The FRCN in December won four of the five awards at the recently concluded Nigeria Media Merit Award, for the first time in history.
Of these categories, the federal government owned radio station won the Radio of the Year, a feat which came as a pleasant surprise to staff of the station and Nigerians at large. One of the criteria for the award was based on the stations dynamic coverage of the 2 015 elections. Other categories won by the station include, Best Presenter, Best Producer and Best Reporter of the year.
Paparazzi was at the station to feel the pulse of staff especially as the Director General who helped the station achieve all these honours was relieved of his post about two weeks ago.
A journalist at the station, volunteered to take our reporter round the Abuja premises to verify the legacies of the erstwhile DG, who we were told was happy to bow out telling staff that he had attained the peak of his journalism career having been DG of such a big parastatal and leaving on a high note.
What Paparazzi found on ground at the FRCN was an amazing transformation of a radio station which had been abandoned by previous heads of the organisation. Salihu had transformed the radio station beyond belief both infrastructurally and technically. He had built more studios, with state of the art equipment, trained staff to man these studios, and given the old and hitherto archaic FRCN a complete facelift such that the station can now compete with any other station in the world.
Paparazzi noted that while other DGS of parastals complained of harassment, while some were roundly hated and criticised by their staff, the staff of the FRCN were full of praise for their ex-DG.
An elated staff of the News Department told Paprazzi that the awards are indeed a manifestation of the DG’s exemplary managerial style. He emphasised training, staff motivation and insisted on professional excellence being a professional himself.
However one staff wondered why the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed did not grant the ex-DG the honour of presenting the awards to him personally and why celebrate awards that were won on the 22nd of December 2015 now.
Many of the staff we spoke with however vowed to work with whoever becomes the new DG with the hope that he will carry on with Salihu’s good works and what one of them terms “impeccable managerial skill”.
