Dandal Kura established to counter Boko Haram narratives – Faruk Dalhatu
Alhaji Faruk Dalhatu, is the Managing Director of Dandal Kura Radio International, a private run broadcast media outfit, based in Maiduguri, Borno State. He was Managing Director of Freedom Radio, Kano and Jigawa states. Dalhatu explains why the establishment of the radio station was conceived in 2014 among other issues. Excerpts: What prompted the […]
Alhaji Faruk Dalhatu
Alhaji Faruk Dalhatu, is the Managing Director of Dandal Kura Radio International, a private run broadcast media outfit, based in Maiduguri, Borno State. He was Managing Director of Freedom Radio, Kano and Jigawa states. Dalhatu explains why the establishment of the radio station was conceived in 2014 among other issues. Excerpts:
What prompted the establishment of Dandal Kura Radio International?
Well, the idea of Dandal Kura was conceived in 2014 when international agencies wanted to get more involved in trying to find a resolution to the conflict in the North-East. They discovered that the information infrastructure at that time was really very weak. Because they’re mostly FM stations and none of them was reaching more than 80 kilometers. And in Borno State you will find some of the towns are farther than 200 kilometers. And unfortunately, those are the areas Boko Haram was controlling the narrative and these communities use to get their news and information through BBC, VOA, Deutsche Welle, RFI and also radio stations from neighbouring countries of Niger, Chad and Cameroon. These international radio stations, mostly don’t give enough news and information about the area; not because they don’t want to, but they have many more areas to cover. So, people there were not getting adequate information and news about themselves especially during crisis. You wanted to know what’s going on in the next village. So, that’s why Dandal Kura was set up as a Short Wave not FM so that it could reach deep into the hinterlands to provide news and information to people especially those ravaged by the insurgency conflict.
Are we right to say that Dandal Kura was solely established to counter the narratives controlled by the insurgents?
Yes. That’s why it’s set up. It started in Kano in January 2015 and relocated to Maiduguri when the security situation improved in February 2016, and we have been there since then.
Have the aims of establishing the stations been achieved?
The FM station is a new project. But for the Short Wave its aims and objectives have been achieved and even after that many more milestones have been achieved. The aims were set up with three mandates. To roll back the narratives of Boko Haram, come up with positive narratives and also create radio programmes that would help the communities out of the horrible situations occasioned by the insurgency. These we did and had done them very well. In fact, in March 2017, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram condemned Dandal Kura Radio in one of his videos. That was scary, but it’s also a very big validation of our programmes as it means that we are reaching the top echelon of the Boko Haram leadership and they didn’t like us. So, it means our message was getting to the places it was aimed to get to.
What type of programmes are the radio airing?
They’re many. But it’s difficult to list them all now, because we’re doing six hours a day, three hours in the morning and three in the evening. All our programmes are aimed at either to roll back the narrative of Boko Haram or help the communities cope and find their fate to pick up and start new live in post insurgency. And then, after that, we started post-conflict programmes like helping the communities to find each other. We have a programme tagged ‘Where are you’ because whenever the insurgents attacked a village everybody disperses and some are not even privileged to take their telephone numbers along. So, people would call and say they’re at so and so place and we would link them up. We have linked back and reunited many families through the use of such programmes.
What are the feedbacks, especially competing with other international media organisations, since they have been there for quite long and broadcasting in Hausa as you do?
We don’t see it as competition because our dynamics are different. We have our areas of strengths and they have theirs. They’re ahead of us, because they have the resources to get breaking news and resources to get great interviews and move around while we don’t. But we also have the resources that they don’t have. We have two or three stringers in all the six states of northeastern Nigeria. We have news and reporting programme that is rich because it’s one hour all about northeast. So, if you want to get news and information that’s rich about the region, you tune to Dandal Kura. So, this put us ahead of even international media outfits because they don’t lavish enough time to give stories and information about the region. They have to limit theirs to breaking news and news around the world. They’re just doing news three minute clip for the entire region.
What are the immediate and long term plans of the station?
The short term plan is to expand on the FM so that we’ll be able to capture the urban listeners because as it is more convenient to get FM in the urban population centers than the Short Wave. For the long term plan, is to have a television station and, probably, one day, we’ll run a newspaper.
What is the coverage distance of the radio station in the region?
The Short Wave is monitored from Senegal to Saudi Arabia and from Tripoli to Cape Town in South Africa. The entire continent of Africa picks the signals of Dandal Kura. But we zeroed and focus by the languages of our broadcast, which is, Hausa and Kanuri which means it is necessary to stay more focused on the northeast region where the conflict of Boko Haram is raging. We get calls from Libya, Ghana, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Chad and even from Saudi Arabia. They call our studios whilst airing live programmes. At home, we get calls from Kebbi, Bayelsa, Enugu, Lagos, Ibadan and Kano.
How does the radio station fund its services?
It started it as a grant, but the grant stopped after two years. So, we went fully independent and commercial since February 2018 and we’re still there. In fact, we added FM this year, which means that we’re able to grow the radio.
What were the initial challenges in establishing both the SW and FM stations?
The major challenge of any electronic media is electricity supply. Especially while we’re operating, the power may be there, but the voltage is low. So, one can’t risk the equipment, so we have to put on the generator. The cost is very high. The second is lack of highly skilled manpower to be able to handle this. But we have trained so many men and women who have later become skilled.
How do you think these challenges can be addressed?
We hope all the efforts of the government to continue in regard to improving power supply. That will bring down the running cost. Because running anything on the generator is really very expensive. So, we preferred to have the power which is cheaper.
Is Dandal Kura the answer to North-East insurgency crisis?
I don’t know what is the answer to the insurgency challenge in the North-East. But I don’t think the insurgents themselves have articulated convincingly why they’re here and what are their conditions to achieve peace. So, today they say this, tomorrow they say another. But all I can assure you is that Dandal Kura Radio is playing a bigger and important role towards the efforts against the insurgency and also in educating, informing and entertaining the communities and doing programmes that can promote peace and peaceful coexistence and that would encourage and insist on good governance.