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…As founder of DAAR Communications receives accolades over role in truncating Third Term Agenda
From Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja
The senator representing Edo North Senatorial District, Adams Oshiomhole, has asked broadcast media in the country to emulate the founder of DAAR Communications Plc, owners of Africa Independent Television (AIT) and Raypower 100.5FM, late High Chief Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi, who freely gave his medium to non-state actors to air their views.
The former governor of Edo State, while delivering a goodwill message during the Second Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi Annual Diamond Lecture in Abuja, recalled how Dokpesi was instrumental to the dearth of the now infamous Third Term Agenda on the floor of the National Assembly.
Oshiomhole said: “I just want to say that I have noticed, for those of you who are in the broadcasting, in the days of Dokpesi, I had the opportunity as a non-state actor to appear on Kakaaki (a political programme on AIT) to put across to Nigerians, from the point of view of the working people, what we think public policy should be and how setting specific public policies affect the ordinary Nigerians. And Dokpesi truly lived up to the name – Africa Independent Television.
“He gave opportunity for non-state actors to put their case, as well as state operators to respond or to put their case. And on many occasions, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) or whatever it is, the regulator decided to threaten or even threatened to withdraw the certificate for allowing a smallish man like me, who in their view, is causing trouble to a big man from Ota.”
Oshiomhole further said: “But I saw a man who used his station, first to promote internal conversation between and within Nigerians, but never dedicate the station to running down his country.”
Continuing, he also said: “These days, I watch television and I see a Nigerian media saying Nigeria has affected you because something negative happened to you. And I ask myself, who are the Nigerians? Are editors, broadcasters, TV hosts, are they not Nigerians?”
The former President of the Nigeria Labour Union (NLC) added that if anything, “they affect the image of Nigeria, portraying us in the worst colours as if nothing good happen in this country.”
He made reference to Cameroon where 92 years old Paul Biya had just been re-elected as president, saying that with such scenario, “you will know that Nigerians’ ability to terminate the ambition of a president from altering our constitution was a great accomplishment and AIT played a major role in transmitting that conversation in the National Assembly live without demanding money.”
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Oshiomhole stated that with such development, when Senators and Members of the House of Representatives stood up to talk, they knew that their constituents would hold them accountable.
“So, if you talk about using media to promote national interest, Dokpesi was there,” Oshiomhole stated.
Also speaking, the Minister of Regional Development, Abubakar Momoh, said during the 5th Assembly when there was an attempt to amend the constitution, many people were taking the credit, saying that the man that should be credited is Dokpesi, because of what he did.
Momoh said: “I was a Member of the National Assembly. In one of the occasions, he called me, he said, you are my brother, first, it has to start from home. This issue of third term, make sure you work with your people to ensure that it does not succeed. And he even referred me to Senator Uche Chukwumerije. He said work with those people and make sure the Third Term Agenda never succeeded. I said, you don’t need to ask me. If you ask people like Bugaje and the rest of them, we had a place we were meeting at that very time. So, even after the whole exercise was truncated and people were taking the credit and the rest of it, I said, how I wish they know the brain behind this exercise. It was that very man because apart from using the Africa Independent Television station, he was calling people one after the other, letting them know that it is not a good thing and that it must not be supported.”
Delivering the lecture titled Communication and Development, the Governor of Nasarawa State, Abdullahi Sule, recalled how through genuine communication and leadership, he was able to acquire and turn around the African Petroleum (AP) Plc, resolved the nagging border issue with Benue State regarding grazing routes for cows, the discovery of oil in Nasarawa State, amongst others.
Speaking earlier, the Chairman of DAAR Communications Plc, Raymond Dokpesi (jnr), said the founder of DAAR Communications Plc firmly believed that no nation can develop beyond its ability to communicate truth to itself.
“Today, we gather under the broad theme of Communication and Development, to confront many questions that defines our time. Chief Dokpesi was not just a media entrepreneur, he was a visionary passionate about giving Nigeria and Africa at large a platform with which to tell its own stories. A platform with which to shape our own narratives and a platform with which to bridge the global information order to give Nigeria a true sovereign voice,” Dokpesi said.
