Reports swirled Monday, October 1 that Faridah Nakazibwe had resigned from her job at NTV Uganda where she anchored news and hosted shows.
Nakazibwe is yet to publicly comment on her departure from the Nation Media-owned television station but the news has been confirmed by her workmates.
Her popular show Mwasuze Mutya was Monday hosted by Ruth Kalibbala, also a season TV host and Faridah Nakazibwe’s media journey started with WBS TV, which was owned by businessman Gordon Wavamunno.
She secured the job at WBS through former finance minister Gerald Ssendaula who was friends with Wavamunno. Ssendaula was a family friend, Nakazibwe has said in interviews.
“I got the job even before graduation. God helped me, my dad was well-connected. And one of his friends was friends with Sir Gordon Wavamunno,” she said in an interview.
In the period leading up to graduation, Nakazibwe, who had studied mass communication at the Islamic University in Uganda (IUIU), got a job at Hotel Brovad in Masaka, which is owned by Hajat Sarah Nabukalu Kiyimba, another family friend.
“Before my month at the hotel ended, Wavamunno had confirmed the job offer… We went to Spear House… and they told me my voice was too young for TV,” Nakazibwe recalled.
She has said that she could have lost the opportunity to work with WBS, but she says the recommendation coming from a minister who was friends with the company owner made it hard for the managers to reject her.
At WBS, she started as a news reporter though she had eyed anchoring. “When they told me your voice is bad, I stopped thinking about it [anchoring] again… I reported the news and I enjoyed it to death,” she said.
A few months into the job, Wavamunno directed her supervisors to assign her the role of giving traffic updates.
One day she reported about Wavamunno getting stuck in a snarl-up because of a muddy road. The area leaders worked on the road after seeing the story.
“He (Gordon Wavamunno) came to the office and said, you see why I started a TV?.. It’s a very powerful tool,” she said.
After a year and a half at WBS, NTV launched in Uganda and started hiring. Nakazibwe applied. “I said let me try… WBS was the TV then… It had a big audience. But its management was not systematic,” she said.
For NTV, Faridah Nakazibwe applied to work as an editor and reporter. She had been with the company since 2006. In September, Nakazibwe obtained a Master’s in Business Administration from Victoria University.
Born on August 18, 1984, to the late Shakib Ssenyonjo and Sarah Ssenyonjo in Sembabule district, she attended Kisozi Boarding Primary School in Gomba district and Bwala Primary School in Masaka before joining Taibah High School in Kawempe.
