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The Story Of The AIT Founder
The information of Raymond Dokpesi’s dying crept upon the nation on the night of a day Nigeria was celebrating the inauguration of a brand new democratic management. In accordance with Tony Akiotu, group managing director of DAAR Communications, the media mogul had fallen off his treadmill throughout a routine gymnasium train. The autumn was worsened by an sickness he had been nursing earlier, and Dokpesi died on the age of 71.
Dokpesi was a media magnate who toed the uncharted waves to determine Nigeria’s first non-public radio station.
He constructed a media empire that some argued accelerated the recognition and affect of Afrobeats within the early 2000s. A bigger-than-life persona who as soon as confessed his weak point for ladies. A multi-millionaire who liked the clinking of cash as a lot as he loved the intrigues of politics.
Dokpesi was additionally a person of bizarre contradictions: A catholic but a polygamist; he was additionally a celebrated media practitioner who had issue speaking within the early stage of his life. Dokpesi was born on October 25, 1951, in Ibadan, Oyo State. He was born 9 years earlier than the independence of the nation whose draconian broadcast regulation he would later discover to usher in an period of relative press freedom.
Though his household lived within the south-west, Dokpesi’s mother and father hailed from Agenebode, a village on the financial institution of River Niger in Edo State. The soggy soil of the group is wealthy in historical past as its neighbouring river is replete with aquatic life. Agenebode was the regional headquarters of the colonial Royal Niger Firm and was the capital of Weppa Wanno, an historical clan whose republican system of administration preceded the arrival of the colonial masters.
Dokpesi was the one son of 13 kids. The mom, Alice Aishetu Dokpesi, a petty dealer, misplaced six of her kids amid the hazy medical procedures of the time. Even Dokpesi himself virtually joined his deceased siblings.
Dokpesi as soon as stated he struggled with recurring sicknesses and was “handicapped as a result of I couldn’t discuss from the start of my life”. He felt sorry for himself, and the self-loathing and harm intensified after a pal of his father suggested that he needs to be disposed of as a “by no means do-well”.
“He [my father’s friend] stated, ‘Do you see any little one of a northerner succeed, other than the kola nut they eat, they’re never-do-well. I used to be handicapped, and that was the hardest second of my life. At the moment, I felt extremely discriminated in opposition to. I felt I used to be prone to be denied the chance to stay,” Dokpesi recounted in a chat with journalists in 2021.
“My mom was very helpless at the moment, and right here I used to be feeling very sick, unable to speak freely. And my mom, too, was illiterate. So, right here I used to be, I couldn’t discuss, and even once I tried to write down something, she couldn’t learn what I used to be writing.”
Solely after an esoteric exorcism episode did Dokpesi escape his adolescence situation. “We went by the financial institution of River Niger, which was full at the moment. We went right into a small village, having travelled virtually two and a half hours on the river; they referred to as the village Osuneme. I used to be not given any injections. The folks simply got here as much as say I had been poisoned, and individuals who dedicated the atrocity had been current,” he recalled.
“So, ‘right here is water, in case you are certain you aren’t the one liable for the state of the well being of this boy, and say, God, you’ve gotten seen me.’ And one after the opposite, my father’s eldest sister, my father’s first spouse, the lineage coincidentally had been concerned. I went right into a match once more, the place I used to be rolling and vomited. It was the identical water that they got that was given to me. So, I took that very same water and vomited fairly extensively totally different objects from my stomach.”
The torrent of sicknesses had pressured a repeated change of colleges for him. After beginning with Ebenezer African Church Faculty, he was moved to Loyola Faculty, Ibadan, earlier than finishing his secondary schooling at Immaculate Conception Faculty (ICC) Benin Metropolis.
Dokpesi grew to become a grantee of an instructional scholarship sponsored by the Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) and he proceeded to check marine engineering on the Wyzsza Szokta Morska Gdynia in Poland and the College of Gdansk Sopot, bagging bachelor’s, grasp’s and doctorate levels. Whereas in Poland, he suffered one other well being scare, however the inspiration of his adolescence braced him by the storm.
“Once I acquired to Poland, after doing the medical examinations to get into the college, they stated I used to be not going to stay past the age of 35. So, I collected the outcomes and forwarded them to my father, who saved telling me I ought to have religion and confidence,” he stated. “One, it was God that created me and God has an outlined a mission for me, and he was very certain and optimistic after I went by all these challenges in my adolescence and I used to be capable of survive and stay as much as this time.”
RETURN TO NIGERIA AND EARLY YEARS IN POLITICS
Dokpesi returned to Nigeria in 1976 and labored carefully with Bamanga Tukur, a politician and businessman, earlier than a short stint on the federal transport ministry. He headed the water transport division on secondment from Nigerian Ports Plc (NTCC) from 1978 to 1983. That very same yr, he was appointed the chief of employees to Tukur throughout his tenure because the governor of the defunct Gongola state throughout the ill-fated second republic. A yr later, he grew to become the managing director of African Ocean Line Restricted from 1984 to 1988.
