Nigeria: How Not To Gag The Media

 By Dan Amor

It is a sad story to tell but telling it we must. Before the advent of the present "democratic" dispensation, Nigeria was literally run by buccaneers who plundered the nation’s till into private use and built empires over the painful anxieties of the oppressed people. Upon assumption of office, the present crop of leaders (since 1999 till date) promised to make Nigerians put the pains of the past behind them as they were poised to embark on massive people-oriented programmes. 

Consequently, therefore, Nigerians who had long been living in penury and deprivation felt that the only option left to them was to hope for better days ahead. This is more so as the beauty of any government is its ability to bring together human and material resources and use them for the uplift of society. It would be recalled that during those dark days in our nation’s annals when the military usurped the polity to breaking point, the Nigerian media stood firmly on the side of the people. 

In the face of intimidation and blatant abuse of their fundamental human rights, Nigerian journalists resolutely fought the military to a stand-still thereby paving the way for the current "democratic" system. In the process, many journalists were brutalized and jailed while several others had their precious lives cut short in their prime. Dele Giwa, one of Africa’s most colourful journalists and pioneer Chief Executive Officer and Editor-in-Chief of Newswatch magazine was assassinated with a letter-bomb on October 19, 1986 in Lagos at just 39 by agents of intimidation in solidarity with advanced state terrorism. Another ace correspondent of TheNews/A.M News and Tempo, Bagauda Kaltho, was murdered with a bomb by Abacha’s hit squad on January 19, 1996 in Kaduna. 

In order to succeed in their battle against the press, the military deliberately accused fearless journalists and critics of their nefarious rule of coup plotting and were subsequently clamped into detention in very dehumanizing conditions. Kunle Ajibade, Chris Anyanwu, Ben Charles-Obi, Niran Malaolu and others, were victims in this category, even as Chinedu Offoaro, a reporter of The Guardian simply disappeared from the face of the earth since May 26, 1996. To be candid, whenever there is bad government, whenever government fails to provide for the people or fails to achieve anything for posterity, the Press suffers. This is because the government fears the crusading press. It is unfortunate that a government that came into being from a political party that calls itself "ALL PROGRESSIVES CONGRESS (APC)" could take the country back to the dark days of draconian military laws. It is unbelievable and lamentable!

Again, it is common knowledge that while members of the Nigerian Press were being subjected to the aforementioned levels of inhuman treatment by the military, most of our current politicians who are presiding over the free-for-all looting and sharing of the national patrimony were busy hobnobbing with the military either as contractors, intellectual acrobats, court jesters or even political jobbers. 

There is, therefore, no professional group in Nigeria today that can honestly lay claim to the liberation of Nigeria and its peoples from the jaws of military sharks and tyranny more than the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the Nigerian Gild of Editors (NGE). In fact, the Nigerian Press which is supposed to be the sole arbiter or safety valve for the common man, owes it a duty to protect the democracy it relentlessly and conscientiously fought for. Yet, we seem to be repeating the past. It was George Santayana, poet and philosopher, who said that: "Those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it." We know the past. Or, don't we? 

Given the gale of arrest and detention of journalists conditioned by monumental illegalities and abuse of power since 1999, our wobbly democracy is greatly threatened by those elected to manage it. The arrest, detention and trial of journalists by government for doing their job is made worse by an attempt to gag the media. Our mandate is therefore beyond the slogan of informing, educating and entertaining the public. 

Just as Section 22 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as amended, asserts that: “The Press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media shall at all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people”, we also have the social responsibility to defend the cause of the popular masses. We must defend and propagate the Libertarian Social Responsibility Theory of the Press. It is against this backdrop that we must sit up especially now that the politicians have started going mad and drunk with power again. At the National Assembly, the law makers have nothing to offer Nigerians except the protection and propagation of their self-interests. The jigsaw puzzle of our national instability is yet to be solved more than 21 years into civil governance. 

It is even getting worse when the governing class is fanning the embers of discord with bigotry, religious fanaticism and mendacity. Since the past six years the communal bond that hitherto held us together is caving in with frightening possibilities as the only item on the agenda of ethnic nationalities in the country today is to go their separate ways. Nigeria has never been this divided. Therefore, what is most important now is the unity of media practitioners against the forces of reaction in the country; to keep Nigeria one. 

