Veteran broadcaster and media guru, Prince Bisi Olatilo, has navigated the media world for about 50 years. Born on December 20 1953, Olatilo, who hails from Igbajo in Osun State, studied Mass Communications at the Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos. He started his broadcasting career in Ibadan in the 1970s and has worked with other stations, including the Voice of Nigeria (VON) and Radio Nigeria. A polyglot who is well versed in English and Nigeria’s three major languages- Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa, is a popular master of ceremonies and events host who now owns a television station. He spoke with VERA WISDOM-BASSEY.
You’ve been in the media for close to 50 years now. How has the journey been?
I did not enter broadcasting or journalism by accident. I had always liked to go for my life ambition, and broadcasting has been that ambition. I started as far back as my secondary school days. I left secondary school in 1971, and before I left, I had always wanted broadcasting. So I would listen to news through the only system through which we hear the news, which is the radio. I would hear the likes of Ikenna Ndaguba and Sola Folorunsho – radio commentators. They were very popular then. I would put all of that into practice. I would go around my school in search of materials that were going to be used to write stories. I read the news regularly. During the assembly of about 500 students, my principals of blessed memory gave me the opportunity to read the news. And just like what I had heard, I conducted news a lot. I did the same thing for football. As I said, just what I heard I put into practice. No football match was played without me commenting regularly. And as a student, I exhibited my talent as a goalkeeper for my school. I was leading my school’s literally and debating society. I make bold to say that we won all the schools that were around our locality at the time. This continued until I left school. In 1975, after many failures and many attempts at auditioning, I got the opportunity to be on Radio OYO. I was reading the news. I could speak Igbo and Hausa very well.
There was a programme called Wazobia Requests. That programme brought me my wife. I have been married for 42 years. I went on a visit, and she was out to see a friend of hers. She saw me, and you know, radio will hide you, unlike TV, where everybody sees you. She had been hearing about me, so when she now saw me, she was like, “ah, are you the man who speaks all these languages?” I always said she ‘toasted’ me. We got married in 1981 in Ibadan, and from there we moved to Lagos.
At the Voice of Nigeria (VON), that is where I started my broadcasting career, on the national scale. There, I had a few days with Radio Nigeria, and there I had to read the network news, so we read the news from 1979 to 2009. Maybe I was the longest person among my colleagues, who also shared the same practice of reading the news with me, the likes of Soni Irabor and John Momoh, the same person who owns Channels TV. We read the news and did programming, and because I could speak the two main languages, when radio broadcasting started, I was appointed the first head. We broadcast in English and Igbo. I did that till 2009, when I established my own corporate communication house. BISIOLATILO Show, like everybody knows. We had this 24-hour TV, and you can see it on Youtube. That is where we are today.
You’re Yoruba. How were you able to learn Igbo and Hausa?
I was fleunt in Hausa and Igbo before I started speaking Yoruba. I grew up in Kano. I grew up among the Igbo. We went to the same schools in the same area called Sabongari. Although I am Yoruba, I learned Igbo in the North. Before we left Kano in 1966, at the end of my primary school education, I could only speak Hausa and Igbo, not even a little Yoruba. That was why my father insisted that I must go to school in my village. Thank God I did because I can now speak my language very well. Just name it, there is nothing about my language that I don’t speak. So that is how the languages came about.
Looking back at the time you started your career and now, what is your view on the Nigerian media today?
The love for the job, which should be the motivating factor, has almost completely died now. In our own times and even the time before ours, the first thing was the love for the job. We just loved the job, and that motivated us. Money might not come immediately, but the love for the job brings in a lot of recognition. Passion is almost out of the business now. It’s so sad. The love for the job would take us to the Broadcasting House, Radio Nigeria, even when you were not roasted to work. Just because of the love you have for it, you want to be there. But now it’s like those you employed and you’re paying them regularly, you’re not owing them, you’re forcing them to work. It’s like they are doing you a favour, which is so sad. If I have to score the present-day broadcast journalist, I will score them lowly on that.
How was your growing up like? Did your parents support you going into mass communication? Or was there something else they wanted you to do but you insisted on this?
Both of my parents, of blessed memory, were into business. My father was a tailor, and my mother was a well-respected businesswoman in those days in Kano. Only what they wanted for their children was to be responsible in life. They did not choose a profession for us, but they were happy that I was making my mark and all that. Mine career was giving them a lot of joy – that I could speak these languages, and so on. So they didn’t frown at it but were happy that I became responsible.
Has there been a time you felt like quitting the job?
There hasn’t been any time. To show you that I love this job – I don’t even know how I will describe my love for this job. This is the same place; we’ve been in this building for the past 23 years. And we run our operations from here. This same building has come crashing down; we’ve survived fire accidents that brought the whole place down to rubble. We had to re-build. Isn’t that enough for me to say, “Let me quit?” But God stood in for us, and before we knew it, we got back again, and here we are. I am sure you know I had this COVID thing, pronounced dead. And that shows that God has a special thing for me. That is why he is keeping me specially.
Have you ever been embarrassed on the job?
