television, Enugu which was part of the merger of state stations that became the NTA. My first job there was as an executive producer, features and documentaries. The late Ukpabi Asika picked me out and I enjoyed very much. When NTA was formed, the great DG of all times, Engineer Vincent Maduka, invited me and a few others and we were called Maduka boys. People like John Chiahemen who retired from Reuters; James Audu, the great newscaster; Saka Fagbo; Peter Igho; the late Adamu Augie and a few others. Maduka is a manager of men and resources, an inspirational leader and he was an inspiration to all of us. One day, he told me that I would one day become a DG but I laughed it off as a joke. When I was appointed DG of FRCN, he said, ‘but I told you so’. He is a person with foresight.
Don’t you think that the liberalisation of private media affected the government-owned media?
It ought not to be so. It shouldn’t. When Rupert Murdoch introduced Sky TV in the UK in the 80s, it was only BBC and ITV and then later Channel 4. With the advent of Sky, everybody sat up; competition is good for the soul, for the intellect. Monopoly does not; communism has shown that government monopoly does not work. It does not achieve an all-time purpose. Competition challenges the intellect. I think the private broadcast sector is good; there is nothing wrong with that. Look at the Diplomatic Editor at Sky, Tim Mashall, he is right now in Istanbul reporting; that is the newscaster element they introduced. The news caster is part of the news gathering and he can read the news without looking at the script because he was there. Ben Bradlee, the Executive Editor of the Washington Post that broke the Watergate story, demanded of his reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, that for every factual information they bring on the story, there must be corroboration from three independent sources – one of which must be the guy who later became famous as Deep Throat. Thus as both a journalist and individual, I make every effort to be certain before I speak or write. Most Nigerians think with their eyes and that can lead to misperception. When my daughter from my first marriage came to Abuja three years go, someone who saw us at restaurant gossiped to my wife in London that she saw her husband with one half-cast girlfriend.
How much of a family man are you?
My wife is my life. There are many things she can do that I cannot do. God created wives specially; those things she does that keep the family together and healthy, and bonded are far more important for me than what I do. I’m gifted with a wonderful woman. She is my better half in the real sense of it; she is the stability that enabled me to do what I did at FRCN. One of the things I enjoyed in Abuja was I could drive home for lunch and drive back. That was the only time I had with her because by the time I finished at night, she was already in bed. She is particular about my welfare. Back in the UK, I have seen the young lady I married become a resourceful, self-reliant woman. I travel around, as the Igbo say, searching for what the children would eat, but she manages the home front in a way I possibly would not be able to do myself. She is my partner and I practise it. She is good at so many things that I couldn’t do as well as she does. She is an excellent mother of our three boys – Jonathan, Ethan and Jethro. She has groomed them into such well behaved children that are the envy of other parents and a source of pride to us, especially in a society like Britain where parents tend to be a little casual about children’s behaviour and character formation.
How did you meet?
I was married to a white woman for 18 years. Her father could not get his Hitlerite blood out of himself. He served in the Hitler youth group and he was Hitlerite in mentality and did not like the idea of a black man marrying his daughter. We did it against his will but he worked against it until he succeeded in separating us after three children. The only blame I have for my ex-wife is that she was not strong enough to resist her father. I waited for three years and as God would have it, I met this wonderful lady when I was doing a project for Triple Heritage in Abuja. Shortly after, I left for the UK but something told me to come back. We were together for the next three years before getting married. I gave a decent interval between the time and my first marriage so that people would not start talking rubbish. People didn’t know that she met me when I didn’t even have a job; they thought she married the DG. No. She married Eddie Iroh, simple; she didn’t know who I was and she often wondered why people seemed to know me everywhere we went to. I think God packaged her for me. Due to my amiable manner, some people might think I had something to do with my female members of staff simply because I hugged them. No. That is my British training. One day, a member of staff waited by the side of the road while I was being driven out in a jeep. I stopped and asked her to enter without knowing that she was going for physiotherapy. Some ignorant person somewhere would say the DG was seen picking a lady. We paid her hospital bills even though she was not entitled by the rules. Today, the lady is one of the best newscasters in the corporation.
PUNCH
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