Beyond the 2023 elections: The role of the media in deepening democracy in Nigeria
A lecture such as this has many tributaries, many undercurrents, many interpretations and many sub-themes. In exploring the core themes of media, democracy and the 2023 elections in Nigeria, one must not lose sight of how complex the issues are. Indeed, the topic is relevant on many fronts and addresses many demographics from politicians to […]
A lecture such as this has many tributaries, many undercurrents, many interpretations and many sub-themes. In exploring the core themes of media, democracy and the 2023 elections in Nigeria, one must not lose sight of how complex the issues are. Indeed, the topic is relevant on many fronts and addresses many demographics from politicians to academia, from students of political science and mass communication to media practitioners and scholars. It is a topic worthy of exploration and I am thankful for the opportunity.
Let us journey into this lecture by deploying Albert Camus far-reaching comment to collectively hold our thoughts, “Democracy is not the law of the majority, but the protection of the minority.”
I had many thoughts as I researched this topic, especially concerning the best entry point for it. But as I dug deeper, I found that the best premise would be to start by unravelling the term democracy which has over the years remained one of the most complex and intriguing subject matters among scholars, academics, politicians and students of political science. Emanating from Greece, the word democracy comes from two Greek words “demos” meaning people, and “kratos” meaning power, so essentially democracy can be thought of as the power of the people which largely depends on the will of the people. But since the Greeks began the concept of democracy in 507 B.C, it has evolved across the world to become different things to different countries with different democratic cultures, while still maintaining the underlying ethos of the people’s power as often expressed in Abraham Lincoln’s government “of the people, for the people, by the people.” The UN resolution on promoting and consolidating democracy weighing in on democratic terms asserts that “While democracies share common features, there is no single mode of democracy.”
According to the Council of Europe’s Manual for Human Rights Education with young people, it is better to understand democracy from the position of what it is not, especially since there are so many models of democracy around the world. The manual lists some of what democracy is not to include dictatorship or autocracy where it is one person’s rule or oligarchy where a select section of the society rules. The manual adds that democracy should not really be about the rule of the majority if the minority is disenfranchised. These thoughts are critical for going forward in any lecture that dares to include democracy in its purview.
Christmas: Jonathan calls for unity, peace
In the book Defining and Measuring Democracy edited by David Beetham, he along with other social scientists, Biryukov, N, Dunleavy, P, Elkit, J and Saward (1993) among others examine several interesting philosophical and analytical questions. In his introduction, Beetham places democracy within the scholarly space of a concept that is constantly being explored and always being discussed. Some of the questions addressed include whether the same criteria for exploring democracy should be applied to developing democracies as to established ones. He goes further to question whether the standards used by western scholars for the definition of democracy are ethnocentric or universal and by what criteria or benchmark the progress of a given country’s democracy is to be measured.
In addition to these questions, the book interrogates issues of citizen participation, the meaning of democracy beyond electoral processes as well as government accountability, and how far the level or durability of a country’s democracy is determined by key socio-economic variables.
Within these multi-layered conversations lies the vexed question of what democracy is, what it should be, what the media’s role should be and how Nigeria has fared.
Many researchers continue to explore the meaning and assessment of democracy and this exploration would continue for as long as different cultures and nations are pursuing different models of democracy that work for them and their citizens. For purposes of this lecture, however, we would abduct the 1993 definition of Beetham:
“The first principle (popular control) is underpinned by the value that we give people, a self-determined agent who have a say on issues that affect their lives, the second [political equality] is underpinned by the assumption that everyone or at least “every adult” has an equal capacity for self-determination and therefore an equal right to influence collective decision and to have their interests considered when they are made”.
This definition while still problematic in the areas of equality [who determines that], self-determination and interests (how is this measured and by whom) still encapsulates the general ambience of this lecture which is primarily citizen participation, political equality and popular candidature through the ballot box, i.e., a larger number of votes determines the winner in an election.
Media and democracy sustenance
Beyond the 2023 general elections in Nigeria, beyond the election cycle, beyond the winners and losers, beyond the political pundits, how do we fare in the years before and after the elections? Within the ambit of these posers is where this lecture is situated. The question that is hardly asked in the Nigerian polity is whether democracy is just the period of electioneering campaigns and slogans or whether in the interregnum, the four-year period of governance is irrelevant to the entire democratic process.
