LADAN SALIHU'S LEGACY SHINES BRIGHT AS FRCN WINS 4 AWARDS

The Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN in December won four of the five awards at the recently concluded Nigeria Media Merit Award, (NMMA) for the first time in history.

Of these categories, the federal government owned radio station won the Radio of the Year, a feat which came as a pleasant surprise to staff of the station and Nigerians at large. One of the criteria for the award was based on the station's dynamic coverage of the 2015 elections. Other categories won by the station include, Best Presenter, Best Producer and Best Reporter of the year. 

This historic feat will be incomplete without mentioning the former Director General, Ladan Salihu who was relieved of his post about two weeks ago. It will go down history that he was the one who helped the station achieve all these honours.

Ladan Salihu was however, happy to bow out, because according to him, he had attained the peak of his journalism career having been DG of such a big parastatal and leaving on a high note.

It will be of note to mention that the amazing transformation of the radio station which had been abandoned by previous heads of the organisation was completely transformed by him both infrastructurally and technically.

He built more studios, with state of the art equipment, trained staff to man these studios, and given the old and hitherto archaic FRCN a complete facelift such that the station can now compete with any other station in the world.

While other DGS of parastals complained of harassment, while some were roundly hated and criticised by their staff, the staff of the FRCN were full of praise for their ex-DG.

"The awards are indeed a manifestation of the DG's exemplary managerial style. He emphasised training, staff motivation and insisted on professional excellence being a professional himself." Declared an elated staff of the News Department of FRCN.

However one staff wondered why the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed did not grant the ex-DG the honour of presenting the awards to him personally and why the awards that were won on the 22nd of December 2015 are being celebrated now.

Many of the staff spoken to however  vowed to work with whoever becomes the new DG with the hope that he will carry on with Salihu's good works and what one of them terms "impeccable managerial skill".