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To nurture Nigeria's democracy By
I thank the Civil Liberties Organisation for setting up this Media Forum and asking me to present this paper. Because of the title of this paper, I do not intend to sing praises. I believe we are dead serious when we seek repositioning the media in the dispensation we have chosen. I will paint a picture of what it was, what it ought to be, what it has been and what it can be. I am not going to split it all up in those headings but a general presentation will point to the direction. As I have said, please do not expect praise today, at least from me. I must say how unhappy I am because of the harm we as media practitioners have done to the development of a dispensation which we fought to entrench with our tears and our blood. During the years of the military locusts, every institution in the land was swallowed up. The democracy workers did their best as little pockets of resistance to float a dream of freedom in a desert of deliberate deprivation and denial. The courts were reduced to the status of onlookers where the cases they were entitled to handle were channelled by the very law they were to interpret to the dark chambers of the absolute ruler. Labour was castrated through infiltration and politicisation. Students became agents of the polity. The political class denied their own manhood and handed the sovereignty of the people, in purported representative capacity, to one man to rule this country for as many years as he wished, using the instrumentality of what has come to be known as the five fingers of a leprous hand, the five political parties that served one man. Death killed that man and sabotaged the scheming of a class that has always acted the part of rot in an environment that cries for fresh air and detergents. Only the Press stood out as the bastion of the rights which human beings in Nigeria's geographical space were entitled to. They paid dearly for it. They were detained. Their media houses were shut by force and by law. One was even set on fire. Practitioners were charged with murder for writing what was true. They were incarcerated for a fire they knew nothing about. They found themselves being tried with soldiers who had been done in with accusations of planning coups. They were sentenced to prison terms that would have seen them die in there. Two died of bomb blasts, one at his breakfast table in Lagos, the other in a hotel in Kaduna. But freedom came not just because the days of arbitrariness have long passed in a world in which we are not and can never be alone, but because the media which championed the battle have profound credential for their status. For one, there is no argument any longer about the media being a channel that is manned by professionals whose training is for balance, fairness, fairplay, truth and truth and truth and truth. There is no argument any longer that institutions abound for training media men, from the lowly ordinary diploma to the doctorate level. There is little argument that outside law, journalism is the most sought after course in the social sciences in this country. There is no doubt that the journalist is no longer a press boy or any person's boy unless he chooses to make himself one. There is no argument about he being more undermined financially than any other professional unless he chooses slavery. What is there to count for any profession that the one journalists have chosen will not more than lay claim to! Is there a profession more linked internationally than journalism? Why do politicians get detained and no one knows, but when a reporter is invited by the police, the whole world monitors what is happening. Distinguished participants at this forum, journalists have things in common that demand an irreducible minimum level of behaviour. Because the work of monitoring others is specialised, and reaching out to the world at large is communication at the level of publication, rules bind our collection of information, our processing of information, our dissemination of information. These rules are universal because we belong in a profession which the world, in a division of labour setting, depends on for what is happening, where, why, how, who to, and to what effect on their lives. It is social mandate. And in our Constitution, it is a constitutional mandate. Is it therefore not unpardonable irresponsibility to bastardize that mandate? Have we in Nigeria acted to brief? Have we worked to sustain a dispensation we helped to bring about? Do we even know where we are and what we are supposed to do? With the more than 44 institutions that offer courses in communication in this country today, what is it the runs through the syllabus to make what we bring out of the institutions relevant? Have we a focus? Where does it lead us to? These are questions, answers to which should help reposition the media in the dispensation we have chosen, on the road we have taken. This is because the media operates in a polity, is part of the polity and must understand that polity and interpret to the those who live in it and have a stake in ensuring its survival. Because this is an occasion when nothing should be taken for granted. I would like to tell you of the country under reference and the dispensation it has opted for. The country is the Terrain and the dispensation is the Beat. Let us discuss them briefly. The Terrain The terrain is Nigeria, the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I do not want to go into the argument whether or not we have a republic and if we do whether it is federal. This is part of the challenge of the dispensation we have chosen and anyone who denies discourses on how 97,000 communities constituted into more than 250 nationalities can work out their relationships does not know that dialogue is the most effective weapon of peace and welfare in a democracy, in the dispensation which we freely chose on May 29, 1999. The Terrain will be one hundred years old as integrated space in 2014. We have less than 13 years to that point in our march through time. Since 1922, we have tickled with the Terrain. The colonial masters called the shots until the fifties when we were offered independence and some of us said they were not ready for it. Since 1960 when the handing over of political power was formalised, we have shown, through our performances, that perhaps we were not ready. Not that those who ruled us should come back until we are ready. The fact is that their