Popular media personality Shaffie Weru has revealed how he lost a lucrative job at Citizen TV.
Speaking during an interview on Tuesday, January 19, he explained that was a reporter and producer at the station and his salary was Ksh 50,000 which was a lot of money in 1998.
“I was a producer but I didn’t have an idea of what I should do. I did whatever anyone asked me to. I did a lot of sports and one time when there was nobody to present the sports news I was put on air only to get so many things wrong,” he recalled.
Shaffie lost his job when the late former President Daniel Moi closed down the station over a personal dispute with Royal Media Services Chairman S.K. Macharia.
The station remained closed until 2006 when it was relaunched and has grown to become the biggest television channel in Kenya.
At the station, the media personality made a lot of friends by teaching them how to drive using his mother’s car. However, the loss of the good job at Citizen pushed him to idleness and alcohol abuse before a new lifeline was handed to him.
“At my mother’s house in South C, I would indulge in alcohol and other substances until she called in a favour from Carol Radull who offered me an internship opportunity at Radio Africa.
“I rarely slept in the house. I bought a car using the money I had saved while working at Citizen TV and my mother chased me out of her house. She wondered why I had a better car than her yet I was not contributing anything in that house,” Shaffie shared.
His 2-month internship slowly turned into eight months since nobody asked him to leave when the first two months lapsed.
Fortunately, a position he was eyeing became vacant and he became a producer.
At the time, Shaffie was making a name for himself in the entertainment scene, albeit being the subject of negative headlines on gossip blogs.
“Radio Africa Group MD Patrick Quarcoo wondered how I had become a celebrity yet I was not on air,” the radio personality stated.
“One Monday morning I went to work with a hangover and was surprised to learn that I would be hosting a show that same day,” he recalled.
From then, he moved from the afternoon drive show to the breakfast show with Kalekye Mumo until he left the station after 14 years in 2019.
Currently, he is the station manager at Homeboyz Radio which is partly owned by Radio Africa.
