Dandal Kura radio will give voice to10 million Kanuris – MD

Dandal Kura Radio International has been on the air for quite some time now, broadcasting from the North-east. When did you actually start, and how far have you gone, so far? Well, precisely Dandal Kura Radio started in Kano in 2015 (February).We just clocked one year. It was started as a shortwave radio, and it […]

Dandal Kura Radio International has been on the air for quite some time now, broadcasting from the North-east. When did you actually start, and how far have you gone, so far?
Well, precisely Dandal Kura Radio started in Kano in 2015 (February).We just clocked one year. It was started as a shortwave radio, and it started with a one hour programme a day, with a repeat of another hour in the evening. Now, it has grown into six hours; and the long term plan is to keep expanding those hours, and also to be able to obtain license in Nigeria so that we can drop transmitters here. We are in talks with Cameroon, Chad and Niger because it is going to be a Kanuri-based radio – the first Kanuri-based radio serving, especially the Lake Chad Basin countries.
There are of over 10 million Kanuri speaking people in this region, and the radio is to really serve their interest and address their needs so that they have a voice; in fact, one of our monikers is ‘10 million Kanuris one voice that’s Dandal Kura’.
So far, there is no radio station that has devoted so much time and energy in the service of the Kanuri language and the culture and people than Dandal Kura Radio International. The name, which  is in Kanuri, means a big meeting place.
 
What is the motive behind the establishment of the station?
Well, the motive is to provide and fill in the information gap that now exists – hitherto existed, especially for the Kanuri people. This is a vehicle through which they can project their culture; and Kanuri has a very rich culture of over a thousand years’. They can project their culture, their language and their aspirations.  They can get to tell their story to the world by themselves, and which means that now they can be heard. Before, there was no vehicle for them to achieve that. So, this is the motive, to fill in that information gap, and when somebody wants to address the Kanuri nation, now they have a platform through which they can do that. And when they speak Kanuri, (people) in Northern Cameroon, in North-Western Chad, in South-Eastern Niger and North-Eastern Nigeria will understand.
Of course, since Dandal Kura broadcasts on shortwave, we get feedback from Russia, Brazil, and the United States (US), because you know, shortwave signals travel very far and wide. But really our target is the population in the Lake Chad Basin region.
We have 20–25 percent of our programme in Hausa, but it’s essentially in Kanuri language.
 
Some people say the station was established as a counter-insurgency apparatus, is that correct?
Well, it’s not really a counter-insurgency station;it is for government to set up a counter-insurgency station. We didn’t set up this station to be in the vanguard of fighting insurgency;ours is to educate people on every aspect of life; ours is to give them information that they need; and is to entertain them, because life is hard here. Sometimes you need somethings that will make you remember the good old days, and that is our primary objective.
But if  through our programming we are able to help in the collective effort – like the farmer is helping, like the manufacturer of goods, like the provider of services is helping in the war effort, we will be happy. It’s not our objective to perform any counter-insurgency operation. That is left for the military. I believe they have their own radio station to do those things; because for a radio station to be purposely for counter-insurgency, it now has to spew out propaganda, and only information that is good for that effort. But if information comes our way that is not propaganda, we’ll use it regardless of who is involved.
 
How prepared are you for the task?
Well, I have experience in setting up new outfits and nurturing them to successful brands. I have that pedigree. I was part of the team that midwifed Freedom Radio in Kano; eventually I became the managing director and served for four years. I grew Freedom Radio from one station to four radio stations. So, I have the competence and pedigree to be able to do that.
Also, our executive director, Umar Sa’id Tudun-Wada, is a veteran journalist with many years’ experience. We started Freedom Radio with him. He resigned from Freedom Radio not long ago, we are here with him now. And, we have very talented mix of young and mature journalists, and the IT (Information Technology) people. Because, this is a very modern station, it’s highly dependent on IT; and we have very experienced broadcast engineers who head our engineering department.
You know, if you go round Maiduguri you’ll understand that people are very familiar with Dandal Kura, and are not only familiar with it, but they like it; and all these, because the team behind it is working hard. Our listeners are growing by the day, if you care to check us out on facebook – we just started and we have over 50,000 following us on facebook.
 
This station is officially called ‘Dandal Kura Radio International’, is it really international?
It’s international because of our content, our philosophy, our outlook. You know, we don’t think local, we don’t act local. We have correspondents in Sudan, we have in N’Djamena, in Niamey, in Yaoundé, and we have many stringers in Nigeria. We have up to 13 or so stringers in different cities in Nigeria. If you listen to our news and reports, you will hear stringers from all over the place. If you visit our website which is still in the making, you’ll see it is a multilingual website that would be giving constant information in English, Kanuri, Hausa and French. That really makes us international, and addressing the needs of the Lake Chad Basin region, because in the Lake Chad Basin region there are four countries. And for us to really say we are international, not only do we need to have correspondents in other countries that speak French, we also have to show on our website that people can interact with us in French.

Do you reach out to people of other tribes in the region?
You see, the beauty of Nigeria, and especially Northern Nigeria is that there are many, languages here. But even government has not been able to step up to address this need. It’s a very good idea to be able to serve them but it is practically, economically and operationally impossible to address all these diverse languages in Northern Nigeria on one platform. You need to have sub-regional radio setup to be able to give attention; detailed attention to these languages.
That is why we brought in Hausa, because everywhere you go from here to Sudan, you see people who understand Hausa. Incidentally, we got request from somebody who wants to string for us from Bangui in the Central Africa Republic – people there speak Hausa, they understand it.
So that is why we didn’t make it completely Kanuri; it is in recognition of the need of other language speakers to be able to obtain information from us. We keep thinking of diverse ways to address this language issue even if it means a few hours a week to begin with.
We cannot start with all these many languages, that is why we say okay let us take the major languages in the (Lake Chad) region which is Kanuri, Hausa and French. We don’t have the infrastructure to do it in French now, we are working on it. When we set up similar operations in other countries then we will see how we can address the issue of French language but it’s definitely in the works.