coming disoriented us and those who would have refocused our gaze did not have the opportunity to rule this country after political independence. The coming of the military further complicated matters because the national institutions they would have built for the new dispensation to have worked were decimated through neglect. We are therefore left to tackle basic issues like light, fuel, roads, water, jobs and housing at levels where they ought to have been seen as given and which would have entitled us to what we opted for. Note the implication of what I have just said. Democracy as practised today is the luxury of development. Over time, its evolution has been watched by its programmers so that it moved space with the level of economic development. Once upon a time, you qualified for rights only when you had contributed to the performance of duties. You therefore could not have a vote unless you had landed property where you wanted to have a say. You can see therefore that the new dispensation is a stage in the evolution of man. You work to reach it. The prerequisite demand for it is that you know your duties to the system and you perform them. This is a fact in our cultural settings. You are brought up to perform for the community before you can lay claim to the community's protection, to the rights there are to enjoy. At the stage of the march of man through time, enjoyment of rights is even entrenched in the Constitutions. By our choice of the dispensation, even before Independence, we chose to emphasise rights and had them entrenched in the Constitution. These rights, true are inalienable and are man's entitlements. But in the growing up within polities, man worked to merit the enjoyment of the rights. In other words, the performance of duties qualified the citizenry for the enjoyment of the rights. This is not where to develop or push what I am saying, but our democracy addicts must look at the two sides of the coin. There is the side of duty and the side of rights. In a democracy, the rights are in the fore, protected against abuse and infringement because the duties were imbibed within the polity through the school system. We lack this sense of duty in our Terrain, in this country. People in public office are not trained to work for the public. Government property is nobody's property. The separators on Lagos roads therefore get removed two days after they are put there to redirect traffic from the elevated bridges. The telephone cables are torn off so that the copper wires can be used for things that are more of importance to those who call themselves citizens of a polity they owe no allegiance to. Our national anthem does not shake us into any recognition of nationhood or any commitment to patriotic duties. We are brought up to be nonchalant about a fatherland where the managers of affairs know of our existence only when we have struggled through other terrains to achieve the little they see manifest. They invite us to play football but did not know when we were knocking the ball around the dirt roads of Ajegunle. The heterogeneous nature of our 97,000 communities is ignored and we pack the Centre with people and money and responsibilities that ought to be assigned to the rural areas through appropriate restructuring for more effective governance. We deny equality to the citizens by associating clout only with some nationality groups and the individuals who have theft and fraud in common. Looking at the Terrain, we see over time the changing faces of the outline. In 1914 when the journey to now started, we had one entity, a centralised administration. Then we began to tinker with geographical space which, in my view, accorded with the facts on the ground, that is that we had large groups that we had brought together into one country, and this had to reflect in governance. So, we had three regions, then four. In a period of extreme emergency we sat on a table and split the country into 12 states; then 19, and 21 and 30 before we settled for 36 which now constitutes the geographical space of the Terrain. But each time there was a slicing of the geographical Terrain, the seed of disintegration were sown. Those who have lived together serve notice on those who have just won autonomy to pack their things and go, even the houses they have built. Not one day have we fashioned a viable policy of integrating our people. For 20 years after amalgamation in 1914, not one important leader of Northern descent came over to the South for a meeting. Yes, two emirs passed through Lagos in 1934 on their way to England. That was the closest contact with a part of the Terrain they were supposed to live for, even die to sustain. What will the media do to help establish a Terrain people will come alive to, that they will defend consciously to merit its place of housing more black people on earth than anywhere else. This is a challenge the Media in Nigeria cannot perform until it is repositioned. The Beat Before we chose the road we have taken, we walked another road. Since we achieved political independence in 1960, we have had effective civilian presence in government only for a little less than twelve years - from 1960 to 1966, from 1979 to 1983, and from May 1999 to date. Even before 1966, we tasted the absence of due process during the West Regional crisis when the Federal Government declared a state of emergency in the Western Region. That was during the Action Group Crisis of 1962. The long period of military rule was the much long period of a state of emergency, and one thing about a state of emergency is that you are in a war situation and all rights and privileges must give way to national security which only security agencies claim monopoly knowledge of. With the new dispensation, we have all become beginners in accommodation of due process. For some forty years, we forgot everything. Those who were old enough to know what due process meant had forgotten, and most of those who are in charge now were too young to know what was happening. You must be forty years and before you qualify to be President of Nigeria. But those who may aspire to that position were by and large independence children, and knew absolutely nothing about the workings of a democracy. Do not be persuaded if they tell you that they were in the US or the UK. Even if they had been there for years, they would still not feel as much at home as when they are here in their place of birth. I had an idea what it was like before the military took over; I was active