There is one that comes to mind. Mobil Oil opened one of their facilities in Akwa Ibom. We had to go by helicopter. I had the microphone with me, but there was this gentleman who was pairing with me. He was the one handling the jokes. I don’t know where he said I went wrong. He just said I should give the microphone to him, a younger person, to go ahead. That was an embarrassing situation. It wasn’t as if it was announced; he just came to me and said, “give me that microphone.” I felt really bad. I am talking about something that can’t be less than 40 or so years ago now, a very long time ago. Then later, he started apologising, but then it was too late for him to start apologising. I felt bad.
Has your life had any high points or blissful moments?
If you look at the environment here, I am sure we have the Nigerian Media Merit Award, and that is the highest award anybody can have. I had it twice: 1993 and 1994, two years consecutively. In fact, I shared one with John Momoh. Based on that, I was one of those who signed – we were among those that put together the Vision 2010, and all of us were from different radio stations. We were camped in Abuja for a year, and every weekend we flew to Lagos, we worked on something like a template that was close to helping our government in every aspect of life, beginning from 2010, which is 13 years ago. That is the highest point of my career in broadcasting. It’s not everyone that had that privilege that I had. Look at all these awards you see here, Also, there is an honorary doctorate, one from a University in Singapore. I cannot remember most of the awards I got from fans, from Nigerians living abroad who appreciate what we are doing, trying to put Nigeria on the map, celebrating Nigeria. These awards are from Germany and the UK.
If you love the job, you also get loved. When you visit these countries, people there are the ones responsible for everything. When they see you, it’s like seeing the president of a country. So, the job has brought a lot of love to me. All my effort is not about money. I just love the job. Even as we speak, I still read news on my platform. I was the one who did the newspaper review today, and so on and so forth.
I just hope that people learn from me. There are some people that we took over from. I decided that if they can do this, why can’t I?
It means your driving force has been your love for the job?
It’s that love for the job. And it is too late for me now to drop the ball. My life revolves around broadcasting. I am still awake until 2:00 am, or sometimes until 5:00 am. Around 5:00 am, I am awake.
So you sleep for three hours?
What am I doing? That is not to say that in between, I won’t sleep. I nap and all that. Even if you have people who will do it, but that’s me. It’s like it’s in my DNA. If you love your job, it will show in what you are doing. And that is why, as you see all these governors. Quite a lot of these governors that come here say they see the kind of attention that I put to all the things I do. It shows you love the job, so come and do the same for us. And when we have the privilege of publishing them, we’re also publishing ourselves. Then we are on AIT and NTA. What we do is that we send our reporters there, to the construction site. Then we do 15 minutes every week; we’ve done it for Bayelsa, Rivers, Imo, Anambra, Sokoto, Oyo, Osun, and almost all the states, and we are on the road doing jobs and publishing. There are cameras there, even in Bauchi, Plateau, Nassarawa, and, of course, Lagos. Cross River. And we were the first to tell the world about the tourism potential in that state. Even now, I’m still going to Delta. How did we start? During the time of Governor Emmanuel Oduaghan, we started with this coverage of marriages and events. I said what are we talking about? We can actually put this into events, and that is how we started covering events. Activities. Like when the governors are commissioning roads and bridges. That is what your people will see before voting for you and you’re convincing them. You promised them water, electricity, and all of that. You are showing them just to see what you are doing.
Looking back now, is there anything you wish you had done differently?
In my fantasy, I have met at least two people. There is a gentleman who came here and he wanted us to help him to do something between us and them, and he has posted an award to reach out to these people, but along the way, something just struck me. Everybody has been talking about Bisi Olatilo. Nigerians are not people who don’t say what they don’t believe in. If it is one hour a week, we are known all over the world. Why don’t I maximise that opportunity? That one hour a week of Bisi Olatilo show, holding every week, has become a 24-hour affair. That is something that is special to us. We are the ones who made the whole world call us Nigerians the happiest people on earth. We cover events because we are the ones who do it on a weekly basis. Look at this one on BOS TV that shows the different cultures in the six geopolitical zones, showing our lifestyles. We even helped to change the narrative of the Western world, which does not see anything nice in what we are doing. They went all out to jettison and mess up what we are doing. When they see things like this, they are shocked. Are these the same people we are talking about? So I said since we have metamorphosed into a 24-hour television service on a regular basis, why don’t we try and look for those that will buy us and invest, or even try and get things on our 24-hour plate? There may not be in Nigeria here, but there is a Nigeria outside where they love this kind of programme. That is the next line of action to take this to the world. As I said to the young man, we have been busy in show business rather than business, but it is now time to turn to business accounting.
Somebody will say, ‘ah, you just realised that at 70 years old’ I said to the guy, ‘God’s time is the best.’ My pastor will say, ‘How can you be in the river and allow the soap to enter into your eyes?’ So what we have can fetch us a lot of money that we don’t even need. But we have not properly followed up. We will do it with people who will key into it. You know this job we are doing—we can’t do it all alone. We need a lot of collaboration.