For many years, television audiences in Nigeria had the misfortune of listening to only one station throughout the country. At a time when citizens of other countries had a variety of channels to surf and dozens of programmes at their fingertips, millions of viewers in the most populous country in Africa had to compulsorily endure the monopoly Nigeria Television Authority enjoyed.
Nor did it help matters that the Nigerian public perceived NTA as a government mouthpiece, influenced mostly by those in uniform or agbada, thus diminishing the professionalism of its staff. For much of its existence then, studio bosses knew better to laud the achievements of military administrators commissioning a borehole project in a state capital, for instance, or civilian governors declaring open a piggery or poultry farm in another. Add to that the monotony of the programmes NTA offered and you understand why it never quite caught on with younger generation of Nigerians.
And then, there was the problem of antiquated technology. Audio and video quality was most often poor, reducing youngsters in rural areas to turning bamboo poles atop which television antenna dangled while their parents or senior sibs gave instructions from living rooms through partly-open window curtains for clearer reception.
Whether to save cost or for whatever reason, NTA and its satellite stations in state capitals then didn’t start broadcasting until 4pm, with prime time news following five hours later. By I I, I I.30pm, the national anthem signaled the close of broadcast until the following day, leaving millions of viewers in a permanent state of suspension.
It was clear Nigerian viewers needed something better, something fresh, exciting and not the often repeated programmes NTA had to offer. An editorial in The Guardian of 18 October 2009, for instance, summed up what it was like then glued to what passed for a national television. “The federal government-owned television network, the Nigerian Television Authority, (NTA) is arguably the largest of its type in Africa,” the newspaper wrote at the time. “But it is yet to have the operational freedom required to maximize its potential.”
With the hammerlock grip on the state-subsidised NTA, there was no sign of it getting the “operational freedom to maximize its potential.” Plainly, that freedom had to come from somewhere. But who or what will bring it about?
Enter Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi with Raypower/ AIT
The man who started off the first private radio and television stations in Nigeria seemed the most unlikely person to do so. A Marine engineer who’d worked with two prominent northern politicians (Bamanga Tukur and Adamu Ciroma) after his return to Nigeria from Poland, Dokpesi was not a regular media type. He had not worked with any media organisation before, neither had he any prior experience in the industry. For him, the idea came off the cuff. He recognised there was a need to do a few fresh things in the broadcast media in Nigeria and he set about doing just that.
Recalling how they started, his protégé and brother-in-law, Kenny Ogungbe, once told reporters how they began the Raypower/ AIT project just on a whim. Military president Ibrahim Babangida had deregulated the broadcast industry through the Nigeria Broadcasting Commission with Decree No. 38 thereby opening that aspect of the media to private ownership. It was in 1992.
According to Ogungbe who will later launch the careers of dozens of Nigerian artistes on AIT, Dokpesi “was into politics then. He was then the director-general for Adamu Ciroma’s presidential campaign. And later, he was Bamanga Tukur’s presidential campaign director-general. I was like his right-hand man. After everything, he asked me what we should do, and I told him, let us do radio. We got to the US and he started buying radio equipment. I asked if he had a license, and he replied, ‘Don’t worry.’ Before we left America, he ordered the construction of DAAR Communications while we were still in Los Angeles.
“We did not have a license yet, but we started broadcasting. And it was during Sani Abacha’s regime. One day, we suddenly heard an NTA news report which warned that ‘there is a radio station broadcasting illegally, off-air or we will deal with you decisively’. We went off the air for six months till August 15, 1994, when we were able to get a license. We fully came on air on September 1, 1994.”
With that, Dokpesi set about filling the void in the broadcast media in Nigeria, pointedly noting that Raypower “was to bridge a lack of proper information gap created by several government-run radio services. I have said that it was a lack of proper information. There was a need to be able to reach the people. Mind you, Raypower started at the height of the Nigerian crisis, during the Abiola saga.
“At that particular point in time, OGBC was not effective; there was the Federal Radio Corporation, but then, there was a yearning for something new, something fresh, and Raypower was able to come out at that point to meet that need. We had hoped that we would be able to expand and develop rapidly across the country, but unfortunately, there were various blockages and hurdles that were put in our way.”
Obstacles or not, it didn’t stop Dokpesi from starting off a sister media organisation Africa Independent Television, in 1996, described by one reporter as a television station “with more youth-centric appeal with an array of entertainment programmes…a TV station credited for accelerating the popularity and influence of Afrobeats culture.”
Of course, Raypower and AIT caught on well with many a Nigerian youth, especially budding artistes who availed themselves of the opportunities presented by the stations to showcase their musical talents. With the likes of the stentorian voiced Steve “the Sleek” Kadiri anchoring programmes on Raypower 100.5FM, a dependable anchor Jato taking his turn on the popular AIT news programme Kakaaki, both media outfits soon became household names, made eternally so with jingles and promotionals such as “Africa Independent Television, Ogbonge TV, for dis kontri…Papa, Mama o, AIT na di station.”
Unlike other broadcast media companies located right in the heart of Lagos, AIT/ Raypower were in one vast ranch-like location straddling Lagos and Ogun states, some place called Alagbado. At the time, it was miles and miles of extensive bush punctuated by the imposing steely pylons which were the only signs of modernity in an otherwise forgotten region inhabited by farmers and hunters in search of game.
Going to Raypower/ AIT then was like travelling to another country entirely. Houses were few and far between and you could barely glimpse the residents except the occasional sighting of a villager hanging a lifeless porcupine or a tongued-out antelope on a pole just by the roadside. If you asked, the hunter will direct you to a corner where you find locals quaffing frothy palm wine in thatched-roofed huts. Despite this distance, the media organisations Dokpesi founded grew in popularity becoming, at some point, the sole source of reliable information from government or out of it.
