Men around me at NTA were versatile, didn’t see me through my skirt before my capacity —Moji Makanjuola

Chief Moji Makanjuola MFR sounds awkward to describe a journalist, but this multiple award-winning and vastly-experienced icon holds four chieftaincy titles and a national award from her work as a journalist, apart from her wide travels. Moji Makanjuola of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) fame tells her journalism story to SAM NWAOKO.

Some people set out to become journalists as a dream while some just landed in journalism when the profession found them. How did your media journey begin?

I’m right in the middle of all these. I’ve always wanted a career in the media. In school, I was very active with the literary society. I read a lot, I loved writing essays. My set was the first in my school to be taught the African history, slave trade and all of that and I got very interested in all of that and women movement. My father always bought newspaper and I would sit with him to read. I got interested in literature, particularly the media. I grew up in the North – Kano, Kaduna and Zaria – we had this debate, somebody spotted me, Adamu Augie of blessed memory. He asked: ‘what about a career in the media? You have all it takes’. He monitored and mentored me as I went into Radio. I started from radio, then TV and the rest is history. Along the way, I got personal training, academic training and to the glory of God, today its history.

Essentially, I would say that my background and God’s grace gave me the grace to have gone through the mill. I had good teacher, good mentors and I had my father and my mum who would encourage me to read. I remember when I started on TV, they were my mirrors – my family. The foundation, for me, was the great shoulders that I relied on, who found me and found me worthy of the profession.

Looking back, you’d recall the initial tottering steps – those times you would be anxious of what the day would be like as a new media person. What was it like when you fully launched into the media proper?

I think at that time, I had the support of the men because, most of the time it was like one or two of us women in the newsroom. I started from the Programmes. There was the stereotype then – children’s Programmes or women’s Programmes. That was it then but that wasn’t where I wanted to go, I wanted to be the Correspondent. Luckily I had a boss Jimmy Atte (may his soul rest in peace) who threw me around then. I had another boss, Yahaya Sanni who also made sure that I covered politics; I covered agriculture, health which now became my passion. I covered a bit of finance and of course, I covered women and children. That’s where they had always stereotyped us – women and children – but one was lucky to have been given the grace to do things outside the normal for women at that time. I was a presenter and being a presenter, I was also an interviewer. So, you had to be versatile. The men around me then at NTA Ilorin were quite versatile and they didn’t see me through my skirt before my capacity.

As a health correspondent, Moji Makanjuola was iconic and had set many standards. What was it then like for those who were coming after you and we’re looking up to you. What was it like between you and them?

People coming after me thought that it was a hard terrain. Doctors speak their big topical language and you had to make sense of it and all that. But one thing that I thank God for is that we have been able to encourage and build a very strong health correspondent domain. This is because at that time, when I got to the headquarters in Lagos, you had to be creative. You had to do things differently and so, I became friends with the doctors, with the nurses and I read all the journals. Even before I had the opportunity of some capacity building, I would read the journals and thing that I didn’t understand, I would go to the doctors and nurses for explanation. They were all my friends. The thing that encouraged me about reporting of health is hat health is a team work. It’s just like we do in the newsroom. The reporter comes with a story, the editor sees it, the producer will ensure that you adhere to the ethics and all that. So, for me, it was initially a learning process and I just got interested in saving lives and when I got feedback from my reports, it encouraged me to do some more. Every health player was interested in the synergy with the media and it became more pronounced. I thank God that I was in the pioneering sector.

A lot of people coming after me could not keep up with the hard work. They said it was too tedious for them. They would say ‘Aunty Moji is all over the world, how do you do it?’ and I will tell them that it is my work. Some of them fell by the wayside, some of them kept the faith and today I feel very proud when I look back and see that I’m still part of the Association of Health Correspondents, at least mothering them and encouraging them. Some of my people have gone to fellowships that I had been to and I feel extremely proud. We have gone beyond just health correspondents, we have the science correspondents and so on. For me, the relevance of the media became an imperative and that’s my joy. I have some of my young women in radio, in TV, in newspapers who would come to me to say ‘you’ve done this before can you be a resource person?’ Some of them are very willing and have become very powerful reporters.

Who are some of these people we can point at in Aunty Moji’s school?