It is important especially at a time when state opportunism can force hungry journalists to a neutrality of maneuver in which solidarity covers an alliance with the forces of reaction, a time in which several governments engage the services of writers to paint an official image of their respective "achievements" in the media for cheap political goals. 

Yet, this "democracy" has also enhanced our acquaintance with the natural order of human progress, and understanding of the fact that the worst civilian regime is by far better than the most benevolent military dictatorship, at least in Nigeria. For, despite all their apparent incongruity, there are points of identity between the ruthlessly competitive spirit of corruption among our politicians and their humanitarian zeal for social betterment. The media must wake up from its slumber. The incessant killings, abduction and rape of thousands of Nigerians under the watch of the Muhammadu Buhari administration is enough cause to jolt media practitioners from illusions into stark realities. 

Whereas, during the military era, the government could maintain themselves in power through a policy of facile demagogy and a constant run of festivities and stillborn projects, whose effect was mitigated by shows of force, some of our current politicians still manage to display their ebullient faith in human progress with the understanding that they might be voted out of power if they failed to deliver. Since the past 21 years of "democratic" civil governance, it is ironical that this government that rode to power in 2015 on the crest of the media is trying to invoke authoritarian military laws of 1992 to cage the media. 

With obviously ulterior motives, the government is using the instrumentality of the National Assembly to achieve its nefarious objective. Somebody has sponsored a Bill for an Act to amend the Press Council Act CAP N128 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1992, to remove issues affecting performance and to compel the Council to regulate the Press. This is being done without carrying the stakeholders: the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), and the Gild of Public Affairs Analysts of Nigeria (GPAAN) along. 

Although it is also democratic for people to hold a contrary opinion of the motives behind media criticism of government, those who deplore the “frivolity” of the press and its natural form of group exposure and communal cleansing simply ignore the nature of its social and professional responsibility to the people. Indeed, the aspiration of our time for wholeness, empathy and depth of awareness is a natural adjunct of the present age of information. Every culture or every age has its favourite mode of perception and knowledge that it is inclined to prescribe for everybody. 

The current method of trying to muzzle the media by this government is unacceptable and deplorable. The government has tactically exhumed the Nigerian Press Council (NPC) Act of 1992 and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) Act to annihilate the media. 

By this, the government would ascertain what constitute fake news, who owns a media house, who works there, what they write and distribution channel. We do not need such shenanigans in the media in a democratic dispensation. Journalists are like people in the belly of the beast. Writing about our media owners and paymasters most of whom are politicians is enough censorship. The Presidency's denial of involvement in the scandal is an afterthought. Is the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed not part of the Federal Government? A government that recently suspended Twitter in the country and has refused to rescind that decision despite global condemnation cannot be trusted. It had been looking for a way to gag the Social Media since after the #End SARS protests in October last year. No democratic country, not even a totalitarian state, in this 21st century has tried it. 

From the June 12 protests under this administration (about three weeks ago), Nigerians have lost the right to protest (which is part of the democratic process) unless the protest is pro-government. In fact, how does a free Press constitute a threat to a hardworking and progressive government in a democratic dispensation? Nigeria is in a very precarious situation. For instance, Nigeria's debt overhang in the 16 years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was N6 trillion. Now, with just six years of APC in the saddle, the country's debt overhang is N33.1 trillion. 

Whereas, the Babangida administration would subject its International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan and its conditionalities to public debate, this government would just not. Even the National Assembly has capitulated its oversight function over the Executive arm of government. Every loan passes freely with impunity even as the Senate President himself Dr. Ahmed Lawan is saying that the country needs more loans. And all of us and generations yet unborn are debt-slaves to our creditors. Now, military rule has been made to look more democratic than civilian democratic rule. Yet, you expect the Press to go to sleep. 

Nigerian journalists have the constitutional mandate to challenge Nigerian politicians to wake up from slumber and to forestall any attempts by the military to stage a comeback. In truth, we must go back to the barricades; for, this is certainly not the democracy that we fought for. We do not need the new Nigerian Press Council (NPC) and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) Acts. General Sani Abacha tried it in 1995 and failed. 

The National Assembly must perish the thought immediately. The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns. And there is a deep faith to be found in this new attitude – a faith that concerns the ultimate harmony of all being. Such is the faith which the media must adopt to monitor our politicians who have forgotten so soon the past and will prefer to learn their geology the day after the earthquake. For the politicians, the best way to gag the media is to govern well, which the APC Federal Government is too far from since the past six years.

*Amor, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja