“Nigerian TV’s Half-century”: A Book Review

Reviewer: Kay Whiteman

To a book launch, at the Nigerian High Commission here, on a subject of considerable fascination to all those interested in the media in Nigeria.

The book Nigerian Television; Fifty years of Television in Africa by Dr Oluyinka Esan, currently lecturing at the University of Winchester, is the result of a well researched PhD thesis at Glasgow University, but its subject matter goes well beyond the academic. It is a readable work, providing all sorts of informed insights into Nigerian politics and society.

It begins by placing TV in Nigeria in its broad social context, which also means historical, and includes radio, as the vital forerunner of television. In some ways the story of the two branches of broadcast media are inextricably related - they both illustrate the power of the ‘electronic’. Radio, indeed, especially its colonial origins, is a remarkable Nigerian media history in its own right that has already been subject to some study. Esan tells us how it was the experience of the politicians attending the 1957-8 constitutional conferences that made them realise how important television could be politically. This helped trigger Chief Awolowo’s move to gain the prestige of having the first TV in sub-Saharan Africa at WNTV in Ibadan. Again, she recounts how in 1962 Sir Ahmadu Bello decided to launch Kaduna TV after having been snubbed by inadequate TV coverage by WNTV of a visit to Ibadan. The story of the pioneering work of WNTV would make a book in itself, but the section in her chapter The Early Years has fascinating detail. She tells how that admirable broadcasting guru Vincent Maduka, later Director-General of NTA found an AMPEX quad videotape recorder, which was state of the art technology bought at a discount at a fair in Accra, but nobody could make it function, so it was put in a specially air-conditioned room marked ‘no entry’. Maduka, as a curious recently qualified engineering graduate, experimented with it and made it work.

The author’s interview with Maduka is one example of the research that gives the book its quality. She also takes us from the big picture to the specific, in excellent case studies of Lagos TV, Ogun TV, Plateau TV and Kano community TV, all illustrating the problems and illuminating the politics of each. The centrepiece is the two chapters on the ‘second and third waves’ of TV expansion. In the 1970s the proliferation of State TV services at the time of the oil boom demonstrated how the military made use of the medium to reinforce their power. At the same time, increased resources encouraged a social medium in the areas of both education and entertainment, the twin pillars of all TV. The chapter on the ‘third wave’ of post-deregulation TV, and the creation of the privately owned TV stations such as Channels and especially AIT is also compelling. This has been a controversial and trail-blazing TV station, with a central place in Nigeria’s TV history. She does it justice.

My own direct experience of TV in Nigeria came from living in Lagos in the early years of this nearly-ended decade. My own impression was above all of unrealised potential – that technical difficulties, including local reception, had still not been mastered, and that possession of a TV set more than anything gave access to the South African satellite provided DSTV and hence to foreign channels, most useful for watching international football matches. This, it seems, is a jaundiced and partial view, and this book holds up hope that Nigeria’s TV can on occasion find ways of being a genuinely peoples’ medium, reaching to the rural areas and playing a vital social role, if only, above all, electricity supply were to be regular.

I was also in the print media as Chief Executive for fifteen years of a London-based subsidiary of a ‘quasi-governmental’ Nigerian para-statal which is also relevant here. It helped give me insight into the resilience of the media universe in Nigeria and the creative abilities and aspirations of its inhabitants, but I also learnt how dangerous the grip of state ownership can be in terms of waste and diversion of resources. The problem of keeping abreast of expensive technology is also one the book highlights. But the message is still that the potential of TV in Nigeria is enormous. At the launch one speaker from the audience drew attention to the fact that Nigerian TV was the nursery and training ground for the success of Nollywood.

Although the ‘Africa’ in the title is symbolic (as the book is entirely and properly Nigeria-focused), what happens in Nigeria can have great influence in Africa. I have heard many in Africa say they wished there could be a pan-African equivalent of Al Jazeera, which has been sought after but not realised. The author says that Nigeria’s external services have so far been ‘diasporic’, but the country would have to be at the heart of any bigger venture.

 

Kay Whiteman
Businessday on line
December 2009