In seeking answers to these questions, in the pursuit of good governance, accountability, citizen participation, and other related democratic nuances, especially beyond the electoral cycle where the media makes an entrance.
The media is a powerful compass. A knowledge and moral compass, a directional and opinion compass. All over the world the media is and will remain a veritable mirror that “strives to show us the bare truth and harsh realities of life” Sarka (2021).
According to Kibore (2017) “media plays a crucial role in shaping a healthy democracy. It is the backbone of democracy.” Evolving from this quotation let us look closely at the function of the media in any democratic setting.
Over the years, researchers and scholars in the disciplines of mass communication and the social sciences have come to some level of agreement that the media is a critical arm in any democratic setting. This is how the media was conferred with the all-encompassing title of the 4th estate of the realm.
Academic and grey literature agree in the main that the role of the media is critical to the sustenance of democracy for many reasons to include, including information dissemination to citizen education both for electoral purposes and human rights information, as a link between governors and the governed and as a link between political parties and the citizens among other things. They also serve as a watchdog to hold elected persons accountable. Media helps to disseminate education for citizens, to educate them on various issues including national, legislative, constitutional, and political rights, economic and cultural issues as well as policy issues.
The media remains a place where citizens look up to for information regarding political processes. In their study of the 2015 and 2019 elections using AIT and Channels television as case studies and anchoring their work on the agenda-setting theory, Omoera and Ake (2021) aver that TV is a powerful media platform for voter education and information on candidates. Their research shows that over 75% of the sampled population agreed that TV was a veritable platform for how they decided on which candidates to vote for while over 61% said they received information on the election and electoral processes through the television.
Their five-point recommendations are germane to the role of the media in deepening democracy. These include a continuous partnership of the media with the electoral umpire, INEC, for citizen enlightenment, fair publicity for all candidates, more agenda-setting programmes by television stations, and divesting “the media from ownership fetters.” We shall return to ownership issues as we progress in this lecture. The last recommendation they offer is empowering television media to have access to enough information in order “to improve quality of service to the receiving public,” While their research targets broadcast media, their recommendations apply across the board.
Media in modern times remains a difficult term to decipher. This is because technology has taken over our lives and how the media is discussed is no longer as we used to know it. Traditional media encapsulates radio, print, and television but new media is all pervasive and with the aid of technology can reach a larger audience and is more interactive. Social media is now a part of the everyday lives of people all over the world and has enjoyed rapid growth. (Wigan et al 2010, McAfee 2006).
New media differs from traditional media in three different ways according to Frentasia (2012) cited in Fadeyi and Adamu (2019) in interactivity, low entry costs, and direct content deployment. All of these are positive developments for political activities in Nigeria and all over the world. Some scholars believe this is making political processes more democratic, (Castells, 2009) and has therefore led to a deepening of democracy and a more interrogative citizenry (Huffington, 2011).
On the other side of the aisle are schools of thought concerned about certain shortfalls of the new media including new media’s ability to strengthen the government’s surveillance aptitude, ([Kelly and Cook, 2011), making sense of too many voices (Freedman, 2014), lack of regulation (Omede and Albiosu 2015) and the propensity for new media to trigger electoral violence because of its mass appeal especially in elections in Nigeria due to “several unguarded utterances” attributed to politicians” (Fadeyi and Adamu, (2019).
The social media network Facebook declared this year that the total number of its monthly active users is 2.9 billion. In 2011 those figures stood at over 800 million. The increase is staggering but points to how pervasive social media is in our lives and the new and incredible ways in which we are connected which have changed the way people communicate with each other.
In Nigeria, statistics show that there is over 50% internet penetration of the total population in 2022. According to DataReportal, an online data and statistics site, there were 109.32 million internet users by January of
- This large number of users immediately confers authority on new
media as an important and novel avenue for deepening democracy despite its other shortfalls.
The many dividends of social media for deepening democracy include their participatory and interactive nature for political campaigns, their inclusive nature for diverse voices for participation in the democratic space, political engagement, and mobilisation among others Chinedu- Okeke et al, (2016). Other dividends listed by Chinedu-Okeke et al include creating candidate awareness, illuminating the electorate, and educating citizens about election procedures. New media has the added advantage of the low cost of entry, unlike traditional media which requires a large and expensive equipment architecture and high costs of entry.
The discussion on social media and its impact on deepening democracy or otherwise is relevant to today’s Nigerian society and has been largely extrapolated. New media continues to grow in leaps and bounds, but as scholars of the history of media would always affirm, no matter the stampede of the new media, traditional media would always remain.
