By Ozioruva Aliu
Sulaiman Aledeh was appointed the Managing Director of Edo Broadcasting Services (EBS) on November 25, 2024. One year after, Aledeh x-rays his sojourn so far and how Governor Monday Okpebholo gave him free hand to run the place, saying this has helped to transform it to a must-watch station in the state. Excerpts:
How has it been heading the Edo Broadcasting Services (EBS) coming from the private sector into the public sector?
I am happy you have put this in perspective, it has been challenging. Quite an interesting one, but highly challenging because coming to EBS, it was as if there was nothing on ground. The only thing I met in EBS was a staff that is populated by experts, but no zeal, no motivation because somehow, whether deliberately or otherwise, that motivation had been taken out of them.
Meanwhile, these are great experts, great minds, professionals like you and I not being able to work because the motivation wasn’t there, the tools to work with were not there, and the resources were not there. No vehicle to go for news, roving had stopped, the newsroom empty, no computers. Those who were still trying to write, to make news out of the little resources, the personal resources that they had, using their cars, they were writing in long hand pen and paper in the newsroom in November 2024, and I asked myself, “What am I doing here?” But again, I remembered the time, about twice, that I met His Excellency, the Governor of Edo State, Monday Okpebholo, in his private residence in Abuja, the conversation was about EBS and he told me, “Don’t worry, I will support you”, and, at the back of my mind, I was thinking, “You’ve been in the media, you’ve always had this perception about politicians, even though now I am in politics”, and I asked myself, “Do you want to trust this?” I said, “Okay, trust him and let’s see how it goes”, and I will say, so far, so good. Not for one day has the governor reneged in his promise to ensure that I have the backing, his personal backing and the state’s backing because even the State Assembly and the Committee in charge of Media, they are all giving me that support.
You said you met a very deplorable situation but the last administration painted a picture of spending billions of naira to revive here. What happened?
Seeing is believing, and you need to see. When the governor paid a visit, it was on video, we were in the dark, and we were using our phone light. This office that you see everywhere, beautiful, there was no office like this. I couldn’t work in that office because of where I was coming from. I needed to have a befitting place to work. Somewhere that I always looked forward to going to every day and that is why today, I come to work every day.
There is hardly any day I don’t come to work. So, back to the last government, I don’t want to say much, but I will say it the way it is, there was nothing in EBS, if they said they bought computers, I don’t know where the computers went into because, at that point in time, I gave the same statement when I came and the spokesperson to the former governor went on a journey that I didn’t understand how broadcast works, why anyone would think that what I said was incorrect. The adult people knew that they couldn’t listen to EBS on radio because when I came in, for over two months, my friend was bringing me to work and I was listening to EBS in his car. Then I said to myself, “Why is it that EBS is not clear?” If you moved a bit far from the city centre, you will not get EBS, but as I speak to you, EBS can be gotten in Auchi.
The last Salah period, I drove from here to Auchi and I listened to EBS radio throughout. Now, people call from everywhere. There is a traditional ruler, the Olokpe of Okpe Kingdom in Akoko-Edo local government area, his area shares boundary with Ondo State in that axis, he said he listens to EBS now in his palace and he sends messages to the station. We get calls from people in Delta but this is the same EBS that they spent millions on. So EBS was off terrestrial and we were told from some of the documents we saw here that they will need about 3 billion to fix EBS and bring it back on terrestrial.
We didn’t spend 10 million, we didn’t spend nine million to get EBS back. EBS came back when we climbed the mast. We brought experts from outside Edo State. No one believed that we could do that and they climbed the mast, they found out that it was disconnected and water was getting into all of the cables, so by the time we got it connected, we got what they call a dehydrator to drain the water and dry up the lines. But because it was left there for years, every time it rained, moisture came, there was vapour and all that. It was a poor situation I met, no commercials, nothing was coming to EBS.
All the artists in EBS were gone, it is either you take artistes as full staff or on contract because there is no system in broadcast journalism that you don’t have. The governor said, “Bring the names of those people for proper engagement”. The artistes I met were being paid between N5, 000 and N10,000 in a month and they were being owed for over a year and I asked “how is it that you are paying someone 10k and you are owing for one year plus?” So what did I do? I cleared the backlog, we cleared everything and we now increased the amount so they are earning almost five times of what they were being paid. You are seated in my office and you’re looking at the picture. You see how clear this picture is, this is HD.
