When I think back to the days as a young producer with the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN in Enugu, I relish the opportunities I had to meet and interview a lot of people, most especially great Nigerian musicians like Victor Uwaifo, Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, Onyeka Onwenu and so many others. Among the numerous programs I produced was the one called ‘Artiste of The Week’, a one-hour artiste personality program that featured different artistes every week. I often wished I could listen to any of those productions again. I made attempts to find any from the FRCN archive without success.

This brought to mind the issue of our preservation attitude.

I can vouch for the FRCN establishment that it had a well-established archive in its music library department. I have used them in those days. Also in the early eighties when I was still a staff of the corporation, it was made sure that highly rated programs were saved in the archive. I also remember that we once had a program called ‘Vintage’ which featured vintage programs. It once featured one of the earliest radio drama series in Nigeria ‘The Adventures of Sheki-Sheki, and Alawo, a hilarious drama about the adventures of a ‘Bolekaja driver and his conductor. This was the creation of non other than our director then, late  Mr Ralph Opara, in the 60s when he was a young producer, 

The re-run of this vintage material brought joy to a lot of people, especially older ones whom the program took on a memory trip, back to the days when things were better. I am also convinced that all other older radio and television houses in Nigeria preserved most of their highly rated productions. I do hope that NTA for instance has intact programs like ‘Village Headmaster,’ excerpts from key live shows like ‘Bar Beach Show’ and so on. I also do hope that drama series like ‘Cock Crow At Dawn’, ‘Icheoku, Masquerade, Samanja and numerous other classics of the past are safe somewhere, and one thing I keep asking myself sometimes is why they do not run these programs once in a while. One aspect of the western media I admire very much is the pain they take to make sure that materials are preserved and later broadcast for the benefit of the future generation. It gives a special feeling to watch a drama or music program that was popular say in 1950 for instance. It gives an instance on the way of life at that time, the mood of the people, their values and so on. The old people will remember their youth, the younger ones will ask enthusiastic questions, they will understand better how their society evolved, and will be more proud of who they are. But why is it not the case in our society, why are our old programs not being re-issued?

Apart from the classic radio and television programs of the past, there were films the preceded them. My father had told me with pride about a documentary captioned ‘Sunset In Udi’ or something like that. Where is it today? All the pre independence and early post independence documentary films made by the film division of the Ministry of information, where are they. I remember one I watched as a child in the 60s, I do not know the title, but it was on the new Nigeria after independence and featured the highlife musician E C Arinze. Here in Europe materials in black and white, even as far back as the era of silent pictures are still used as materials for regular television programs. Classics like the works of Charlie Chaplin feature regularly.  

My fear is that most of our classic audio and video materials may have been lost, either in parts or as a whole. Despite the fact that our archival, our preservation culture may not be well developed, there are other more dangerous factors that may have aided the disappearance of such materials.

Here is one classic example. At a particular time in the mid eighties, Gen Ibrahim Babangida introduced ‘Austerity measure’ an era of untold hardship for ordinary Nigerians. Every other month featured waves of entrenchment of workers, creating a high level of job insecurity. Salaries were not paid on time, and no one was sure when his pay check will be in his pocket. It was a devastating time for everyone since it was a new experience.  I remember in those days in Radio Nigeria Enugu we usually get essential commodities from the then Kingsway supermarket (ironically one of the big supermarket chains killed by ‘austerity’) These commodities were peak milk, sugar, washing soap and so on. These commodities were so scarce that even if you had the money, you will not find them, unless you are connected. It was a situation reminiscent of the days of the old Soviet Union. If you walk the streets those days, you will find queues here and there. People join such queues even without knowing what it is all about, Only knowing that therehas to be something edible at the other end. Every government office also had its own arrangement on how to lay hands on the essential commodities.

For us at the FRCN, we were getting things once in a while through some arrangement made by the welfare department of our workers union. People were malnourished at that time. Some even got sick and died. We had mango trees in the compound of the broadcasting house, and each day during work hours, senior officers will order their messengers to climb tall mango trees to pluck mango for them. I remember one occasion when one of such messengers fell off a mango tree and was lucky to break just a few bones.

If the Austerity had such impact on the daily lives of the workers, imagine therefore what negative impact it had on their jobs. The whole system of production in the radio house at the time went upside down. As a producer, I was running some budget especially for the two drama programs I produced, Radio theatre, and ‘Ayakata’ a fifteen-minute drama sketch. Due to ‘Austerity, there was no funds to run these programs. I could not hire actors or scriptwriters. There was no money to pay them, but you are expected to produce a new program. We were allowed to repeat programs once in the month. In those hectic days I became a scriptwriter, actor and producer all in one. We created a kind of in-house help system where every producer uses the talent of another to produce his program; even secretaries and messengers became artistes. Now, how about the tools needed for the job, especially magnetic/ celluloid tapes that were commonly used in those days. These were nowhere to be found. People were hiding the few they could lay hands on. As the situation got worse, producers started cleaning old programs so as to record new ones. Tapes where so scarce that everyone was locking up their tapes in their desk compartment as they could be easily cleaned for use by others. No sources of recorded tapes were spared in this process, including the archives. This was a nationwide situation, from NTA headquarters to all the zones. From FRCN Lagos to all the zones, and of course all the state radio and television houses. Now you can understand my fears regarding the safety of our great radio and television classics.

All said, I still do sincerely wish my fears are not true, that at least some of these wonderful classics are safe somewhere. I do also wish that the radio and TV houses realised how important it is to re-issue these classics once in a while.

I found some old cassette tape in my store house by accident, and to my surprise one contained one of my old programs, Artiste of the week. This was a special edition released in December of 1986, containing excerpts from selected artistes from previous productions. Those featured in this edition are – One World, Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, and Onyeka Onwenu.  It gives me pleasure to sharethis interview with Oyeka Onwenu with you all.I hope to post more when I finish digitalizing them. Peace!

Ikechukwu Ude-Chime