+How His Colleagues Planned A Coup For Him
It is no longer news that Mike Okwoche is no more with TVC. He has signed out. He took his exit from the station a few weeks ago after 11 years. And over the last few days, friends and colleagues of this broadcast Journalist, have been hosting him to lunch and dinner, as a send off to greater things. He has a new job. As you read this, Mike who was the Senior News Anchor, TVC News Africa is on his way to Moscow to be part of a big media project.
After working with TVC for the past 11 years, Mike Okwoche took his exit on 20th August 2023. He took a bow and left the popular TVC Breakfast show.
It came as a big surprise to all the regular watchers of the programme that morning when his co-anchor, Veronica announced that Mike was signing off with that mornings programme. During the programme he broke into tears. He was overwhelmed with emotions. Once or twice, he had to wipe his tears. He couldn’t believe the torrents of tributes his colleagues paid him.
The programme came to Mike as a big surprise because he never knew that his colleagues in TVC had planned to show a documentary in his honour. Many fans of TVC breakfast programme were surprised to watch Mike sign out of TVC. Until he left, he was one of the popular news anchors in the station.
He had presented the TVC Breakfast programme with different persons over the years, with Ngozi Alaegbu (now with Arise TV), with Azeezat Ola-Oluwa (now with the BBC), with Busolami Tunwase (now out of the media) and the last co-presenter was with Veronica Dan-Ikpoyi. The programme usually starts at 7am and runs till 9am.
How did he feel that morning on TVC when he signed out of TVC that morning, why did he break into tears? “It was very emotional for me because my producers and co-presenters, knew about it, but I didn’t know. That morning we were supposed to run to end at 9 O’clock, but they rounded off everything at 8:30am. And I was wondering, we still have 30 minutes, what will fill the airspace. Is there anything that was going on that I am not aware of? They said just relax, just relax. I said okay. But I was looking at what we were going to use to fill the space.
They went on a break and then came back and it was my co-presenter taking an introduction to something new, and when she started, 3 to 4 seconds into it, I knew she was talking about me. Then, it dawned on me that wow this people had planned a coup for me. They had gone ahead to get home past ideas of me and edited it, those times when I used to present low points, high points. They put everything together, and it was really emotional, it was very emotional. As much as I was happy moving on, but a part of me is in TVC, because TVC made me, to a large extent. The capacity anybody thinks I have today with all due respect TVC gave it to me. It is not just that. I found my wife in TVC. So TVC is like my in-law. I owe them a lot of gratitude. I am in TVC. TVC is in me. So, it was a very emotional morning for me, that day signing out of the programme. And that was going to be my last, ever time on air, on TVC so, it was really emotional for me”.
For how long has he been working for TVC “I worked with TVC for 11 years. I came to TVC on the 16th of August 2012 and it so happened that I was leaving TVC on the 18th of August 2023. So it was exactly 11 years and 2 days that I was leaving TVC, so it was really emotional for me”.
So, what next for Mike Okwoche? “That is what many people have been asking me.
Very soon, I will let the cat out of the bag practically.
They will see it and see it soon. All I can say is that we are not leaving the media industry yet. There is still so much work to be done. However, everybody who is in the industry understands that sometimes you move from one platform to another platform, doing the job, reorganising, re-strategising, upgrading, building up more capacity, rubbing off on other people, learning new things, so that is what it’s going to be for me.
So, when you ask: what next? We are still in the industry. I will let the cat out of the bag practically. They will see it and they will see it soon. It will be along the line of broadcasting. That is why I said we are not retiring yet. We are still in the Broadcast industry there is a lot to be done. So we are still doing that. But as to precisely where am I going next, where am I going to be next, they will see it soon, everybody will see that soon”.
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