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It Took Me All the Way to America to Discover Africa - Nigerian-Born CNN Girl, Femi Oke

Vanguard
Kunle Oyatomi
29 July 2007

The first time Femi Oke dazed African television viewers was when she popped up on the CNN screen, talking about weather. She implanted herself on the African consciousness with sheer brilliance of her presentation of weather report. And that was sometime in 1999.

But the weather woman who became the delight of African viewers of CNN did not start her career in Atlanta, Georgia. "I started when I was still a school girl. I was 14 years old when I began with LBC Radio station in London. I used to report issues about young people.

And when I moved onto the University of Birmingham where I studied English Literature, I worked with BBC Radio. When I left the university I was employed as a reporter with the BBC Radio.

"I worked for BBC News Service, I worked for the big BBC Radio Network in the UK, then I moved onto the BBC Television, doing famous music show called "Top of the Chart". It is a music show that ran for some years. I did so many TV programmes that now I don't even remember all of them," the Nigerian-born broadcaster told Sunday Vanguard on the fringe of the recent African Journalist of the Year awards held in Cape Town, South Africa, organized by CNN/Multichoice..

She went on: "To summarise, I worked for the BBC for ten years, as a reporter, as a producer, as a presenter. I wrote scripts for independent television stations. I worked for many people. "One day I saw CNN advert, they were recruiting staff and I said, 'hmm, this looks like a great job, and I have always been a very brilliant person. My mother used to say - 'Aim high, shoot high.' She tells Sunday Vanguard, nothing is beyond reach; just pray and God will answer your prayers.

"I put in application for the job and a few weeks later I got a phone call at home and whao 'we want to fly you to America for an interview.' I was so shocked; I couldn't believe it was true. They flew me to CNN office in America and I had the interview in April 1999."

It was the kind of interview she had never experienced before. "I did the interview from 9.00 a.m to 5.00 p.m. I went to speak with the vice president of CNN. And they will leave me with the people to evaluate me, and of course I never expected that. We did all this for a whole day and, at the end, they took me to CNN International Hotel in Atlanta and the following day, they called me up: 'We are offering you the job, when can you start?' I got the job in April, and I was on air in August 1999."

And from that day, she became a celebrity. You could see the passion as she reported the weather. You could not ignore the brilliance with which she made the presentation and, for all that Nigerians who were watching her cared, she was our greatest ambassador on the international screen.

Yet, Femi Oke knew very little about the continent from where she came - Africa. It took CNN to move her from London to Georgia before she could discover Africa and, after that discovery, she had become and remained passionate about events in the continent.

"Let me say that I don't like the way we tell stories from Africa; and the way the media portray Africa, I'm talking about the African media themselves, I think we can do this better. Right now, I work on a programme called Inside Africa. It's quite interesting working on a lot of issues and problems from Africa and this is a programme that tries to address those problems. I worked on this programme, first as a reporter, then a stand-in host, that's when the host was not there, I stood in for him and later I became a full-time host.

"I don't think we report ourselves well even as Africans. There are better ways of doing this with more contents, with more empathy. I feel very passionate about it. Fortunately, it took me all the way to America to discover Africa."

Not that alone, Femi Oke owes a lot to CNN for practically much of her personal and professional experiences to date. According to her: "It has been an amazing experience working with CNN because you are right in the middle of everything and I am a very curious person. I'm fascinated by the news around the world and all this come to us even before they are edited. And I get to travel, meet people from around the globe. I have an amazing network of friends, colleagues and fellow journalists. It is a job that enables me to do a lot of things. You see, I'm passionate about CNN."

But what about Nigeria?

"Oh, are you kidding? You think I will get away with it if I don't have passion for Nigeria. I have my cousins and uncles in Lagos. I'm very careful, though, commenting about Nigeria, but the warm thing about the country is that we are very smart. However, there's so much disconnect about what we have and what we do with it.

"You hear people say Nigerians are drug dealers. They are into crime; don't send them email! But I'm glad that wherever we find ourselves, we excel, we are very very enterprising. And I'm so proud about Nigeria than any other African country; I can flaunt that."

Copyright © 2007 Vanguard

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May we be strengthened with the ability, willingness and capabilities to be good ambassadors of Nigeria contributing to its uplifting, rather than its detriment. - Cxsm