Prof. Tonnie Osa Iredia, OON: The Broadcaster Who Built a University

By Chris Osa Nehikhare

There are people who practise a profession. There are those who lead it and who teach it.

And occasionally, there comes someone who does all three and then decides that the knowledge accumulated over a lifetime should become an institution for generations yet unborn.

Professor Tonnie Osa Iredia belongs in that rare category.

Broadcaster. Journalist. Lawyer. Public administrator. Scholar. Professor.

And now, university founder.

For more than five decades, Tonnie Iredia has been associated with one central idea communication.

Not merely communication as talking or propaganda, but communication as an instrument of information, governance, accountability and national development.

Born on January 31, 1949, Iredia is a son of Benin City whose educational journey took him through several institutions and disciplines, including communication, journalism, law and management.

But long before Professor appeared before his name, there was the young reporter.

Iredia began his broadcasting career with Midwest Television in Benin City, which subsequently became part of the Nigerian Television Authority.

He started as a pupil reporter and rose through the ranks.

Eventually, he reached the summit of Nigerian public broadcasting as Director-General of the Nigerian Television Authority.

The young man who entered broadcasting at the lower rungs of the profession would one day direct Africa’s largest television network.

Iredia’s expertise was not confined to television. In 1987, he was deployed to the then National Electoral Commission as Director of Public Affairs, placing him at the heart of electoral communication during one of Nigeria’s most consequential periods of political transition, including the June 12, 1993 presidential election.

His expertise would later take him to Liberia, where he was involved in electoral information and political broadcasting following years of civil conflict.

In 2002, he was appointed Director-General of the National Orientation Agency.

The following year, he returned to the Nigerian Television Authority, this time as Director-General.

His career demonstrates something he continues to advocate today: broadcasting is not simply about owning a microphone or standing before a camera.

It is a profession.

Technology may change. Cameras may change. Audiences certainly change. But professionalism, training, ethics and responsibility remain fundamental.

There is something particularly valuable about practitioners who return to the classroom. They carry things textbooks cannot completely teach — experience, mistakes, judgement and institutional memory.

Iredia made that transition.

He served as Head of the Department of Mass Communication at Nasarawa State University, Keffi, and later became Professor of Broadcast Management and Media Law at Igbinedion University, Okada.

The broadcaster had become the teacher of broadcasters. But even that would not be his final destination.

The University

What began with the Tonnie Iredia Centre for Media Advocacy eventually grew into something much bigger.

Why merely organise seminars and train professionals?

Why not build an institution dedicated to producing a new generation of communicators?

In March 2025, the National Universities Commission approved the establishment of the Tonnie Iredia University of Communication in Benin City

The pupil reporter had become a university founder.

There is something significant about where he chose to plant that institution.

Home.

Edo State.

Iredia travelled through the commanding heights of Nigerian broadcasting, served national institutions, worked beyond Nigeria and became an academic. Yet when the time came to establish perhaps his most enduring institutional legacy, he brought it home.

One of the greatest contributions successful people can make is not merely to succeed away from home, but to bring something back.

Tonnie Iredia brought home a university.

There is also a personal reason I write about Professor Iredia with considerable respect.

When I served as Edo State Commissioner for Communication and Orientation, there were people outside government whose counsel I valued.

Prof. Iredia was one of them.

His advice mattered. He was selfless with his knowledge and generous with his experience.

Public office provides no shortage of people willing to tell you what you want to hear. The greater gift is finding people prepared to tell you what you need to hear. Prof. Iredia was one of those people for me.

And our relationship did not end when I left government.

To this day, he reaches out.

Sometimes to commend an article I have written. Sometimes to discuss an issue. At other times, our conversations are about direction and pathways.

It is simply an elder professional taking an interest in another person’s journey.

I am a beneficiary of his wisdom.

Perhaps that tells us more about Tonnie Iredia than a long curriculum vitae ever could.

Knowledge becomes more valuable when it is shared. He has spent a lifetime sharing his.

At 77, Tonnie Iredia could comfortably spend his days recounting what he has already achieved.

Former Director-General of NTA.

Former Director-General of the National Orientation Agency.

Lawyer.

Professor.

Scholar.

Those would constitute a distinguished life by any measure.

Instead, he is still building.

The reporter became a broadcaster, administrator, scholar and then a professor.

And the professor built a university so that others could begin their own journeys.

From my window, I see more than an accomplished broadcaster.

I see a teacher. A mentor. An institution builder.

And, speaking personally, one of the men whose wisdom helped me navigate my own responsibilities in public communication.

Professor Tonnie Osa Iredia, OON, is an Edo Icon.