Former broadcaster, Mrs Oluwatunmise Oladapo-Kuku, tells GODFREY GEORGE about her childhood, career journey and her battle with Bipolar Affective Disorder
You were in broadcasting for more than two decades. What was the most beautiful memory of that experience?
I have a couple of them. The one that will stay with me the most and which I will say probably set the tone for the trajectory I am on now happened during a Christmas Special (programme) back in 2005. I was fresh out of NYSC Scheme and this was my first Christmas Special as a full presenter. I had this midnight shift where I’d ask people very existential questions. From ‘how do you relate with yourself?’ to ‘how do you intend to be a Nigerian?’ On the programme, a lady called and said, ‘Tunmise, I know this is a Christmas Special, but I need to thank you. The show you had last week was about so and so. I was ready to take my life, but told myself to listen to your show one more time, and you had asked this question about what life would look like without us being there and I didn’t do it. Thank you.’
That call set the tone for my presentation days till I left. Every time I was going to put my microphone on, I’d say a prayer, ‘Whom am I supposed to bless with my words or the songs I’ll play today? Who is that person that needs help? Guide my speech, God.’
You have a lot of passion for broadcasting; has it always been your dream as a child?
I went into broadcasting by a stroke of luck. It was not a childhood dream. I am one of those people who didn’t have childhood dreams. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Frankly, sometimes, I am still in limbo (laughs). However, in 1997, my cousin was serving with the African Independent Television and I had gone to visit her, and they needed an emergency script written. It felt so easy to me doing it for them.
In part 1 at the Obafemi Awolowo University, we had this 17-month strike and my dad, who was struggling with what I would do with my course of study, English Language, sent me to his friend at MiTV for internship. This time, again, they needed an emergency script written for a show. I asked to be locked in an office for me to get it done. Why they trusted I could do it, I don’t know, but I came out with a worthy script for the said show.
With my dad’s help, again, I got a chance to do internship at the Lagos State Radio Services, where I truly flourished as a broadcaster and hung the first half of my broadcast journalism journey.
What kind of childhood did you have and how has this influenced your life as an adult?
My childhood is a mixed bag of fun, pain, hurt, joy and everything in-between. I learnt how to love deeply at home. I also learnt how to be very cautious of humans at home. It’s a very thin line, you see. I know that one of the greatest cultural exports – if we care to use that term – of the Nigerian/African people is our sense of communality. While I will not totally throw that baby out with its dirty bath water, my experience is that the bath water should be totally discarded.
If we cared to speak and not feed our culture of silence, we’d find out that most homes that housed family members and extended family members, including those who are not even related to one by blood that you have been raised to call family brought more pain than joy to the family. That was my experience.
People who were left to care for me took advantage of that in ways they shouldn’t have. That exposed me early to a life of pain, deep pain that I remember clearly. I think I was 10 (years old) when I said to myself that if I could get to a place or a point in life that I could do things differently, no one around me would have to go through pain, any kind of pain. Not just around sexual molestation and all its attendant maladies, but any other. I guess that was why the story I referenced at the beginning of this interview about my most memorable experience as a broadcaster kept me grounded and continued to fuel me.
Do you miss anything about your childhood?
Yes, I miss road travel. That was the only time I actually had my dad with me. We travelled a lot. Yes, in this same Nigeria. We travelled every November to December, every year. We would climb rocks, camp in forests in Ondo State, bathe in streams, and eat cocoa off the tree. I travelled as far as Bida with my dad. He would be blasting music and we were singing at the top of our lungs. They were far and in-between, but they were and are still very dear to me.
Whose idea was it for you to study English?
(Laughs) It was no one’s idea. Remember I said I had absolutely no ambition in life? I wasn’t being facetious. After secondary school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I had all this energy, by all accounts, and to everyone watching from the outside, I was this renegade unconventional confident child. My dad wanted me to study Law or International Relations. That was not it at all for me. So, I kept writing the Unifed Tertiary Matriculation Examination. Though I always passed, no school picked me for the Law degree or IR.
My mum and I were talking one day. We were watching the Oprah Show, and then she said she remembered that, as a child, I’d look at American newscaster, Julie Coker, reading the news, and I’d simply say, ‘Someday’. I laughed it off then. But since I already had the experience at AIT, I felt I should simply go for Mass Communication, not because I liked it, but because I had that experience.
I got admitted to the Local Government Studies at OAU. I sat for another UTME, and this time, I put Mass Communication as my first choice of course and the University of Lagos as my first choice of school. International Relations at OAU was my second choice. How I got English Language Studies on merit in OAU is still a mystery to me to this day.
What was the experience like at OAU?
I was a very boring student. The first two years were on autopilot. The last two were somewhat better. I got to know my classmates in my final year. I was not entirely bookish. I, however, was quiet in my head. What I know now to be my coping mechanism for all that was going on with me at the time. I am not sure my classmates will agree though. My favourite courses were socio-linguistics and psycholinguistics. Now, I know why. Many of my lecturers believed and still believe I’d have done better with Literature. But life, God and the universe had other plans.
You mentioned in an earlier interview that you had a flair for languages. Will you like to speak on this?
I can give a lecture on this! Yes, I do (have a flair for languages). The way we use language and how we relate with it, be it with oneself or with other people, is so beautiful to watch. The amazing thing about it is that we humans are not aware of the impact of the use of language on ourselves and others, even when our various faiths tell us how powerful it is. There is also the social use of language and the psychology behind the social use of it. It is worth writing a thesis on if I had the dream of being a professor. But as we have established, I no get ambition. (Laughs)
How many languages can you speak?