in the media throughout the war years and I knew how high the stakes were before Gen. Yakubu Gowon decided to postpone the return to civil rule in 1976; I was part of the mobilisation effort to keep the hope alive that the military would go in 1979. As editor of the Daily Times, I told my colleagues that we had to ensure that our performance did not remotely encourage the military to remain in power. Not only that, I was part of a team that designed a programme of information management in a Presidential system, the system being new to us in Nigeria. Finally, I had the opportunity to serve in a military administration for four years, which turned out to be the most turbulent years of social and economic transformation efforts of the military in government in Nigeria. Let us now look at the two pictures that a military presence in governance and a democratic dispensation present so that we can more fully appreciate what it is we have been doing and what it is we may have to do. Picture of a Military Dispensation
Fundamental Obligations of the Government; the Government and the People; Political Objectives; Economic Objectives; Social Objectives; Educational Objectives; Foreign Policy Objectives; Environmental Objectives; Directive on Nigerian Cultures; Obligation of the Mass Media; National Ethics; and Duties of the Citizen. We should spend some time to explain each of the areas covered in the constitution: On the Fundamental Obligations of Government: Every organ of government and authorities and persons that exercise legislative, executive and judicial powers must conform to, observe and apply the provisions of the chapter. The Government and the People: Nigeria is a state based on the principles of democracy and social justice. Sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria. Government derives all its powers and authority from the people through the Constitution. The primary purpose of every government must be the security and welfare of the people. The people must participate in the running of the government. Activity of government must reflect the composition of the nation-state, such that the predominance of persons from a few states or from ethnic or other sectional groups is avoided. This is to ensure national unity and command national loyalty. Political Objectives: National integration will be promoted through encouragement of free mobility of people, goods and services throughout the federation; securing of full residence rights for every citizen in all parts of the Federation; encouragement of inter-marriages among persons or ties; and promotion of associations that cut across ethnic, linguistic, religious or other sectional barriers. The abolition of all corrupt practices and abuse of power is an article of faith. Economic Objectives: There must be a striving for harnessing the resources of the nation and promoting national prosperity and an efficient, dynamic and self-reliant economy. Social Objectives: The state social order is founded on the ideals of Freedom, Equality and Justice. Every citizen is therefore guaranteed equality of rights, obligations and opportunities before the law, and the independence, impartiality and integrity of courts of law and easy accessibility thereto shall be secured and maintained. Evolution and promotion of family life will be encouraged. Educational Objectives: Government will ensure that equal and adequate educational opportunities are available at all levels. Science and technology shall be promoted; attempts will be made to eradicate illiteracy, and to this end, government will, when practicable, provide free, compulsory and universal primary education, free secondary education, free university education, and free adult literacy programme. Foreign Policy Objectives: The point of departure is the promotion and protection of national interest. There shall also be promotion of African integration and support for African unity, and promotion of a just world economic order, among others. Environmental Objectives: There shall be protection and improvement of the environment and safeguard of the water, air, and land, forest and wild life of Nigeria. Directive on Nigerian Cultures: The State will ensure the protection, preservation and promotion of the Nigerian cultures which enhance human dignity, and will encourage the development of technological and scientific studies which enhance cultural values. It is significant that those who exercise certain powers in the Nigerian polity are made to swear to the Oath of Allegiance and the Oath of Office. It is clearly stated that the person swearing promises to "strive to preserve the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy contained in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria". My submission is that the National Interest of the Terrain, of Nigeria, cannot be sought outside Chapter Two of the Constitution. That chapter is our Bill of Duties just as the chapter on Fundamental Rights is our Bill of Rights. It focuses areas of national striving. Through dialogue and other ways of sustaining the democratic tradition, all of us, in meeting our different commitments, must look at the constitution and do what it asks of us. My submission also is that unless you infuse in the people through the school system the duties and rights available in the polity, it would be difficult to set and maintain standards through ad hoc arrangements. The curricula in communications studies in our institutions must therefore be grounded on the demands of Chapter 2 of the Constitution which identifies the media as the society's agency for government monitoring. Conclusion I am sorry if I have been a bit hard on us, the practitioners. But if we must reposition ourselves, it means someone somewhere is seeing what we are doing as different from what we should be doing. We should owe no one any explanation if we study the national brief to the media and satisfy ourselves that we have done our best. But how tragic it is to know that we do not know what it is that we should assess ourselves on! Let me therefore call on the Nigerian Press Council to co-ordinate work on a programme which should make Chapter Two of the Constitution the basis for journalism education in Nigeria. There is so much material in that chapter that for years; students of communication would not run short of material to research on. Being text of a paper delivered at the first Media Forum organised by the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) |