Please don’t blame Bola Ray. Don’t also blame the nice people who have stuck with him all this while but have had to leave at some point.
On Bola, he set off on a very ambitious and impressive path to do for Africa what Rupert Murdoch perhaps has done in the West. Bola created great job opportunities for his colleagues in the revered inky fraternity. When Bola’s visionary enterprise started, it had great prospects and I think it still does. The success of every business idea waxes and wanes. Indeed, the voices echoing around Bola will either encourage him to soldier on or dissuade him to quit. I would want to add to the voices that encourage at this critical moment. Indeed winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win. Stay on bro .Scale back a few of the operations and concentrate the resources available to you now on a few viable and essential operations.
To Bola’s friends and staff, it is not your fault that you have to jump ship at some point. We live in a society that puts a lot of financial burden on few family members who are seen as gainfully employed. It’s not easy to continue giving excuses to your spouse why you can’t pay bills, and to your extended family why you can’t help with a few family issues. It will be entirely unfair to blame you.
I can’t and won’t name names. Even when EIB was new and flush with cash and the TV section didn’t exist, it was only the radio station. After one of the interviews in the morning with me as the interviewee, one of the senior friendly people there told me he was contemplating leaving because some other business man was making enticing overtures. I humbly advised him to stay and be a part of the great enterprise Bola was building. Bola was nice enough to rope in soooo many of his colleagues to also be a part of his new-found opportunity and he did his best to make their working conditions modest enough for each employee to walk into the office door smiling every morning. Well done for doing your best for your colleagues of the inky fraternity Bola. A call from you to any of them those days meant prospects of a better salary, a better accommodation and for the senior ones amongst them, a better car to drive to work. Please don’t blame those of them who have left. But know that some of them will remain even if it means coming to work on a wheel barrow if that is what you and the company can provide.
To other media enterprises, no one can blame you for being a drag net draining EIB of its human resource. It was a reverse reaction when EIB came into the game with a seeming bottomless money bag that devoured your best personnel too. Most media houses and the HR managers I’m sure didn’t even trust their own shadows those days. Your presenters could come to work in the morning and ditch you for EIB by nightfall maybe. It is all because of the largely challenging remuneration regime in your industry so no one is to blame.
All we can do is to wish EIB and other media houses the very best and do the little we can to support them with prayer and goodwill to continue the great work they are doing to keep our dear population well-informed as we call on corporate entities to advertise with them to help them continue this great national service- Alhaji Irbard Ibrahim
