Governor Ajimobi

GBENRO ADESINA/IBADAN

Governor Abiola Ajimobi, yesterday, said that his vision for the state-owned Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS) was to make it a reference point in broadcasting in the country.

Ajimobi, who said this at a strategy session organized for BCOS in Ibadan by KPMG International, added that the station would soon witness a radical transformation that would make it a profitable multi-media entertainment and communication business.

He said that the forum was organized in conjunction with KPMG to examine and fashion out the way forward for the BCOS of his administration’s dream adding, “It is my expectation that the new BCOS will be a modern organization whose manpower is made up of some of the most creative and technically-savvy managers in the Nigerian entertainment industry; men and women whose managerial competencies rival those of their contemporaries across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. It is our vision that our media enterprise will one day become the Mecca for all broadcast practitioners and stakeholders in Africa, to become renewed and reinvigorated in readiness for the fiercely competitive environment of an impending digitalized broadcast regime”.

According to him, part of his expectations is also to see the station whose operational business paradigm is in alignments with global best practices, where stakeholders’ investments are routinely rewarded by very high sustainable returns.

Ajimobi said that the state deserved no less from its long investment and heritage in mass communication, entertainment art and culture, starting with broadcasting media’s nascent beginning in Africa under the guiding spirit of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

He recalled that on assumption of office in 2011, his administration’s immediate focus and action plan was to ensure the security of lives and property of the citizenry as well as the restoration of the decrepit infrastructure.

While most of the state’s scarce resources were committed to achieving security and infrastructural development across the state, the governor said he was not unmindful that the true and lasting change needed was to build infrastructure of the mind of the citizenry.

According to him, “To do this, we always knew we needed to change our people’s attitude by changing their paradigms and thinking patterns. To achieve this paradigm shift, we knew we needed the right communication platform that is credible, respectable and trusted enough to be believable. We knew we needed BCOS, but not the BCOS that we inherited in 2011. We want a more holistic restructuring and repositioning that will ensure a sustainable and profitable future for the corporation. We want a new BCOS that will fulfill the dreams of one of its founding fathers, Chief Bola Ige, who, at the inauguration of the Television Service of Oyo State (TSOS) proclaimed the vision that our media enterprise would one day become the Mecca for all broadcast practitioners and stakeholders in Africa”

Consequently, he said that a team of creative and respectable professionals was drafted to do a quick, surgical fix, even if for the interim.
He, however, promised that his administration wanted to do more for the state-owned broadcasting organization.