Steve Nwosu
For a change, I have decided to steer off the in-fighting in APC, the saboteurs of the PDP, the malaria-induced optimism of some of the smaller parties and the fact that the president is just setting up a presidential campaign council with just 40 days to the election, as if he’s just doing it to fulfill all righteousness.
I won’t even talk about the anti-graft war again, even when the corruption which we said was democratized under Jonathan has now become centralized under Buhari – that is, moving from the Concurrent list to the Exclusive list, but is still walking around on all fours. If that is not CHANGE, then tell me what is.
Rather than talk politics, today, I want to revisit a classical quote from Eric Arthur Blair, the English novelist better known as George Orwell. According to the write of the celebrated Animal Farm, “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations”.
So, I went to bed penultimate Sunday night thinking of how beautiful it would be to reproduce those words into a picture frame and hang it in every government office in Nigeria. And also get all senior government and security functionaries in the country – especially the military top-brass and the ministry of information, to recite it to themselves every morning.
READ ALSO: I fear Buhari won’t go if he loses – Tope Fasua, ANRP presidential candidate
That was only what I could come up with, as I tried to make sense of the raid on the offices of Daily Trust by soldiers of the Nigerian Army a few hours earlier. Was that the best the Army could think of? Are we still operating the rule of law or the rule of raw? Do we still have courts? Or are they now strictly for obtaining dubious injunctions only?
How come we make all the best laws on Planet Earth, when we have no intention of using such laws? Why do our governments and their officials prefer to resort to roof-rofo and self help, even when there are clearly spelt-out laws to deal with the issue at hand? Why are we so crude? Why are the brains of several of our security chiefs and leaders, a still permanently frozen on 1984, even after 20 straight years of experimenting with democracy?
Much as it is inevitable that everyone, including journalists, other professionals and everyday Nigerians, would have to join hands with the military in the quest to defeat the insurgency in Nigeria, it is mind-boggling to think that any other contribution outside of what the military rule book says is interpreted as tantamount to sabotage, or an action against the state – as the military authorities would want us to see the ‘offensive’ report of Daily Trust.
Nobody is in doubt that there is a huge information lacuna around the Nigerian state’s war against Boko Haram insurgents and the entire insecurity situation in the country. People are yearning for information, which the Army is clearly not giving.
If Governor Yari of Zamfara would go on national television to beg that a state of emergency be declared in his state, as a result of the insecurity there, and his Borno State counterpart, Gov. Shettima, could burst into tears in front of TV cameras over the same insecurity in his state, it means they are experiencing things which are at variance with the narrative emerging from both the army and the government’s official information channels.
Even though no army anywhere in the world ever gives out all the information about its military expeditions, in a country, where politicians and public officials readily mount the podium to castigate journalists and bemoan the dearth of investigative journalism, isn’t it benumbing that we would want to hang a media house by its genitals for trying to fill the void? Even when it is clear that boundaries were crossed, when did, as the Yoruba would ask, beheading become a cure for headache? Why has truth become so irrelevant? Why has it become so difficult for the military to guard its own secrets that it is now so easy for just everyone to pick up? So, if the military cannot keep its own secret, is it the press that would keep it?
But jokes apart, does the military want to tell us that Boko Haram actually needs the media to gather intelligence about our military and it’s troop movements? Isn’t it an open secret that the same way the military has infiltrated the ranks of the insurgents is exactly how the insurgents have also infiltrated our military? We don’t need to go to Defence College to know that.
Yes, the media is culpable in the spread of the insurgency, but it is only to the tiny extent that ‘generous’ coverage given to the exploits of the terrorists by the media seems to be the oxygen the criminals need. However, recent developments clearly indicate that the terrorists are requiring less and less of the regular media to get their message across. That is what the social media is all about. Book haram now records and posts its own videos, including live coverage of its attack on military formations. That we, the regular media bury our heads in the sand and pretend it’s no news does not mean that it never happened. Nor stop the information-hungry public from seeing the videos.
When you force the regular, professional practitioners from sourcing and disseminating genuine information on the crisis, and also fail to give out credible information, readers would look for alternative sources of information.
Now, if information, credible information, is the soul of the business of the media, it then means that any medium that insists on covering the insurgency solely from what the military and government spokespersons say is gradually, but steadily, killing its own business. You’ll end up reading your own paper, watching your own TV station and listening to your own radio station. Or, how many people who have a choice rely on our state-owned broadcast stations for news?
READ ALSO: Ekiti auto crash: Fayose, Fayemi commiserate with Iworoko community
And, just in case the military chiefs were too engrossed in the terrorism war to study the 2019 budget proposal – and the ones before it, there is no where that any provision is made for subvention, or budgetary allocation {either for capital or recurrent expenditure} for the much touted Fourth Estate of the Realm. We are to look for our own money wherever we can, pay abominable taxes and levies to government, ignore the news those who gave us their money would want to read, and fill the entire paper/airtime with news of what government wants to read. Yes, the same government whose actions and inactions are responsible for the pitiable state of the media. Now, is there a better definition of madness?
Of course the media and government would have to collaborate on nation building and security, but it’s not written anywhere in the constitution that the tree of national peace and stability must be watered by journalists’ blood and journalists’ blood alone. Similarly, there is no empirical evidence to prove that some people are more patriotic than the rest of us simply because they wear military uniform or are in the public service.
I would also want to remind them that, unlike those of them whom we pay for their patriotism and service to the fatherland, with taxpayers’ money, nobody pays the journalist anything for his own patriotism and loyalty to the flag. And there is no evidence yet to show that soldiers are more patriotic than journalists
January 15 is Armed forces Remembrance Day. I am wearing a commemorative badge on my chest, as I write this. I salute and defer to our fallen and standing heroes, but I’ll not accept anybody making me look less desirous of peace, unity and progress of this country simply because I’m a ‘bloody civilian’. Or, if they do, I’ll draw them a long list of soldiers – both fallen and standing – who are not nearly as ‘heroic’ as they would have us believe.
The army is doing public relations, and propaganda, both of which are legitimate. The media is doing journalism, which encompasses, but is not limited to, PR and propaganda, but has always {even in the face of more tempting pro-Boko Haram headlines} bent over backwards to slant stories in favour of military positions – in the interest of national security. However, it is laughable to insist that media, whose bills you do not pick, abandon its business to do government business, even in these times of near-emergency security situation. As Arthur Nzeribe would say, ‘a ga akpa ya akpa’.