At the risk of offending, one – Yoruba – and I don’t speak it as well as I would love to. Yes, I speak English, and I dare say well too. It is a means of communication and a tool for survival in a world that is governed by it. Socially, I am not language-snubbing. I can understand just a weeny bit of Igbo. I wish I kept the lot I learnt while I schooled at Command Secondary School, Abakalliki, Ebonyi State. I can exchange greetings in Idoma, and that’s about it.
How do you think the use of the mother tongue for early childhood education can scale up child development?
You sure want to take me back to the classroom. I think Babs Fafunwa already answered this question for us way back with the Ife Six Project.
There’s no way we can take away the importance of the use of the mother tongue in early childhood education. My undergraduate project was on inter-language use, which is basically how native speakers interact and assimilate a second language. I do not have an issue with second languages. The beauty of the world is the multiplicity of languages. My grouse is with terming or labelling a language ‘vernacular’ and ‘impure’, inadvertently telling the speakers they are inferior.
What places did you work?
Apart from my internship at MiTV for about 17 months, I did my National Youth Service at the Nigerian Television Authority, Makurdi, Benue State. I worked in the Lagos State Radio Services for many years, moved to Eko FM, Radio Lagos and Lagos Traffic Radio.
How did you know it was time to leave the place of work at the times you did?
The only place I truly left was the LSRS and it was just because it was time. I had come full circle. I was also fighting a mental health battle that my coping mechanisms were no longer serving me. Work was my number one coping distraction and mechanism. It was no longer serving. It was time. After a major crisis, the family decided it was time, and I left.
What were some of the most challenging moments you encountered as a broadcaster?
This will be when the transmitters went off, or when you had to engage callers who wanted an immediate resolution that you couldn’t give. The sweetest challenges though were on Traffic Radio. I remember those with bittersweet memories. (I had) lots of firsts with Traffic Radio. As I speak, I have them flashing, and I am smiling because I can laugh now.
Setting principles, as you rightly said in your recent book, is essential for career growth. Was there a time when you had your principles shaken?
Shaken? Questioned? Punished? Everything in-between happened. Some of them (principles) stunted my career growth. Some of them denied me opportunities. Will I stand with those principles and values again? Oh yes! What will I do differently? I’d be less Tunmise. That is the best way I can say that. Maybe more like my radio boyfriend, Femi Akanni, will say it. I’d be ‘more tongue in cheek’.
Women often have a career pause, especially with marriage and childbearing and rearing. What was your experience?
It didn’t stop me. I took my children to the studio with me. Yes, they’d resume with me on early morning shifts which start around 5am and leave with me on midnight shifts if need be. My husband was and still is my rock. My office at the time – I think organisations should think about this – had a crèche, where we could keep children for those of us with daytime shifts.
This is also the place where I’d take the baby in the bath water. Some colleagues would hold my babies while I read the news and you could swap or sell your shifts, etcetera. There were ways around these things. Then, again, it was not like I particularly had a dream of becoming a particular something in the firm. It was all about excellence and doing things well.
What is your idea of gender equity?
I truly run away from this conversation. It is too sensitive and extremely divisive. There is no appropriate answer that will assuage either side of this ever-increasing pile of pieces of evidence of the sins of Eve and the presumed negligence of Adam that has led to a plethora of literature. Some even say men are from Mars and women from Venus. I am also not oblivious of the fact that what I have said now may cause a bit of a stir. So, please, pardon my jumping and passing this.
Do you think the Nigerian society has done enough to create more opportunities for women?
The simple answer to that is no.
You’re a senior certified coach, wife, mother and preacher. How do you manage these multiple roles?
Preacher? If storytelling is preaching then, yes, I am a preacher (Laughs). On the real though, all these years of being a broadcaster have prepared me. I am just taking it a notch higher. I cannot even begin to think how I survived being a broadcaster and doing all I did then. I actually think that I now have too much time on my hands. But serving people with heart-breaking stories like mine, getting them to a place of awareness that everything in life is sovereign, and the wisdom that is needed to be the best God has given to them has been a beautiful experience. Now, that is worth living for.
While in broadcasting, you were known to always use your platform to propagate the gospel of authenticity and social awareness. What inspired that niche?
Pain! I said at the beginning of this conversation that I was seen as a renegade or perceived as unconventional. While that may not be totally untrue, there is a reason. I have always questioned things, yet I love the process. Social construct took too many things from me.
My innocence, childhood and family; I grew up too early. I had to find out myself. The only way to do that was to be unapologetically me. It didn’t come without its own challenges. I battled esteem issues. I battled image issues. In fact, the job that everyone thought I was doing well at, I thought I was crap at it.
I pushed through it anyway. Recall I said earlier that my coping mechanisms began to fail. Yes, they failed till I was made to face my mortality. I no longer was faced with the things that threatened me from my beginnings. I had a home, a job and children. But my brain was filled with all the vestiges of my childhood, teenage drama and decisions. Where will these energies go? By the time 2015 hit, it was time. I became a person living with bipolar affective disorder.
You recently published a memoir, ‘Living Mindfully: A Journey to Being’. What inspired it?
Living Mindfully didn’t start off as a ‘sub-memoir’, as I call it. I wanted to just curate the basic mindful tools to navigate life daily and offer my clients in my coaching practice. What I hope this achieves is my coming out as a person living with bipolar affective disorder, and curate basic mindful steps that can help anyone who is fighting overwhelming thoughts and anxiety. They can fight and conquer the condition. I also hope that we can then begin to have healthy and open conversations around mental health questions.
How has motherhood changed you?
Not much, I’d like to think. (It changed me) physiologically, of course. I’m no longer 28 (years old). I’m extremely goofy with my children. That’s one gift they’d have all their lives
If you have one opportunity to change one thing about your life, what will it be?
Honestly, I do not know.