THE BIRTH OF DAAR COMMUNICATIONS
Nigeria’s political elite have all the time identified the affect of the media. As a way of data dissemination, the newspaper was utilised by foremost Nigerian politicians within the battle to actualise the nation’s independence from colonial rule. Conscious of the distinctive energy of the media to accentuate change, subsequent regimes monopolised broadcast, a more recent and much more highly effective medium of data dissemination.
The ironclad regulation held sway till the administration of Ibrahim Babangida took away the published medium from the monopolistic grip of the federal government in 1992.
Nigerian Broadcasting Fee (NBC) Decree No. 38 enforced the deregulation of broadcast media in Nigeria and opened the sector to personal gamers. Dokpesi was the bravest Nigerian to dip his toes within the uncharted wave.
In accordance with Kenny Ogungbe, Dokpesi’s shut affiliate and brother-in-law, RayPower FM, Nigeria’s first non-public station, went on air formally on September 1, 1994. However the station had already gone take a look at working a couple of months to that point earlier than it was scared off-line by the army authorities of Sani Abacha, owing to lack of licence.
“He was into politics then. He was then the director-general for Adamu Ciroma’s presidential marketing campaign. And later, he was Bamanga Tukur’s presidential marketing campaign director-general. I used to be like his right-hand man. After every part, he requested me what we must always do, and I advised him, allow us to do radio,” Ogungbe stated.
“We acquired to the US and he began shopping for radio tools. I requested if he had a license, and he replied, ‘Don’t fear’. Earlier than we left America, he ordered the development of DAAR Communications whereas we had been nonetheless in Los Angeles.
“We didn’t have a licence but, however we began broadcasting. And it was throughout Sani Abacha’s regime. In the future, we abruptly heard an NTA information report which warned that ‘there’s a radio station broadcasting illegally, off-air or we’ll cope with you decisively’. We went off the air for six months until August 15, 1994, once we had been capable of get a license. We totally got here on air on September 1, 1994.” Dokpesi stated the institution of RayPower was to bridge a “lack of correct data” hole created by a number of government-run radio providers.
“I’ve stated that it was an absence of correct data. There was a necessity to have the ability to attain the folks. Thoughts you, Raypower began on the peak of the Nigerian disaster, throughout the Abiola saga,” he stated in a chat with Punch in 2006.
“At that specific cut-off date, OGBC was not efficient; there was the Federal Radio Company, however then, there was a craving for one thing new, one thing recent, and Raypower was capable of come out at that time to satisfy that want. We had hoped that we might have the ability to increase and develop quickly throughout the nation, however sadly, there have been varied blockages and hurdles that had been put in our approach.”
Two years after the institution of RayPower, African Unbiased Tv (AIT) was created with extra youth-centric enchantment with an array of leisure programmes. The TV station could be credited for accelerating the recognition and affect of Afrobeats tradition.
DEEP FORAY
INTO POLITICS
Dokpesi was a chest-thumping, card-carrying member of the Peoples Democratic Social gathering (PDP).
After PDP misplaced the 2015 presidential election, Dokpesi apologised to Nigerians on behalf of the celebration for “its previous errors”. “We’re conscious of the errors of the previous 16 years. As human beings, we will need to have made errors and couldn’t meet Nigerians’ expectations. For that, we tender an unreserved apology,” he stated.
“Make no mistake. The PDP is conscious that there have been errors made alongside the way in which.” In 2017, he additionally contested for the celebration’s nationwide chairman place. A contest he ultimately misplaced to Uche Secondus.
In December 2015, the Financial and Monetary Crimes Fee (EFCC) arrested Dokpesi on the allegation of complicity in monetary fraud involving the workplace of the Nationwide Safety Adviser (NSA).
The fee alleged that the media mogul acquired N2.1 billion from the workplace of the nationwide safety adviser (ONSA) between October 2014 and March 2015 throughout the tenure of Sambo Dasuki, former nationwide safety adviser, for providers not rendered. On November 21, 2018, a trial choose struck out Dokpesi’s no-case submission and ordered him to open his defence.
Aggrieved, Dokpesi approached the court docket of enchantment searching for to upturn the trial court docket’s determination.
Consequently, on April 1, 2021, Elfrieda Williams-Dawodu, justice of the appellate court docket, upturned the trial court docket’s determination and acquitted Dokpesi of all the costs. In the course of the multi-year authorized battle, Dokpesi accused the federal authorities of mistreating him like “a corrupt and crooked particular person, a dishonest man and a thief”. He demanded N5 billion in damages from Lai Mohammed and Abubakar Malami, the then ministers of data and justice, respectively. The media mogul additionally requested for a full retraction and apology from all main digital and print media retailers within the nation.
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