Osa Sonny Adun is Chairman/CEO of DBN, the first private TV station in Nigeria; and the first to bring Olympics broadcasting into the country. Photo: Filed
This revelation was exclusively leaked to NewsroomNG by an aggrieved DBN employee whom we won’t name for obvious reasons.
Osa Sonny Adun, owner of Degue Broadcast Network (DBN), has been owing people. Some have been owed for six months now.
He owes them, they get tired and leave and he never pays them a dime most times. Those that make trouble get paid after sometime but not all the money.
There are ass lickers in the office who stick to him and tell him what to say.
After the non-payment of salaries, he gave everyone a carton of seasoning and a carton of spaghetti and N10,000 for (2015) Christmas.
This is nothing compared to the thousands of naira he owes people.
Last year November (2015) when the workers of DBN Television, Lekki, decided to strike, he called a meeting and started the meeting with a hymn – ‘Amazing Grace’ – which he sang from his Catholic hymnbook. How hypocritical can that be?!
People are being owed!
He then went further to say at the meeting that he understands all they have been through and he is going to pay the next Friday. After he pays, he promised, it wouldn’t be business as usual. Did he mean he was going to choke them for the money he owed them?
He said he didn’t want anyone to speak at the meeting. Only him and the management staff spoke at the meeting. After the meeting we waited for Friday to come hoping to be paid but got nothing.
About DBN
‘Founded in the United States of America in 1984 and incorporated in Nigeria in 1986, DBN is a total communication and entertainment conglomerate involved in terrestrial broadcast in Lagos and Abuja apart from content development and distribution.
‘DBN relayed live to millions of viewers in Africa, the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics thus earning the enviable and distinctive mark of being the first African company to market and televise to viewers on the continent an IOC event. Since then, DBN has continued to bring to the African Audience both international and African sporting fiestas.
Source: DBN on YouTube.
On December 23, 2015, he doled out a carton of seasoning cubes and spaghetti with N10,000 to each staff that was in the office premises on that day.
This man is Vice Chairman of the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON) for crying out loud!
He treats his staff like paupers. He’s only good at sharing sweets, bread, N500 and banana to his workers to make them happy.
In fact there was a time he got trousers for all male staff! He has only two or three staff living on the Island (where DBN is located at DBN TV, The Dream Studio, 1, Bisola Durosinmi Etti Drive, Lekki Phase 1, Lagos). The rest stay on the Mainland. You can imagine leaving your family and sleeping over at a TV station that has no accommodation for staff. Cameramen slept in the office on the studio floor. Even presenters slept in their offices just to push this DBN dream. And then they don’t get paid.
You go to cover an event as a DBN reporter and the organisers treat you bad! Some even go to the extent of telling you that Osa Sonny Adun owes them or ran away with their money.
No one wants to identify with him anymore. He has offended a lot of people. And the industry being so small is like a circle you meet each other to meet again and again.
After agitating for our money he decided to scale down operations. He placed some staff on compulsory holiday. No one knows if they’ll get paid for the holiday.
There was another meeting on the 30th or 31st of December hosted by the General Manager, Effiong Uyo, where it was agreed that they were going to issue out a letter to certify we were being owed and the amount they are owing us would be indicated.
Staff have been going to collect their letters and found out that the amount they are being owed wasn’t stated. The letter only shows that they would be paid on or before June 2016
But how much? How does he expect us to survive till then?
This post first appeared on Newsroom.ng
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