OGA DRIVER PHILIPS OMACHI RESIGNS: MATTERS ARISING

OGA DRIVER PHILIPS OMACHI RESIGNS: MATTERS ARISING
Until the management of Kaduna State Media Corporation (KSMC) changes its enslavement policy of paying its On Air personalities and other category of staff called "artistes" N10,000 as monthly take home, no good presenter will ever (again) grace their microphone or programmes.
How could a radio/FM station in this era of stiff competition for content and quality presenters be paying radio presenters as low as 10k in a month? That's enslavement!!! The scenario at the KSMC is typical of "monkey dey work Baboon dey chop". The presenters generate the cash for the officers who sits in their office to 'liquidate'.
Another sad part of the KSMC story is you employed these on air personalities as Artistes, cajoling them with the impression they would soon be made a permanent staff. Weeks runs into months and months runs into years without you fulfilling that promise. I was the only lucky one in my generation of presenters that was employed as a permanent staff, but that came after spending over nine years as an artiste. Peter Broderick and the Freshkid were in the mill when I came. In fact most of the presenters today in the KSMC had spent a minimum of eight years; no promotion, no salary increment, no training and all they get is N10k a month which does not even arrive regularly. There could be no better recipe on how to kill a talent than this.
While the government is being fed and given the impression that monies and resources at the station is being utilized to train staff, that is true to an extent, but on a flip side, the real people who the listener knows and hears daily gets none of that, rather, the expended monies are for those 'Ogas' who sits in the office reading newspapers and frustrating the lives of these presenters.
This is the sorry tale at KSMC a station the governor Nasiru Elrufai was poised at changing the paradigm when he assumed office. In fairness to his government, in terms of supplying the much needed equipment and infrastructure, KSMC has leaped a giant step. But these equipment and infrastructures on their own do not generate quality air time; presenters do.
This was the kind of frustration that led to the departure of some of the station's finest presenters; MC Easy, Hilary Bakura, Mr. Cool (Martins Tachio), Ahmed Isa, Peter Broderick, Samson James, John Candy, Idris Usman Freshkid, and now Philips SafetyAmbassador otherwise known as Philips Arome Omachi of the famous "Oga Driver". This was the ills some of us as stakeholders of the radio station were hopping Ibrahim Samaila Ahmed will reverse when appointed as the Managing Director of the station, but this is five years now and still counting with nothing in this direction.

• KSMCs management cannot claimed ignorance of the importance of Oga Driver and Philips Omachi a programme and presenter that generates listeners, goodwill and adverts to the station. Presenters in that quality are hot cakes in other stations and are well taken care of. Now that Kaduna state is becoming populated with more FM stations, KSMC cannot continue to use the same approach on it presenters as it was when there were only two stations. Like the saying goes "When you pay peanuts expect monkeys at work.