There wasn’t a picture like this; even the graphics weren’t like this. There wasn’t a scroll bar; you now have two anchors reading the news. You will not believe that this is EBS from Benin. This is EBS news, our newscasters are now well dressed, in the history of EBS, people were not being paid wardrobe allowance, not a Kobo. These are things that ordinarily people kept to themselves but we decided to say no. This is how media is done elsewhere. As journalists, we always write, we talk about people diverting funds, resources and when we are given the chance to do it, if we now join them to do the same, then we have failed the system and failed the sector and our profession.
Now, is there any effort to make it an institutional issue so that these things you have done will be sustainable after you?
I think we have been able to set the standard, and the standard is that this is the minimum for any TV or radio station, the kind of programmes we have and the content we have. Today our radio is the most listened to, within a year, people are leaving privately owned stations to join us.
Our TV station is now the most watched and our clients, advertisers have started coming back gradually, which is a thing of joy. The governor said to us when he came here, “Critique me and run this place as if you are running a private station. If you do not do it that way, if you are not objective, people will not watch and listen to you”. Our news is not all about Governor Okpebholo, then the next is about his deputy, Dennis Idahosa, no. If all of a sudden President Tinubu is speaking, we are leading with that. If Trump says something has happened, we are leading with that, we are not about “governor this, governor that, Commissioner this, Commissioner that”.
So he gave us that openly and publicly. So that has helped. For those who didn’t get the memo, they were calling, “Hello, come and cover us, the Ministry this, Commissioner that and all that”, and I say, “Okay, are you paying for this?” This is paid. It is because the governor is leading by example, you can check, tell them to show you receipts and they will show you. In the history of Edo State, no governor has ever paid EBS for using EBS but Governor Okpebholo is doing it, he is paying our salaries and he is doing commercial. If he is giving Station A in Lagos, Abuja, anywhere money to do live coverage, he is also giving to EBS to also cover so that gives us the impetus, the courage to look anyone in the eye and say, “if the governor is paying, why shouldn’t you?” Yes, we can give you discount as an agency of government in the state and the like but not to say it is going to be zero Kobo. Those are some of the things that will be able to drive the place even while we are gone because now they see that it is a world of possibility.
We didn’t bring someone from outside Nigeria to run this. It is the people; they thought could not do it. Our flagship bulletin, EBS Tonight, is two hours non-stop. No station apart from one private station in Abuja does it. We are creating a new breed of young generation; I mean a future generation of journalists. They are with us at the moment. Gen Zs are here, a fine crop of journalists is with us. I am quick to say here that these people, majority of them, were hired by Godwin Obaseki, but, sadly, for seven months they were not paid. They were hired and for seven months they were coming to work on a daily basis with not a kobo being paid to them. I looked at them, “Are these people relevant, are they good, are they needed?” Yes. So I made a case to the governor and he said let us revisit and we revisited the issue and he said to me that we are going to pay them. I didn’t believe it, I came back, that was in the sixth month. I came back and I was telling them that “the governor said he will pay you people, please don’t lose it, just keep at it” because some of them were depressed.
It was a bad moment for us here in EBS, one of the worst moments for me because you are giving directives, you are asking yourself, these are family people, women and men, no money and then, the first tranche hit their account, there was some kind of joy, they were ecstatic, he paid and the second one came and that was it; so it wasn’t as if they were paying it in trickles and make the money so useless to them, no they got it in bulk. We have our editorial meetings now, it is now a cultural thing, one in the morning, the second one in the afternoon.
You know when to send in your report here, you know when to come back, you know when to balance the story. It is not all the time that it is about APC because it is the ruling party, no, you must also talk to PDP, you must also talk to any other opposition parties and so you know that for certain you must balance the story. If you bring in a guest and the guest is on one side, you need to bring the other guest that will be on the other side. They have started it and they have seen that it is working. So when we continue, they will see that even when we leave, someone comes to take us back into the woods, there will be some kind of pushback first from the people, because the greater part of Edo people are with us, they are behind us.
Are there plans to revive the EBS outstations?
There is one in Ivue in Uromi, Edo Central then there is one in Ihievbe in Edo North. Now let me shock you, the one in Edo Central is no longer with EBS, the last administration leased it out to an individual who is now running the place as a private broadcast station. They said it wasn’t good, it wasn’t viable. They leased it out for almost next to nothing so the governor’s senatorial district has no EBS outstation.
