NOT TO BE BROADCAST (NTBB) traces the life and career of Samuel Osaze Iyamu through the evolving soundscape of Nigerian and West African broadcasting from the late 1970s to the early 21st century.
The book opens with a near-fatal shooting incident in Lagos in 2001- an altercation with soldiers during fuel scarcity that becomes a metaphor for the dangers of questioning authority in a militarized society. From there, the narrative moves backward to family lineage, early education at Edo College, and an accidental entry into broadcasting following abandoned studies in the UK.
Iyamu's professional ascent unfolds inside Nigeria's most powerful media institutions: the Voice of Nigeria and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria. As a broadcaster and later senior manager, he witnesses and participates in the coverage of multiple military coups, learning firsthand that in Nigeria, legitimacy is conferred not by constitutions but by control of the airwaves.
The book's central arc follows Iyamu's evolution from announcer to news producer during West Africa's most violent decade. As Chief News Producer at VON, he coordinates coverage of the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars, interviewing ECOMOG commanders and exiled presidents over crackling landlines while documenting Nigeria's largest foreign military intervention. Parallel to this is the chilling newsroom experience of General Sani Abacha's sudden death, handled under extreme political tension.
Running alongside politics is culture. Not to Be Broadcast devotes significant space to the recovery of African musical memory, particularly through Highlife My Life, a radio documentary series that reconnects West Africa with its forgotten musical pioneers. The six-year search for Ambrose Campbell culminating in a filmed interview in England, forms the book's emotional and archival core.
The final chapters explore institutional betrayal, professional exile, migration to Canada, and the silence that follows a life spent behind microphones. The book closes not in bitterness, but in record-keeping: an insistence that what was once deemed "not to be broadcast" must still be remembered.