Media history has shown that the advent of new media never led to the obfuscation of the old. Radio remained long after television was born and the print survived the advent of the radio. In the same vein, traditional media continues to co-habit with new media adjusting its methods and relationships and creating new products as a coping mechanism. This lecture takes its thrust mostly from traditional media roles in democratic Nigeria.
Having established the functions of media for democratic sustenance, we now turn our gaze to Nigeria’s democratic journey and the role media played in getting us here.
Nigeria, the media and the future
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation with a population that is over 200 million projected to become more than 400 million in 2050 (World Bank). This population is at once a challenge and an opportunity. With a landmass of over 900,000 square km and one of the most diverse populations in the world both in ethnicity, culture and geographical spread, Nigeria present a peculiar media spread and growth, reflecting its diversity and ethnicity through media ownership. Drawing a road map of Nigeria’s media trajectory respected media scholar Professor Lai Oso in his 47th inaugural lecture (2013) at the Lagos State University (LASU) commended the media for the pressure put on colonial masters to give Nigeria independence and saluted their courage in engaging military dictatorships which led to the current democratic governance the nation has enjoyed since 1999. Mention is also made of the robust role the media played in quashing President Obasanjo’s third-term agenda and other related roles in protecting Nigeria’s democracy, Oso, however, affirms that the media and politicians have had a symbiotic relationship since independence where media owners from Zik to Awolowo also ended up as political party leaders and founders. This parallelism according to Oso has remained a challenge even today in getting an objective media that can carry out its functions optimally for democratic sustenance. Today’s media he posits, have continued to follow the same post-colonial pattern through Nigeria’s chequered political history where political chieftains are also media owners. He avers that this pattern has compromised the media in its major role as an important stakeholder in democratic Nigeria.
The professor of media studies and renowned mass communication scholar Umaru Patte reiterates this position when he said during a Lecture in Lagos in 2015, that although the media has been contributing to the process of keeping Nigeria united, it has been heavily influenced negatively by internal and external forces and parochial interests which contravene the spirit of national integration.
“To be able to explain the role of the media in the Nigerian integration process within its multicultural setting, it is important to locate the position of the media in the whole political and economic milieu of the nation. Basically, the media have been part of the economy system with close links to the political establishment.” Patte (2015).
He adds further that
“One should not be over-optimistic that the performance of the
Nigerian media in handling issues of national integration can be radically different from the deficiencies and failures of the Nigerian ruling elite, particularly in the effective management of the diversities, tensions and contradictions that define the character of integration and unity in the nation”.
Patte in his submission further notes that:
“…the case of the Nigerian media is further compounded by the ownership pattern, commercialisation and competing interests in the media industry adding that the personal interest and political sympathy of the media owners are mainstreamed into professional content to demonise, advocate or manipulate public opinion.”
Media concentration and media ownership about democratic sustenance and its negative effect is not solely a Nigerian challenge. Consolidation of media in the hands of a few and abuse of media power resonates throughout the world. Baker, (2006) Castells (2009) Vizcarondo, (2013). Gross ([2004) argues that the concentration of media ownership is likely to jeopardise the media’s responsibility to safeguard the basic principles of democracy. To break it down, it is almost impossible to have a media owner who is a politician being berated or called to book by a paper he bankrolls This political and media parallelism as posited by Oso (2013) limits the function of the media within a democratic setting.
Baker (2006) opposes ownership concentration for three reasons;
- It prevents legal and political participation
- It encourages a drift away from quality journalism and leads to
- The possibility of the media owner indirectly creating his or her own media empire and exercising enormous and largely unchecked political power.
Omenugha, K.A. and Emmanuel, C. (2013) address the complex issue of ownership when they opine that “…in Nigeria, the environment within which the media operates vis- a vis the ownership structures has continuously posed stoic challenges to its expected roles.”
In addition to this elephant in the room, the other challenges faced by the Nigerian media include the challenges faced by their colleagues in other parts of the world as enunciated by Sheila Coronel (Undated)
They are hobbled by stringent laws, monopolistic ownership, and sometimes, the threat of brute force. State controls are not the only constraints. Serious reporting is difficult to sustain in competitive media markets that put a premium on the shallow and sensational. Moreover, the media are sometimes used as proxies in the battle between rival political groups, in the process sowing divisiveness rather than consensus, hate speech instead of sober debate, and suspicion rather than social trust. In these cases, the media contribute to public cynicism and democratic decay.’
