It is totally legitimate and
conventional that the lead
ership of any nation, nation-state, groups or even the least complex of human organisations be subjected to scrutiny to ensure that the leaders remain focused on the task of promoting the communal good, as defined by the aggregate genuine wishes of the led.
Any proper scrutiny, the sort done without malice, protects the leadership by deepening the trust the led have in them, consolidates internal harmony and invariably guarantees progress and generates respect for the community from outsiders.
In modern times, the media, that is, newspapers, radio, television to mention the main ones, manned by professional journalists, who should be highly responsible members of the community, serve as the watchdog of the society and engage in the task of scrutinizing the activities of the leadership on behalf of the general public. It is so in Ghana and India or in Canada and Romania and in Australia and Nigeria.
In Nigeria, as it is in much of the world, a constitutional provision, section 39 says: “a person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference.”
The media in Nigeria generally, but the newspapers in particular, have taken proper advantage of this provision in their watchdog roles, But in some cases, they seem to concentrate on attacking individuals in leadership positions, particularly President Olusegun Obasanjo, as the quoted headlines below indicate, thereby making it reasonable to assume that they have gone beyond their duties and delved into a territory that could lead to questions being raised on their integrity as unbiased watchdog, “Years of Waste, How OBJ’s Govt. Squandered N5 Trillion” TheNews July 5, 2004, readily comes to mind. Going through the cover story of this particular edition of the magazine, this writer was shocked to realise that there was no case of wastage by the Federal. Government, which editors of the magazine discovered and substantiated with proof of evidence by themselves through sheer hard work or investigative journalism. Rather it is the Federal Government, in fulfillment of its promise to fight corruption through its transparency and due process policy, that purposely uncovered the cases cited with so many flourishes by the magazine as examples of “waste” in the system.
On July 12, 2004, in Abuja at a conference on Public Procurement, President Olusegun Obasanjo announced that the Due Process mechanism has saved for Nigeria the whopping sum of N102 billion in two years. At the same event, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Due Process and Price Intelligence, Dr. (Mrs.) Oby Ezekwesilli reported that her office saved N672.4 million or 4.1 million Euros for Nigeria from a single health equipment supply contract. This information may in a few months be recycled by editors wishing to sell their publication as a ‘scoop’ or ‘exclusive’ and dish it out to a largely-gullible readership as an evidence of “corruption” or “squandering” of resources by the Federal Government led by President Olusegun Obasanjo.
It is noteworthy that the articulate Chairman of the House Committee on Finance, Honourable Farouk Lawan, who was interviewed to make the cover story under review seem authoritative and muscular, confessed in the course of the interview that “I know that the due process mechanism, for instance, has saved for the country a lot of money. We also have the EFCC, which is equally doing a good job in the fight against corruption.”
Earlier in its June 21 edition, TheNews ran a cover story with the title “Go, Obasanjo, Go!” with a deck saying “President’s Popularity At Zero Level” Its tactic of re-running old stories as fresh or original, was discernible. To convince its readers that there was a massive clamour for the President of the Federation to go, it interviewed about 21 people, all of them from one section of the country, and their narrow perspectives were sold as the shared views of most Nigerians, along with the unscientific, if not false, conclusion that President Olusegun Obasanjo’s popularity is at zero level. This is in a country of at least 126 million people with over 60 million citizens on its voters’ register.
The TELL magazine is also in the habit of dredging old or moribund issues and dressing them as brand new. Its cover story called “This Govt Is Wicked” in its July 5, 2004 edition is an apt example. Without reading the cover story in full, some people would conclude that those words were actually used by Chief Innocent Audu Ogbeh, the National Chairman of the ruling party to characterize the Federal Government, especially as his photograph dominated the front cover of the edition under review. The sentence “Inside the story of Ogbeh’s bombshell” beneath the headline, added to the possibility of guiding cursory observers to conclude wrongly. Wrong conclusions could lead to unwarranted erosion of the respect, support, affection and loyalty some citizens have for the government of the day.
Way back in 2003, TELL weekly magazine portrayed President Olusegun Obasanjo as a stubborn person in its October 13 edition cover story named “Obasanjo The Stubborn President”, a caption superimposed on his photograph on the front cover of the magazine. It lined up his known critics to castigate his government and his person, but attempted to appear balanced and fair by interviewing Mrs. Remi Oyo, his Senior Special Assistant in charge of Media and Publicity and publishing excerpts from his broadcast to the nation on October 1, 2003, to mark the country’s 43rd Independence Anniversary.
In an article titled “More love for the President” on July 15, 2004, on the back page of the Daily Sun, in the paper’s usually lucid Reflections column, Mr. Olu Obafemi tried to downgrade the respect the President has abroad by contrasting it with what he sees as his (President Obasanjo’s) unpopularity at home.
Many arguments were advanced to justify the apparent adversarial approach of the press in its coverage of the government of the day. Historically, the indigenous press was primarily an instrument for agitation against the colonial power as part of the struggle for independence. After independence, the combatant psychology persisted and transferred to our own compatriots in power.
Top Nigerian journalists or media operators know and accept this unchanging attitude as one of the basic reasons for the seeming hostility of the Nigerian press against almost all the governments and the political leadership the country had since independence.
In a 1998 seminar titled The Media in Nigeria: Patriots or Cynics? Dr. Reuben Abati, the Chairman of the Guardian Editorial Board put it aptly “The contemporary press in Nigeria has inherited the early history of the Press, and reproduced the patterns in broadly the same fashion. The politicisation of the press may have resulted in certain partisanship and recklessness...”
In a way, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government is a victim of a mindset that emerged in a different era for a specific, noble and patriotic purpose, but which is now a handy tool in newspaper marketing.
It is for my colleagues in the press to start reporting this government fairly by subjecting its programmes and policies to scrutiny in order to ascertain their appropriateness and impact on the wellbeing of the people, instead of personal attacks against a President who said many times that “the only purpose for which I have sought the peoples’ mandate is to offer myself to serve my country”.
Salisu Na’inna Dambatta is Assistant Director (Information) in the Presidency.
