Onisodemuya Lishman takes time to pronounce his first name, syllable by syllable, slowly, deliberately, with the stress in all the appropriate places, so that the random listener can spell it out in their spare time. Lishman is particular about the way his name is pronounced because he believes it’s unique, and nothing hurts more than to have it mispronounced in a hurry. Lishman wants to make things easier for himself simply by being known as the founder and brain box behind Radio James Bond .
Even Lishman finds it hard to believe that he is shy. He does not like the way he looks in photographs, so he doesn’t take many. He does not like being talked about either. If he had a way of stopping this very sentence, and the next, he would do it. Yet, Lishman likes talking about other people, and everything around him. In fact, Lishman wakes up the entire neighbourhood every morning with his signature tune, and his voice has since been recognised along with the crow of the early morning cock.
A casual look at Lishman’s wall on Facebook gives a strong indication of the matters that hold his interest. Since he gets to talk on radio every day, Lishman makes it a point of duty to be on top of the news at all times. He is concerned about the most topical issues of the day. He takes delight in throwing questions at his audience, and every answer he gets leads him to the next question.
He seeks to know why things happen the way they do, and he is keen on sharing the insights of his respondents as well. Lishman’s early morning question is straightforward. What’s the talk of the town? What’s happening in the local vicinity? What news is breaking at the moment, in Creek Haven, in Aso Villa, and what exactly is Donald Trump tweeting again from the exclusive comfort of the White House?
Come to think of it, why is President Bola Tinubu not briefing Nigerians as often as Donald Trump is briefing Americans? Exactly what happened to Nnamdi Kanu? Why were the Almajirai moving down south, in spite of border closures? Was someone really trying to infect all of Nigeria with corona virus in times past? These are the sort of testy questions that sometimes come from Lishman.
Born on Thursday 7 May 1981, at Okarki on the outskirts of Yenagoa, Lishman Onisodemuya attended Township School, Moscow Road, Port Harcourt before proceeding to Baptist High School, Port Harcourt, where he finished in 1998. Then off he went to the University of Calabar, there to study Law. But then, something completely untoward happened. He lost his parents in circumstances that he doesn’t want to talk about, and so he dropped out of school. He was only nineteen, not quite exposed enough to open up to people and ask for help.
Lishman is the ninth child out of ten by his father. He remembers his dad as an energetic sportsman, a devoted teacher, and a passionate singer. He was the choir master at the Baptist Church, and principal of the famous Tantua Private School, one of the first in Bayelsa. He was also a versatile coach in several aspects of sports. He was good in football, in track and field, hockey, wrestling, boxing and swimming. He retired, in fact, as Secretary of the Rivers State Sports Council in bygone times.
Lishman takes a telling pause, and then resumes his story in his own words. ‘I am a grown orphan’, he says. My name means God is great. My mother told me the story behind it. By her account, my name came from the spontaneous outburst of the midwife. My mother had issues trying to give birth to me. She was to go through a caesarean, but while they were taking her to the theatre, the regular public utility light went off and then the generators refused to come on at all. Whatever they did, my mother stood the risk of bleeding to death.
Rather than push for the baby boy to come out, however, my mother was just talking to herself, recalling all that God did in the Bible. She was still talking about characters from the Bible when I came out. I just came out. The midwife couldn’t hide her surprise. She simply exclaimed: “Onisodemuya!” In my language, that means “My God is great”. Little wonder, Lishman believes that he has a great mission to accomplish on earth.
‘Yes I do’, he says. ‘I have a strong conviction that I was born to reveal God’s greatness and that is shown already in the paths I have taken in life. It means a lot to me that, despite every limitation against my progress in life, I have come this far. The fact that I had no money to go to school, and yet I know what I know, that’s something. All of that comes as proof of God’s hand in my life. I got into everything I got into by no particular effort of mine’.
Not surprisingly, Onisodemuya Lishman began to minister the gospel of Jesus Christ at a very young age. As he puts it, ‘the first money I earned as a human being was from preaching. I was about 11 years old, may be twelve. I preached in a church and I was given the pastor’s offering. The message was clear and indisputable. There is a God somewhere that wants to have fellowship with mankind, and he created us for that purpose’.
At the end of the sermon, Lishman sang a special number to the riotous delight of the congregation. Even so, Lishman is conscious of the fact that he was born just four days before the death of Robert Nestor Marley, and that seems to strike him as particularly significant. He picked up sounds from the radio, and the vibrations from the rastaman may well have echoed through the years.
“When I became a teenager, the first sounds that played repeatedly in my head came from Bob Marley. Radio Rivers was playing lots of music at that time, and at some point I heard so much Bob Marley that I began to identify with the songs and the message behind them. When I took a stroll through the neighbourhood, and walked past the bars at night, Bob Marley came at me from every corner.”
Lishman’s deep-seated dream to be a superstar singer began to evolve. He took to writing songs, and singing them to himself, standing before the mirror. ‘I wanted to be as big as Bob Marley. I wanted to play conscious music. I wanted to deliver a strong message, and I think at some point in my life, I might just be the first pastor, evangelist, and singer all rolled into one. I thought I had a calling to reveal God. I have always known that I have the ability to inspire people, but I never at any point set out to be a broadcaster’.
Lishman got his first opening into radio broadcasting in 2012. In July of that year, he read the newspaper headlines for Doubra Timi Woods on Radio Bayelsa for the first time in his life. He was so smooth that he received great feedback from listeners, and that came as a big boost.
What’s more, the producer of the programme, Doutimiye Erizia, alias Crown Prince, took interest in Lishman and invited him to show up as often as possible for recording. Lishman took the chance, and has not looked back. His voice has since become one of the most recognisable male roosters on radio, carrying far upon the open airwaves of Bayelsa every day. His most abiding aspiration, in fact, is that he would be at the head of his own radio house one day.
He would call it Radio James Bond, after the famous television character known as 007, another long-standing figure of influence from Lishman’s childhood. James Bond, as you know, was way ahead of his time, living in a fantasy world of touch-button technology that left his analogue opponents bamboozled all the time. He was always surrounded by the best of damsels, and no plot was too thick for Mr Bond to resolve. In like manner, Lishman’s radio will mesmerise a worldwide audience with its bewildering programme content.
And don’t forget, Lishman has a great sense of humour, to say nothing of an infectious laughter to go with it. He expects everyone, for instance, to know that Lishman is the short form for the full name Englishman. He equally has a great deal of goodwill going for him.
Whatever hurdles may await him in the days to come, this particular Englishman is confident that all his dreams of greatness and his grand hopes for Radio James Bond will manifest one day in the unfolding future, with God by his side.
