Using Development Journalism to Change Nigeria’s Sordid Narrative
why President Muhammadu Buhari had not visited the Benue people, “whose blood was shed repeatedly” at the time.
“Adesina’s response that Buhari did not have to visit Agatu led to a heavy online and offline backlash, which eventually forced the president to visit the state,” Osasu recounts.
Relentless and intrepid, Osasu explains that the same measures were taken during the initial resurgence of the now “famous” Southern Kaduna killings, saying, “The Osasu Show visited the state to speak to all the players involved in the crisis and brought out the truth about the ethno-religious crisis.”
In 2016, when there was the raging controversy that a cabal was running the country instead of Buhari, Osasu caught up with the president at the United Nations General Assembly and asked him brave questions about the Northeast Development Fund and the authority of the president – that auspicious encounter, she notes, shaped the national conversations for months in the country.
The inevitability of The Osasu Show dogging the tail of the principal actors in Nigeria’s socio-economic-political-religious crisis was also evident when the TOS TV brought all the players of 2018 Shiite-Nigerian Army clashes in different conversations to tell a balanced and objective story. In her viral interview with John Agim, spokesman for the defence headquarters (DHQ), it was revealed that the army did not “have rubber bullets when we are sent on assignments”.
The same interview was later used by the New York Times in its stinging investigations into the saga.
Similarly, in 2018, Osasu hosted the third series of ‘The Osasu Show Symposium’, which doubled as the first presidential debate in the buildup to the 2019 presidential election.
By 2019, Osasu had a one-onone interview with the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmoud Yakub, during which the latter told Nigerians that he “can’t foresee any possibility of postponement (of the election)”.
About one month later, when the national elections were eventually postponed, The Osasu Show was also the “first news medium to categorically state” that the elections had been postponed.
In driving these conversations, the show has not lost its objectivity and balance – interrogating Shiites and the army; the president and his contenders; the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, and his prime political opponent, Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike; Governor Yahaya Bello and Senator Dino Melaye; among other principal players in Nigeria’s polity, including ordinary compatriots.
Osasu confronted Amaechi about his affiliation with thugs, including Ojukaye Flag-Amachree and his cohorts, and served Wike tough questions about the millions of naira withdrawn from the state government’s account and his alleged criminal case with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Over the four years of existence, Osasu has used the TOS TV platform to become the voice of the masses, transmitting their concerns from street interviews to the corridors of influence and power, effecting change in the remotest parts of the nation. From Ogoni to Kaduna, from Agatu to Ogbia, she has run nation-defining investigations, echoing the concerns of the downtrodden in society.
As an astute UNMC-certified media ambassador for the SDGs, Osasu has used the show to reflect the heart of the sustainable development goals, which is to ensure “no one is left behind”.
As host of The Weekend Show, media ambassador for SDGs with UNMC, humanitarian and founder of The Osasu Show Foundation, media entrepreneur and CEO of TOS TV Network, Osasu fills a vacuum that has long existed in the Nigerian media space.
Still waxing stronger and going into the future with more belief, following four years of exhilarating, life-changing and nation-building engagements, Osasu’s TOS TV Network is changing the frontiers of media in Nigeria – from that of harbinger of bad news to one that promotes development, understanding, unity, and gives hope.