It all came to me as a surprise. I did not expect to go to England and conduct a class of fellow journalists to the BBC, Bush House, London. But that’s exactly what happened on Friday 17 December 2010. We had finished our last paper in a two-week long exam and a palpable sigh of relief overtook the tight class of journalists from various countries around the world.
I was the only African male in a class of twenty-four that also had two African ladies, one a Sierra-Leonean and the other a fellow Nigerian, Nkiru Ejims. Everyone else was English, Irish, Scottish, Italian, Scandinavian, American, Russian, or Asian. I had undertaken the course in the belief that I would get to see what a typical media house in London looks like, and even more decidedly, I wanted to get to the premises of the BBC, London. My father was fond of tuning to that station at dawn, back home in Nembe and Port Harcourt and Lagos. Here was I in London, in a journalism class. Why shouldn’t I get to Bush House?
So I put a call through to my good old friend, Omale Orokpo. I have always known Omale as a fine broadcaster with a distinctive flair for delivering the news to the last faithful syllable, and for his wide knowledge of broadcast history, to say nothing of his understanding of international politics. Back in Makurdi, he had told me about a young Idoma chap who started work at Radio Benue, and was now reporting sports for the BBC in London. What was his name again?
Omale raked through his memory box and sent me the young man’s number, assuring me that he was still in London. So, one cold morning, I put a call through to Peter Okwoche, and introduced myself. Imagine my surprise when Peter recognised my voice and began to tell me about my days as a corps member at the new FM station of Radio Benue, Makurdi. So, what’s up? What could he do for me? I told him I was just rounding up a short course at the London School of Journalism and would be grateful to embark on an excursion to the BBC.
Peter said such a thing had never happened since he joined the BBC, but he would ask questions and get back to me. Two days later, he called back to say, yes, it was possible. He had made arrangements, and it would be an honour to receive students from the London School of Journalism on a visit to the famous broadcasting house. He asked to know how many of us would be on the team, and I promised to get back to him. To say the least, I was excited.
This had never happened before, he said. This meant that I would be leading the team. I made the contact, yes, but would any of my course mates agree to come along with me? The only way to know was to find out. The following day, I got to class early and spread the word on the notice board. The course was virtually over, the last but one paper written, and not everyone saw my notice. But I was suitably gratified when I had seven yeses.
And so on that fateful day, seven of us classmates walked out of our school premises, two ladies and five gentlemen, and took the Bus 6 connection from Elgin Avenue to Westminster overlooking the south bank of the River Thames. The offices of the BBC were close to the famous Lancaster Castle where, in 1957, Harold Dappa-Biriye had represented the interest of the Niger Delta people before the Henry Willink Commission set up by Queen Elizabeth to allay the fears of minority Ijaws in the emerging Nigerian nation.
History was happening to me in my own small way, and I couldn’t make light of it. Let me confess right away that I did not see a bush at Bush House, and I could not but wonder why these white people still call the place Bush House. The British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, was located in the heart of cosmopolitan London, with its immeasurable spread of concrete sidewalks, its pulsating urban vitality, and its ever mobile traffic of man and machine.
The radio house was at the top of a solid storey building housing a good number of companies, each floor decorated according to the taste of the venture managers. In terms of interior appeal, my impression was one of an inverted pyramid, or like the converse of the huge statue seen by King Nebuchadnezzar.
The walls of the ground floor had a golden finish, the interior decor of the next floor was silver, the floor above that was bronze, and the topmost floor from which the famous radio station broadcast to the whole wide world left me deflated.
Peter Okwoche was there to receive us. He led me and my friends from office to office, and into the two studios, one live and the other for recording. The entire floor was partitioned with an unvarnished wooden board, so that you could hear someone murmur in the adjoining office. I could not but conclude that the new studio I met at Radio Benue 2 FM Stereo, Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria, where I began my broadcasting career in August 1987, was far better than the BBC studio I was seeing.
The panels were poorly maintained, the microphones were rusty and few, and the equipment were evidently rudimentary. It was as if Peter Okwoche had taken us to the wrong radio station, but there was Chris Dunton right there in the studio, across the glass barrier, talking the world to tatters. Was this really where Peter Sellers taught the world how to speak English? Was this where Letters To America were broadcast to the world by that courteous gentleman, Alistair Cooke? I could only wonder.
What’s more, the famous BBC London magazine that had been my favourite read from my university days in Nigeria, was sharing offices with the radio station. Peter Okwoche took me to the office of the editor, Kay Whiteman, and I couldn’t believe just how small it was. I mean, it was a cubicle, no less, like the office of Jane Help Yahweh in the caravan at Radio Bayelsa, and this was happening in twenty-first century London. That was fifteen years ago, anyway. I’m sure by now the offices of BBC Bush House, London, are looking more becoming, more like what I see on television.
But it was time to close for the day, and offices were beginning to shut down. I made a short speech on behalf of my colleagues, standing in my red top hat, and thanked the management for being so kind as to receive us at short notice. We are better edified about BBC Bush House, said I, and I was particularly glad to know that this radio station was not located in the forest. That quip earned me a few friendly guffaws. It was a visit that served to dispel the modest bungalow painted white at the centre of a thick deciduous grove of trees that I had carried in my imagination for so long.
I was simply relieved to know that Bush House was at the top of a modern storey building with a very humble interior. The staff on duty, white and black alike, sat at their duty posts, diligently working on their programme ideas, while the announcer on duty sat before the microphone in the studio next door, talking his head off like one more human being.
I suppose some of my colleagues would have gladly expressed their opinions about the BBC if we had returned to class to give a special report each on what we saw in Bush House. But by the time I finished chatting with my country man, Peter Okwoche, and got back down to the ground floor and out into the open, some of my classmates had caught their buses home in the descending twilight. Simon Wilmore was gone, and so too Robbie Blakeley.
But Richard Lang and that Scottish girl, Niamf, were still close by, so I asked them to join me for a photograph to mark the visit. Richard and I lived along the same Sumatra Road in West Hampstead, so we would take the same bus 328 back home. I looked around and saw a glittering silver plaque spelling out the legend of the BBC, stamped upon the solid face of a pillar. I chose that as the tell-tale background.
That’s Richard Lang to one side of the plaque, and that’s me to the right the way I dressed that day in my thick army wind-breaker on black jean trousers, and the blazing red top-hat atop my turtle head. That’s my laptop bag strapped around my shoulder, the BBC visitor’s tag still over my tie, and that’s my happy smile upon my friendly face.
