Moses Ekpo: Celebrating a culture diplomat, media icon at 83

Writing about a man who has traversed the multi-sectoral landscape of his country and the international environment is not just a walk in the park. This is more so if the subject matter has had a wide range of engagement as a state actor that cumulatively impacted on the socio-economic and political development of his country.

From 1960 to 2023, Moses Frank Ekpo traversed journalism, broadcasting, public relations, diplomacy and politics as a beacon. He also mastered the art of statecraft thereby epitomising his legendary role as an epic figure.

Such a man deserves not just to be celebrated to serve as a source of inspiration to others, but can be a topical issue that draws a broad range of scholarly papers on different areas of his life endeavour.

Fortunately, the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) blazed the trail in October 2023 by honouring him with the Icon of Media Industry award. By so doing, the NUJ has set a veritable platform to promote discourse on this man of many parts and professional dexterity. This article is predicated of the precedent set by the NUJ.

Ekpo started his journey in the media in 1960 but ended in the political terrain as deputy governor of Akwa Ibom State in 2023. In between the aforementioned specifics, Ekpo has served his country in various positions including the following: Director, Nigeria Information Centre for the Americas with office in Washington DC; Director, Nigeria Information Centre for Europe with office in London; Director, War Against Indiscipline; Pioneer Director General, Nigerian Copyright Commission; Commissioner for Information in Cross River and Akwa Ibom States respectively; National Commissioner, National Population Commission; President of World Intellectual Property Organisation (an Agency of United Nations responsible for intellectual property protection) to mention a few. His service to his country and humanity climaxed in a post retirement appointment as National Commissioner of National Population Commission prior to his election as deputy governor of Akwa Ibom State.

During this period, he contributed tremendously to the enhancement of Nigerian economy by transforming the creative industry into money spinning sector for the practitioners; caused attitudinal and behavioral change among Nigerians by instituting the queue culture in public places and heightened the corporate image of Nigeria as a PR guru within and outside the country through astute professional engagements, benevolent goodwill and pragmatic leadership globally.

Ekpo’s advent as a cultural diplomat also yielded many plausible results for the country. It was during his tenure as president of World Intellectual Property Organisation that Nigeria signed the instrument that opened up our creative industry to the world. Today, Nigerian film industry is raking billions of dollars to the country while our actors and actresses are hugging global limelight courtesy of Ekpo’s pragmatism.

However, it is in the media industry that Uncle Mo as he is popularly called feels so much at home and his reaction to the activities of the Union could be for him quite emotive. This is where Ekpo cut his teeth (first as a proof reader and later) as Correspondent with Daily Express in 1960, before he traversed the entire media landscape from print journalism to broadcasting and public relations.

From Daily Express, Ekpo moved to the late Chief (Dr) Nnamdi Azikiwe’s paper, The West African Pilot before crossing to broadcasting where he worked with the first Television station in Africa, the Western Nigeria Television Service (WNBS) founded by the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Ekpo worked there as Senior Sub Editor.

InTrials and Triumphs (Ekpo’s Biography), written by Dr Uko Okopide, Ekpo used to anchor popular talk shows in WNTS, which was well received by viewers including political elite. This was what motivated political leaders from Eastern Region to lobby for his transfer of service to Eastern Nigeria Broadcasting Service, Enugu as a Senior News Editor. Ekpo’s last tour of duty in journalism was with The Nigerian Chronicle, Calabar where he served as pioneer Editor in 1971. He served in that capacity till middle 70s when he was deployed by Cross River State government as pioneer Director of Public Relations.

However, the media industry has changed dramatically from the middle 70s, when Ekpo was deployed from editorship of Nigerian Chronicle to the position of Director of PR Services. The core principles of objectivity, fairness and balancing of stories which were the hallmark of journalism practice during Ekpo’s tenure as editor in the print and broadcast media respectively have been thrown to the wind by most practitioners of the profession today.

Ditto, fair comment as a journalistic function has been replaced with hate comment. In summary, most media practitioners today have abandoned the ethics of the profession to do the bidding of their political pay masters.

