Using a TV Show to Speak to Power in Nigeria
With a slight grin forming on her visage, the delectable woman sits still staring at the camera. Then, she turns her head to acknowledge her guest on the TV show with a smile and a glint in her eyeballs. Her mellifluous voice wafts through the studio with grace, as she amicably put her guest on the hot seat. Driven –not by political patronage – but the development of her people and nation, Nigeria, Osasu Igbinedion, has jettisoned any political pedigree she might have been linked with, speaking to the powers that be. With consistency and commitment, she has – in the last four years through her TOS TV Network – been pursuing extraordinary causes that touch the very life of Nigerians. Bayo Akinloye explores the highlights of the adventures of one woman using the media for sustainable development goals in Nigeria
Tateline was December 2014. The United Nations headquarters was a beehive of activities. That year the Millennium Development Goals had faltered in Africa but the global body was already preparing to launch another project so that “nobody is left behind.” The project, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), was billed to take off on January 1, 2015 as the UN Millennium Campaign (UNMC) had figured out that one of the reasons the MDGs’ objectives were not achieved in Africa, especially Nigeria, was because the media did not play a major role in driving them.
This was a mistake never to be made with the SDGs. So, the UN gathered a handful of development journalists from West Africa – who they thought could drive the SDGs if given the right awareness – and one of the select journalists was Osasu Igbinedion, a development journalist and communications expert.
Between 2015 and 2019, Osasu has gone on to build one of the strongest new media brands in Nigeria – not just delivering news but driving conversations, interrogating the rich and the poor, the mighty and the feeble, the president and the petty trader. She has defied the political divides, religious affiliations, and ethnic fault lines, to ensure development in Nigeria – one conversation at a time.
As a media entrepreneur of repute, she kicked off The Osasu Show alongside her dogged drive for the SDGs in 2015, and has now
moved from just a journalist to the chief executive officer of TOS TV Network, and a key development driver in the African media space – reaching millions of people on the continent and beyond on a weekly basis.
In the last four years, she has engaged policymakers, lawmakers, ministers, governors, and even the president of the most populous black nation. She takes the questions ordinary Nigerians itch to ask and brings the answers to their doorstep via her flagship The Osasu Show.
When the herder-farmer crisis was ravaging Agatu in Benue State and the media was awash with deaths and destructions, The Osasu show went into the depths of the battlefield, investigating the realities, speaking to the victims, the players, and the governor of the state, Samuel Ortom – who said the herdsmen attack was a grand agenda against the people of Benue. She did not mince words when she called out prominent figures like the Sultan of Sokoto, Emir of Kano, and all who have been publicly affiliated with the Miyetti Allah.
“Lawmakers, policy experts, ministers, and core politicians in Nigeria often seen to take actions without recourse to the people who elected them into office,” says Osasu “and this, more often than not leaves Nigerians with tons of questions on why some policy actions or inaction prevail. Many Nigerians do not have the means or place to directly engage these political actors.” But Osasu fills the void. The Osasu Show took the findings of the investigations of the Agatu killings to the seat of power, asking Femi Adesina, the special adviser to the president on media and publicity,