In his 2013 publication Minorities as Competitive Overlords, late columnist and author Jimanze Ego-Alowes listed Raymond Dokpesi as one of the media moguls from the South-south whose pioneering role radicalised the broadcast media in Nigeria. Others are Nduka Obaigbena of THISDAY, Alex Ibru of The Guardian, Sam Amuka Pemu of Vanguard, Frank Aigbogun of Business Day and Ben Murray Bruce of Rhythm 93.7FM and Silverbird Television.
The privately-owned television station was a dream come true for couch potatoes and insomniacs. NEPA permitting, they could watch programmes to their heart’s content because both radio and television stations broadcast 24/ 7. It was a new era in broadcast journalism in Nigeria, an example other private television stations like Channels, the defunct DBN, MITV, Silver Bird and TVC will soon follow. And no one forgot who the pioneer or pacesetter was – the man from Agenebode in Edo state but who was born in Ibadan Oyo state on October 25, 1951, a man nobody gave chances of survival as a child let alone as media entrepreneur.
Early years
Much has been written about Dokpesi since his untimely demise on May 29, 2023, a day of “renewed hope” for newly sworn-in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu but certainly a great loss to family, friends and business associates of Dokpesi who was a card-carrying member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party.
Though in opposing political camps with BAT of the All Progressives Congress, the president however sent a condolence message to the family, describing Dokpesi’s death as a “blow to the media industry where he has played pioneering roles in private broadcasting. His pacesetting investment in the industry is an inspiration to many who came after him. The history of the evolution of the Nigerian media industry will be incomplete without prominent mention of Dokpesi and his giant footprints on the media landscape. I express my sincere condolences to the management and staff of DAAR Communications and the family of the late media entrepreneur for this monumental loss.”
Shock was the word for Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the PDP and close friend of Dokpesi. “Oh my God! I am in a state of shock,” Atiku lamented. “I am in Adamawa, scheduled to return midweek before I received this shattering piece of news,” insisting that “you shouldn’t have left us on a date like this, Ezomo. But what can we do? As we say in Islam, from God, we came and to Him, we return. My everlasting and deepest condolences to his family, associates and admirers. May God forgive his sins and grant him paradise.”
Though reportedly convalescing from an illness, Dokpesi tripped on his treadmill while exercising on the morning of that fateful day. He was 71. By his own account, he had a long run on life. In one account to journalists, Dokpesi recalled that doctors in faraway Poland where he had his university education once told him he wouldn’t live past 35. Worse still, no one thought he would survive his childhood.
He was the only surviving son out of 13 children. He was hobbled from early on by recurring sickness on account of which he became “handicapped because I could not talk from the beginning of my life.” That experience left him with self-loathing, a condition worsened by an uncharitable declaration by a family friend urging his father to dispense with him because he wouldn’t amount to much in life, a never-do-well.
“My mother was very helpless at that time,” Dokpesi told journalists in 2021, “and here I was feeling very sick, unable to communicate freely. And my mother, too, was illiterate. So, here I was, I couldn’t talk, and even when I attempted to write anything, she could not read what I was writing.”
Under that crippling condition, the family sought the services of an expert on such matters. The solution to his problem required unorthodox treatment, as Dokpesi himself later recounted. “We went through the bank of River Niger, which was full at that time. We went into a small village, having travelled almost two and a half hours on the river; they called the village Osuneme. I was not given any injections. The people just came up to say I had been poisoned, and people who committed the atrocity were present.
“So, ‘here is water, if you are sure you are not the one responsible for the state of the health of this boy, and say, God, you have seen me.’ And one after the other, my father’s eldest sister, my father’s first wife, the lineage coincidentally were involved. I went into a fit again, where I was rolling and vomited. It was the same water that they were given that was given to me. So, I took that same water and vomited quite extensively different items from my abdomen.”
Once past those medical challenges, the only way for the young man was up and from then on, his path was pretty much carved out for him: professional work, politics, media and more involvement in politics up until 2019 and the last presidential election where he played prominent roles as a PDP heavyweight.
After his party’s loss to APC during the presidential polls in 2015, for instance, Dokpesi apologised for PDP’s mistakes, declaring thusly that “we are aware of the errors of the past 16 years. As human beings, we must have made mistakes and could not meet Nigerians’ expectations. For that, we tender an unreserved apology. Make no mistake. The PDP is aware that there were errors made along the way.”
An acceptance of guilt and slush funds he was reported to have received from the National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, to President Goodluck Jonathan probably necessitated the anti-graft agency EFCC roping him in that same year. He was alleged to have been paid N2.1 billion by Dasuki, on account of which he was charged to court. A justice of the Appellate Court Elfrieda Williams-Dawodu in Abuja struck out the case on April 1, 2021.
His media station also had some run-in with the NBC for defaulting on tax returns. But it was obvious AIT had been on the sightline of the authorities since 2015 after it ran a particulalrly damaging documentary on Muhammadu Buhari APC’s presidential candidate at the time.
The founder of the first private radio and television stations in Nigeria had been in relative obscurity since then until news of his demise caught Nigerians unawares in late May, prompting outpourings of grief from friends and foes alike.
Outgoing Speaker of the House of Representatives and recently appointed CoS to President Tinubu, Femi Gbajabiamila has sent his condolence to the Dokpesis, so with other prominent politicians and Babajide Sanwo-Olu, governor of Lagos state.
Dokpesi, Sanwo-Olu said, would be remembered for breaking the monopoly of government-owned broadcasting in Nigeria. “On behalf of the Government and people of Lagos State, I mourn the passage of businessman and media guru, who contributed his quota to the economy of Lagos State by providing job opportunities for many young Lagos residents in the media sector.”