This is more so as many practitioners of the profession have never worked in what used to be the conventional newsroom setting where young reporters received in-house mentoring and grew progressively through the ranks to become editors. These days, the lack of newsroom discipline has seen young graduates from universities and polytechnics who have never gone through any tutelage, designating themselves Editors of their publications.
The media space has also witnessed many innovations and emerging tools which however assist practitioners to practice their profession with less stress.

According to the late Dr Delu Ogunade, Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos, the television broadcasting Ekpo and his crop of practitioners pioneered had a static newscast.

“Still images have been replaced with moving images,” Ogunade, who was a senior lecturer, wrote in Daily Times prior to his death. “As part of the dynamism in the broadcast industry, voices of news makers are now aired during the newscast.”

The broadcast industry also introduced Outside Broadcast Service (OBS), which made it possible to broadcast events live on radio and television.

The sophistication of this innovative model of broadcasting got to its peak during the Gulf war in 1990 when CNN gave live coverage to the war. TV viewers watched from the confines of their rooms war planes and missiles flying in Iraqi Airspace as the mother of all wars which ended in the father of all defeats progressed.

However, one development that changed the tide of broadcasting in Nigeria was the liberalisation of the broadcast industry by Babangida’s administration in 1992. It opened up employment space for broadcast professionals who were hitherto competing for the limited spaces in the state broadcast stations.

So far, over 200 private radio and television stations have been established since the first radio and TV stations were established by the late Chief Raymond Dokpesi in 1992. Apart from breaking the monopoly that state broadcasting stations had, it created the atmosphere for competition and improvement of the broadcast industry in terms of quality of and news and programmes.

Another development that changed the dynamics of media practice is the advent of the Internet. The Internet revolutionised broadcasting not only in Nigeria but the world at large. It equips radio and television stations with better frequencies and broader access to listenership and viewership. The Internet also shaped the entire broadcast industry with the emergence of social media tools like potcast and U-Tube etc. Social media giants like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Meta, X (formerly Twitter) broadened the media space by providing platforms for wider communication on one hand while also enhancing the performance of traditional media outlets.

In Nigeria, the establishment of Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) has helped to check the excesses of practitioners that violated the broadcast code. However, even the NCC has been criticised sometimes, when it used a sledgehammer punishment on the peanut offence. Examples abound during Buhari’s presidency. NCC was criticised for consistently slamming a fine of N5 million on broadcast stations for broadcasting sensitive issues like the herders/ farmers clashes. It got to a point, when Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON), afraid that broadcasting stations would go solvent and close down, took the matter to court. The Federal High Court, Abuja in its judgement called NBC to order. The court judgement gave the broadcast stations a bit of fresh air by declaring the fines illegal.

The print media outlets have also changed dynamically during the period in review. For instance, printing machines have undergone series of innovation. One of them is the machine that facilitates direct imaging which makes newspapers look very colourful with good aesthetic ambience. While the traditional print media is still in vogue, the advent of internet has created more platforms for people to ventilate their views and sentiments. Internet has provided people the option of opening websites for news dissemination and for promotion of issues, organisations, establishments and marketing of products and services. Thus, many papers do not go through the rigours of printing hard copies again, as online platforms provide a boost in readership across the world.

However, professionalisation has become a challenge as the regulation of the print media is largely non-existent. The law of libel and sedition is often challenged in court but the slow process of adjudication in Nigeria has made many people to develop apathy towards challenging such cases in court. This is because Nigerians seem to lose faith in Nigerian courts which is why websites that slander people sometimes get away with it.

At 83, Uncle Mo is one of the few respectable media icons that pioneered the broadcast industry in Nigeria who are still alive. As NUJ’s officially recognized Icon of the media industry, it behoves on other professional bodies in the media sector (BON, NIPR, APCON) to join NUJ on the occasion of his birthday to re-examine the ethical behavior of their members with the view to bringing sanity to the industry. There is also the growing need to institute a format of control over the social media to minimise the rampant cases of fake news, seditious and slanderous practices that have become a norm in the new millennium.

Reflecting on the media practitioners, Ekpo’s view is as follows: “Nothing is static. Today’s media environment has been enhanced by technological advancement. And for that sake, they have a better opportunity than we had in communicating. I won’t say that today’s journalist doesn’t pay attention to ethics, I want to ask that our colleagues should look again and search themselves and see whether it is not possible for them to adhere to ethics.”