In Edo North, in Ihievbe, I was there, thanks to the Nigerian Army, because that is the only station outside that was not vandalized and it was because the Nigerian Army put a station in front of the facility, so they preserved our equipment, but rodents destroyed most of them and they are now obsolete. I went to the governor, I said we needed to revamp and, without any delay, the governor approved the reactivation of Ihievbe, so we are waiting for the money to be disbursed to the contractor that has been contracted. Once that money gets to him, you will see work go on in that station.
Fake news has become a challenge in journalism how can this be tackled to sustain the integrity of journalism including your station?
You know, whether we like it or not, fake news is upon us and I try as much as possible to tell my team that we need to run away from it and the only way to run away from it is try not to be the first to break any story, you need to verify. Being the first can actually make you the very last. You will be so ridiculous to the extent that you lose your spot. I am sure if you check properly, you would have also been a victim of fake news. I am a victim of fake news.
Till this moment, if you Google, trying to check my date of birth, it is a fake one that is out there. So fake news is real and also recently I posted something asking a question of AI and AI got the wrong thing and I said it is also still the garbage in, garbage out. It is what you put out there, the algorithm it picks and every other thing that it sends out. So humans will still remain relevant. That is why I am happy about this job that you and I are doing. We still remain relevant. The good thing is that when social media fails, guess where they run to.
I have not seen it in Vanguard. I have not heard it or seen it on EBS. I have not seen it on Channels, on NTA and others because they still know in their heart of hearts that these platforms are the real deal. They may not have the speed, but they have the authenticity. The way to fight fake news, first I say verify, are others reporting it, this big story, so big a story, why is it that it is only this platform that has it?
How will you assess the Edo government in the last one year?
I will give the governor a very good pass mark because I was the first to have used the phrase “Edo State is now one big construction site” because of what I saw when I went around doing my mini documentary series, checking or looking at the roads. I was in the three senatorial districts. I started from Benin, I went to Edo Central and then to Edo North.
I went to so many places and all that burnt by the sun, doing my work and I loved it. When my dad passed last year, I remember I couldn’t go through Benin City to my village. I had to go through Ondo State to get to my village and I am seeing that the roads have been fixed. I gave him a passing mark. I schooled in Benin, my early childhood was in Benin, you go outside Benin, you come back 10, 15 years later, Benin is still the same.
Nothing has changed. Ramat Park is Ramat Park, Oba of Benin Market is Oba of Benin Market, Oregbeni is still Oregbeni, Ring Road is still Jaga Jaga everywhere and all that. Temboga has been one criminal place, nobody passes through Temboga, we all know these, I came and I saw that Ramat Park is about 65, 70% completed for the overhead bridge. Before he came here, cult clashes in the state were something else. People were being killed on a daily basis. It was as if they were playing games with their lives.
We speak good, perfect pidgin in Edo State, but when you talk about education, we were there and all of a sudden in our schools, pupils were sitting on the floor, and now you go back and ask yourself but what happened to EdoBest that the past government made so much noise about? Schools in Edo State are getting the firsts, if you pick up your phone, every child, someone, maybe you have someone you are sponsoring, you are helping in Edo State, just pick up your phone, you look at the person’s name and everyone has a unique number, just the way we have our matriculation number. It has never happened anywhere in Nigeria.
Look at the way he handled the Uromi killings, that is unprecedented that there were no reprisal attacks. Then as a politician, if there is anything I love, I love that he is running what I call inclusive politics. Look at the five thousand teachers recently employed, when they came to collect their letters, they were also given stipends as transportation back to their bases.
What is your take on the recent resurgence in the cases of kidnappings and killings?
The service chiefs were changed and now there is escalation so did we change the good guys and replace them with the not so good guys or did we change and all of a sudden there was some kind of lapses somewhere.
The intelligence of our security system, DSS, the DMI, all of them, they need to up the ante because Nigerians are asking, why is it that when the ordinary Nigerian man picks his phone to do something bad, he is tracked, but when the bad guys who are also now doing TikTok do, you can’t even catch them, you can’t track them.
The post Edo Broadcasting Services was nearly dead when we came in — Aledeh, MD appeared first on Vanguard News.