There’s a young lady at Daily Trust. She’s versatile and has won special awards. She’s my protégé and I’m so proud of her. She’s Ojoma Akor. Some of them are in NTA and they have done well too and they have taken on the passion. Rabiu Abdallah, Godwin Odemijie – I’m sure he’s still running programmes on radio. Hassan Zaggi, the president of Association of Nigerian Health Journalists. It just gives joy.

Looking at what you met and what you left, are there some marked differences you would like to point out?

There are marked differences. I think, back then, we were a lot more serious – you do your research when you want to go and interview people. You already know your subject and you know your onions. I don’t see that again and I’m beginning to get worried. I don’t see those big human angle stories in healthcare. As health correspondent, you are not just an event reporter. I don’t see a lot of investigation like we did in those days with the likes of Akin Jimoh. Then, when people would say they have medicine to cure everything and we dig down and investigate. I remember the days of polio. We were there, I was part of the presidential team that went to verify the vaccines. When you look back, you are not getting that these days. I encourage our people to work harder and do more investigative reports. Talking about the peculiarities of women’s health, I’m not seeing that out there. Talk about the poor health indicators that the Nigerian media should go out with, I’m not seeing that. Some of the journalists are doing very well, some are not doing well at all. We also say that health news shouldn’t be exclusive. If there’s a helpful news out there, share it so that everybody can take advantage of it. Health is life and that’s why I say that health correspondents are special people.

Look back at your home, your domain: The NTA, what do you see – the NTA of yore and the NTA of nowadays? Are you having any kind of feelings?

We always want an improvement and I think NTA is not relenting. NTA is catching up in terms of the new trends and directives. At the peak of NTA, it was just NTA and a few others but now, the competition is higher and pray that the NTA also would live up to that. We are the pioneers, we gave bite to a lot of the professionals that are today either owning media houses or are working elsewhere and I think we should maintain that standard at NTA. Oftentimes, people lie and pretend that they don’t watch NTA but when you go to 9 o’clock you’ll see that they actually still watch. There are some things that NTA will not compromise: standards. We will not do yellow journalism. We verify facts before we go to town, we don’t go to town because every other person is doing it. We check facts and we report facts, it might be from the perspective of governance, it might be from the perspective of government itself but apparently NTA is a unifier. I’m still NTA.

While NTA is and was your passion, what is your main preoccupation now.

I do a lot of work in the humanitarian space. I run the International Society of Media and Public Health. We do a lot of advocacy and advancement. We work for people, we work to encourage people to make their life better. Essentially, I’m a development and health correspondent still and I now do a lot to promote gender equity and good governance. That’s what I do now.

There seems to be a gap between your advocacy and what the immediate passion of the Nigerian society is. How can we connect these because poverty takes the mind of people off a lot of regular health issues?

We need to connect like yesterday. Health is wealth and we must invest in health issues and, women’s health. We have these poor indices about women, whether communicable or non-communicable; whether pregnancy-related or adolescent-related, illness that the Nigerian woman suffers from. We need as a matter of urgency to start looking at the peculiarities of women’s health and improve on them. Unfortunately, like I always say, a lot of these advocacies don’t see the light of the day or they don’t get to be attended to because there are no women on the decision table. We’ve lost it by elective posts but we do hope that with the appointive, the new government coming in would do something that would help promote women’s health as a national investment. We know we have poor health indices in Nigeria but things can happen. I believe so much in this country, we have good human resources. There’s no hospital in the world that I’ve been that I did not see Nigerian experts working – as doctors or surgeons; nurses, pharmacists or lab scientists. We cannot be serving other places when we should be serving ourselves. There must be a deliberate thing to invest in healthcare delivery in Nigeria. I know it can happen. Investment is not just about money, what money are budgeted for should also be properly utilized. There’s a silent revolution in the health sector in the name of National Health Insurance Scheme. Our legislators can have a cluster of 10 to 20 people and you pay for their health insurance instead of buying those things they cannot use. When we have more and more of that, the HMOs will improve delivery and it will thereby go round. People will not have to pay outside the pocket and we would have a healthier society. A lot of things we will have to do together. Education is good, infrastructure is fantastic, the economy will grow, security is very important but health is central. Who are the people who are going to do all of those? Only healthy people.

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