Abuja And the Blight of Misinformation
By
The term misinformation can be defined as the art of giving incorrect information to a person, group of persons or an organisation. This may either be deliberate or as a result of omission or inaccurate receipt of information.
I discovered just recently that most of the inter-tribal mistrust and wrangling we are experiencing in this country is as a result of misinformation deliberately designed by the perpetrators to either sway public opinion in their favour or attract public sympathy or even for the purpose of gaining political relevance. The print and electronic media owned or manned by their kinsmen have always been their medium of spread. They also make use of tribal union meetings and meetings of organisations to which they are members as a medium of dissemination.
The history of misinformation in Nigeria can be traced back to the pre independence days when the nationalists were trying to court the support and sympathy of their people in order to further their cause against the colonial masters. It was in recognition of the enormous damage it was doing to their administration that the colonial masters enacted the infamous Sedition Act in order to check it. The emerging politicians of the first republic who benefited immensely from its use in the colonial era also used it decisively to win the support of their tribesmen in the first republic. The damage done to the unity of our country as a nation of multifarious tribes by the first republic politicians through misinformation is so enormous that today we do not have loyal and patriotic Nigerians but loyal and patriotic Igbos, Hausas, Yorubas etc or Northerners, Easterners, Westerners, South Southerners etc. In other words, people are loyal and patriotic to their tribes and geo-political zones instead of Nigeria. No wonder every national issue is always viewed from the prism of tribe or geo-political zone. Take for example the issue of Sovereign National Conference: while the Southerners are clamouring for it, the northerners will have nothing of the sort. In fact, it was not until recently that the Tivs of the Northern geo-political zone started supporting the clamour for Sovereign National Conference and that was after the killing of their kinsmen in Taraba and Nasarawa states.
Again, while the South is clamouring for resource control, the North is united in its opposition. In an Africa Independent Television (AIT) programme of Sunday 25th November, 2001 an anonymous caller who was however, betrayed by his accent seriously opposed Resource Control and the reason he adduced for his stance was that the money realised from the sale of groundnuts produced in the north in the 50s and 60s was used to develop crude oil in the south (whatever that means) and that the oil therefore, belongs to everybody equally. This type of crooked reasoning is no doubt a bye product of misinformation and it reveals the level of misinformation he must have been fed with. Mr. anonymous and all his types all over Nigeria needed to be properly informed and educated that the oil companies that discovered oil in the Niger Delta are not owned by the government of Nigeria but by foreign private organisations therefore, there is no way groundnut money would have been used to develop or discover oil in the south. They also needed to be properly informed and educated that when the north was producing groundnuts, hides and skin and tin ore, the East was producing palm oil and Coal while the West was producing palm oil, cocoa, rubber, timber, gold etc for export. Perhaps Nigerians need to Judge for themselves which of these products attracted more foreign exchange for the nation.
January 2002