It was at Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, Lagos, that his exemplary skill became crystal. In 1988, he created Nigeria’s first authentic, world class television breakfast programme called Morning Ride. But he didn’t only create the programe, he produced and presented it. Morning Ride became a fetching symbol of professionally produced TV shows in Nigeria .
With Morning Ride, he changed the story of NTA. His posh persona, his stately presentation, his refined language and nuances, plus a true-to-life mood brought, perhaps for the first time, the Nigerian elites to sit in their homes to watch a local TV programme apart from drama.
Danladi’s mind is incisive, he is celebral. If anyone therefore thought that Morning Ride was a fluke, he created and directed SPACS, an ambitious action drama series that added a phenomenally new dimension to Nigeria’s concept of drama and story-telling.
NTA illuminated Danladi’s intellective pathway and placed him on a pedestal of an exemplar. For many of his bosses, he was a young man in the eye of time. NTA was only a transit camp for the English Language graduate whose mind, body language and spirit seemed constructed for a higher calling.
In 1994, he was transferred to the National Broadcasting Commission, NBC, as an Assistant Director. Here, within a space of five years Danladi established his distinctive character not only as a working man but an administrative maestro.
He seemed therefore cloned for the post of the Director-General of this regulatory agency which he indeed attained in 1999. And quickly he established his style as one without space for histrionics that tended towards the banal and sentimental.
He had an unquenchable thirst for raising the bar. And so, the NBC’s bienial Conference of Africa Broadcasters, AFRICAST that, at best, had been shadowy was reinvented and became a confluence of African highbrow broadcasters and movie practitioners with scholarly, forward-looking themes and conversations.
Within three years Danladi transformed NBC from a quaint lame voice of a regulatory body to a vibrant picturesque agency with rolling ideas for a strong, stable, reliable and biggish future equipped to meet the exigencies of a nascent digital era.
It was not surprising that Africa’s broadcast world and Nigerias motion picture industry, Nollywood, froze when on that sunny evening in December 2002, the news snuck in like an ominous rumour. Danladi Bako, the swank, upmarket DG, had voluntarily resigned from NBC to join politics.
His odyssey had taken him from politics to the academia. Danladi Bako had bagged a PhD in Development Communication from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria in early 2020, having completed his dissertation in November 2019.
This academic distinction seems a befitting climax for a journey that began on Sunday, September 1, 1957 when he was born to an upper middle class family in northern Nigeria.
Growing up in Sokoto, Kano and Kaduna, Danladi attended primary and secondary schools between 1963 and 1973 before proceeding to Ahmadu Bello University where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts, BA(Hons) in English Language in 1978 at only 20 years of age.
Before setting out for his university programme at 16, he had a stint in broadcasting, working as Reporter/Announcer at Radio Nigeria, Sokoto. It was within this brief period at the broadcast station that he exhibited great peculiarities and flickers of ingenuity that would proclaim his path at dawn. This explains why he was head hunted by NTA Sokoto immediately after his National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, in 1979.
Even though, he was only 22, he arrived the station with an atypical but exceptional agenda to push the boundaries of creativity and accentuate the quest for excellence. Within two years, 1980 and 1981, he had won the Best Newscaster and Best Producer of the Year awards respectively.
By this time, both at the national Headquaters of NTA and the state TV stations, there were delightful acoustics about a new kid on the block, a young man that seemed to inspire the awaited momentous changes in the science of sound and picture.
Danladi was sent to England by NTA for an Advance TV course having acquired his MSc in Mass Communication at the University of Lagos in 1981. On his return from the United Kingdom he was posted to NTA Headquarters in December 1983 as a Grade Level 12 officer to pursue his avante-garde creative dream and to be the poster boy showcasing the distinctive badge of a new generation of content producers.
His creation and production of Morning Ride was therefore both heraldic and symbolic. Still it was a banner that announced his impeccable originality and arrival on the big broadcast stage. Having produced several programmes including the very popular comic series, Second Chance and supervised the production of many others, the name Mallam Danladi Bako became synomous with upscale productions on NTA. He had made his creative point. He had run an incredible career race.
The Kogunan Sokoto once said on his exit from NBC “I have always had ambition to do a few things from childhood. I wanted to have a doctorate degree, I wanted to be a diplomat and I wanted to be part of elections in my country, to contribute to the outcomes because I was quite excited by campaigns”.
For the dreams he nursed from childhood therefore, he perhaps feel accomplished thus far and have nothing to regret about leaving the NBC. He has been a Commissioner in Sokoto state. He was Chairman, Media/Publicity, for the Yardua/Jonathan Presidential Campaign.
He was a member of the Board of Cross River Basin Development Authority in 2004 and remains a member of the NBC Board. And to crown it all, he has acquired a doctorate degree. “I would not have had the time to do all these if I remained in NBC. I guess for everything, there is time and and season”, he added.
On his political journey, he states tersely, “I wanted to be part of those who influence the outcome of elections and be a role model for younger intellectuals to get involved in politics because we cannot leave it in the hands of shenanigans and area boys”.
In recognition of his contributions towards Nigeria’s journey to her envisioned destiny, the NTA poster- child, headliner and master of iconic, flagship programmes was awarded the national honour of the Officer of the Order of the Niger, OON.
Dr Nasir Danladi Bako is indeed a fulfilled professional. He is an accomplished and distinguished Director, Producer, Administrator and scholar who epitomizes the creative genii of a broadcast generation.