Add to this long list the peculiar challenges of the Nigerian media which include corruption, poor capacity, lack of equipment, poor gender inclusion and poor remuneration among other things.
The latest threat facing all journalists across the world is physical and online threats, including harassment, physical attacks and killings leading the UN to declare an international day to end impunity for crimes against Journalists and a UN 2020 plan of action on the safety of journalists. Between 2016 and 2020, UNESCO recorded 400 killings of journalists worldwide and reported that female journalists were particularly vulnerable to online attacks. These attacks have led to self-censorship according to UNESCO and have affected the role of the media in deepening democracy.
The pandemic has also been a threat and although many journalists became highly traumatised and many died as a result of the pandemic, they were not given the honour deserving as other professionals working on the frontlines (Abu, 2020).
As an industry expert myself and looking in from the inside, it is a herculean task to get media to perform its functions optimally while faced with these challenges. The role of the media in deepening democracy in Nigeria returns full circle in the face of the many issues this lecture has explored.
What should the media do with the many challenges in its domain? How can it rise above these seemingly daunting issues? What is its role as we approach the 2023 elections? And how can it remain relevant as the mirror, the watchdog, the universal accountability officer, the 4th estate of the realm, the one we all look up to provide knowledge, encourage diverse public opinion, be the public sphere (Habermas), the information purveyor, knowledge deployer and the one powerful tool that keeps citizens abreast of their democratic dividends while giving voice to various divergent interests? How can this powerful arm of society rise and function as expected within a democratic setting?
In accenting the power of the media, Benito Mussolini described
Democracy as
“a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, if he be a tyrant”. It is the fear of being exposed by the media before the public that most of the politicians keep themselves under control to some extent”.
Anuj Kumar (undated) writing in legaldesire.com 2006 explicated the role of the media in a democracy as one that is
“…vital in generating a democratic culture that extends beyond the political system and becomes engraved in the public consciousness over time.”
He adds that media supplies political information that voters use to take their decisions, identify problems in society and serve as a medium for deliberation while bringing forward the wrongdoings of those who have power thereby serving as watchdogs.
And with this quote from Anuj Kumar, we return to the theme of this lecture, Beyond the 2023 general elections; The Role of the Media in Deepening Democracy in Nigeria.
Beyond the 2023 general elections, what next?
We begin this section of the lecture with the general position that the media has a formidable role to play in a democratic culture and Nigeria’s democratic journey. It has been established that the media is critical to democratic sustenance. It can be argued that the media is not the only arm of society that should be involved in deepening democracy, and that there are other arms of society that must necessarily be involved in deepening democracy. These are the arms immediately apparent from 2002.
United Nations Commission on Human Rights declaration tagged essential elements of democracy. These are the separation of powers to sidestep the problem of dictatorship which involves the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. Each arm is critical in keeping democracy alive.
Then there is popular participation which involves citizens and if citizens are not yet involved then democracy is practically non-existent.
There are also checks and balances to ensure that no arm of government is more powerful than the other, and there are many government organisations whose duty is to ensure this. Then there are periodic elections where responsibility lies on an electoral umpire, politicians and citizens.
Other essentials of democracy espoused by the UN are the rule of law vested in the judiciary which posits that the law is above everyone else in the political system and respect for fundamental human rights. Every citizen, and every national organisation is involved and this resonates from the Nigerian constitution section 22 which states 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 chapter 1 of the Nigerian constitution and uphold the responsibility of the government to the people.”
More essentials of democracy listed by the UN include Freedom of association, access to power and its exercise in accord with the rule of law, independence of the judiciary, transparency and accountability in public administration. For these essentials, many different and diverse organisations and citizens take responsibility for its actualisation.
Only two of these democracy essentials address, affect and directly point at the media; free independent and pluralistic media and freedom of expression and opinion.
It can be argued further that the press has its extant role in ensuring freedom of expression but other arms of society have also several key roles to play in ensuring democratic sustenance.
In all of this, the media takes the lead and is often called up for its role in deepening democracy because the media remains the focal point for bringing all these essentials of democracy to the fore.
Mrs Abu, a media consultant, delivered this Convocation Lecture at Salem University, Lokoja, Kogi State, on the 24th of November, 2022.