•Frank Edoho with a guest on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire set
Media personality, Frank Edoho, has explained that his exit from ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ followed the withdrawal of the show’s sponsor, not a sacking as widely reported.
Speaking on an episode of The KK Show which was published on Sunday, Edoho said a newspaper report claiming he was dropped from the programme was false.
The former Who Wants To Be A Millionaire host recalled that he spent four years working at Radio Nigeria, the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, before television offered him the fame radio could not.
“I was on radio. I worked for Radio Nigeria — that’s the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria — for four years.
“You know, once you can work on radio for four years but not get as much popularity or fame as you would if you worked on TV for one month,” he said.
Edoho said ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ ended after its sponsor, who had backed the show for a decade, withdrew support following a regulatory penalty.
“So, ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ sort of came to an end when our sponsor withdrew. I don’t know if I can mention brand names here, but our sponsor stayed with us for a decade sponsoring the show,” he said.
He explained that the federal government had fined the sponsor over a corporate matter, and the resulting financial burden forced the company to end its involvement with the show.
“I think the federal government fined them based on some industry… I think it was just like a punitive measure for one corporate thing that happened.
“I can’t go into details, but that affected the sponsorship of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ So they said, ‘Hey guys, we can’t do this anymore based on the fact that we have to pay an incredible sum of money back to the federal government,” he said.
Edoho said he entered negotiations for a stake in the show after learning that new sponsors were interested, believing his years on the programme had made him an asset to it.
“I went into negotiation because we heard that other sponsors were interested, and I wanted to be an executive producer.
“I wanted to have a stake in it because I feel that I built myself up to the extent that I assumed I was an asset to the show,” he said.
He said the negotiations broke down over disagreements, and his absence from the relaunched show under its new sponsor led to speculation that he had been dropped.
“We were having differences in negotiation. I think it was one newspaper that went and said that I was dropped based on the fact that, with the relaunch of the show under the new sponsor, I wasn’t anywhere to be found. And of course, they would draw conclusions based on that,” he explained.
Edoho maintained that the report of his sacking was untrue, describing the experience as a betrayal after years of work on the show.
He said, “So they announced that I was dropped from the show, which was false then. I gave my statement. I said, ‘Okay, you know what? This is it.’ I felt I was thrown under the bus after all the years I put in.”
Edoho hosted the show for 13 years, from 2004 to 2017, before resigning in September 2017. The show went on a temporary break in 2017 after 13 years on air, when its sponsor, MTN Nigeria, pulled out.
Following his exit, reports at the time claimed Edoho had been dropped from the show as it prepared to return under a new sponsor.
He returned to the programme in 2022, when it resumed after a five-year hiatus with a revamped cash prize and new sponsors.
