Toyon Sibair
By Charles Okogene
The second time I saw Paris and still remain alive till today to the Glory of God, was in 2010. This is contrary to the old age saying of ‘see Paris and die. ‘
And it was courtesy Mr. Toyin Subair’s HiTV; Subair is at present, President Tinubu’s Senior Special Assistant, Domestic. It was a trip facilitated by my good friend and Delta State brother, Justin Akpovi-Esade , who was HiTV’s Head, Corporate Communications when the cable TV company made waves and almost took the shine off MultiChoice Nigeria. That will be another story for another day.God willing.
Our final destination on the trip was the beautiful city of Nice to cover that year’s MIPTV exhibition. And what a nice time we had and savoured the sweet music of Asa in one of the evenings of one of the days of the exhibition; she made us proud as Nigerians with her songs like ‘You are a prisoner, I am prisoner, … among others. We walked with our shoulders almost touching the ‘sky’ as we told whoever liked to hear that we are from the same country in Africa like her.
Before getting to Nice, we missed our connecting flight at the expansive Charles De Gualle Airport France that is three times, bigger than MMIA Lagos and Nnamdi Azikiwe Int’l Airport Abuja, put together, partly due to the late arrivaral of our Air France aircraft from Lagos and our inability to complete our self check in as there was nobody to check us in.Call us bush people if you like, ‘e no concern us.’
At Nice, we were lodged in a hotel not too far and not too close to the venue of the exhibition. What that meant is that for the five days the event lasted, we shuttled to the venue on the city’s mass transport bus to the venue. The bus is like our own BRT here in LASGIDI!
The icing on the cake was that beside the allowance that HiTV approved for us in dollar, Subair who was on ground in Nice too, still gave us additional $1000 apice so we can rock the city as we like, and that we did. There is nothing we did not do. From widow shopping to nightclubbing we went. We even went viewing scarlet ladies in their enclosure. There was no much difference between Nice and Paris; no wonder there is a saying that goes thus: “See Paris and kpai.” But we refused to ‘kpeme’.
To Subair, a man I have known from his humble beginning days as one of Ben Murray – Bruce’s aide as NTA DG, I have him to thank for the trip.
It was a memorable trip I will live and die with.
And while HiTV dream lasted, I savoured the experience, benefitted from all packages and I was treated not like a scribe but a brother. You can then imagine how I felt when some bad Nigerians made sure that that loving, truly Nigerian cable TV was frustrated until it ‘kpai’ naturally.
