When I started work at the Katsina State Television, KTTV, I was ushered into the office of the then Director, News and Current Affairs, Mr. Francis Genger. The News and Current Affairs Department was where I was posted as a Current Affairs Officer.
Mr. Genger was one of those staff inherited from the old Kaduna State after Katsina State was created. He wasn't much to look at: your first impression of him could be this guy is a mechanic of sorts...he was short, stout, dark and not exactly ugly but somewhere close to that. He was, most of the time not clean shaven, but not bushy, either, rather looking dissheveled with stubbles of beard, moustache and sideburns covering half of his face. He was a Tiv and an indigene of Benue State.
When I was ushered into his office, his little figure was dwarfed by a huge desk at which he was sitting. I didn't know it at the time, but inside that skull of his was hidden a brain as sharp as a razor. He was one of the best script writers I had ever come across at the time, and make no mistake about that.
I found him smoking a cigarette, a Benson & Hegdes, I can still recall. He regarded me with those sharp eyes, his face completely expressionless. He offered his hand, which I shook and waved me to a chair next to the desk. I sat down and looked at him. He asked the usual introductory questions about my qualifications, schools I attended, where I had worked etc. Then, he gave me an assignment to write an article about a raging controversial issue at the time - I can't remember it now. It was his way of assessing his new staff to find out their strengths and weaknesses.
I went back into the newsroom, found a seat and wrote what I thought was a good article, not one of my best, considering the tension I was under, being new and having no idea how to write like a journalist. I went back to his office and submitted the assignment and came back to wait for the result in the newsroom.
When he finished, he called me again into his office and pushed my article back to me. I looked at the paper and saw that he had made a few corrections with a red biro, like a teacher. He didn't say anything, just continued to smoke, not looking at me. When I realized he wasn't going to talk, I gathered my paper and went back into the newsroom. I looked at the paper again, but aside from the few spelling and grammatical corrections, there was nothing to tell me whether the article was okay or not. So, I decided to go back and ask him. I needed to know whether I was on the right track or not.
I found him still sitting at his desk and working, still smoking. Haltingly, I said, "Sir, you haven't said anything." He said, "About what?". "About this assignment." I answered. "I want to know whether it's okay or not."
He regarded me again with those sharp eyes, drew on his cigarette and blew the smoke towards me and said, "You will be okay if you don't behave like the goat." "Sit down." So, I sat down.
He began the story of the goat: It happened that the goat was interested to learn how to climb trees like the monkey. So, it appealed to the monkey to teach it how to do it as well as the monkey was doing it. The monkey agreed to teach the goat. It told the goat to start by putting its front legs on the tree. The goat did it so well that the monkey was impressed and it clapped at the goat. That clap got into the goat's head and it decided that it had learned all there was to learn about tree climbing and promptly went away, not bothering to continue to learn. Till today, the goat had never learned to climb trees as well as the monkey.
That story struck a note and still rings in my mind. It has taught me a few lessons: to never stop learning and to always be humble.
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