Descent to despotism

In unabashed disdain of democratic principles, soldiers began a nationwide clampdown on newspaper distribution outlets of major national media houses, including Media Trust publications Daily Trust, Weekly Trust, Aminiya and Sunday Trust. Other newspapers affected by the obviously unlawful act include Leadership, The Nation and, to a lesser extent, Punch and Vanguard newspapers.Not since the […]

In unabashed disdain of democratic principles, soldiers began a nationwide clampdown on newspaper distribution outlets of major national media houses, including Media Trust publications Daily Trust, Weekly Trust, Aminiya and Sunday Trust. Other newspapers affected by the obviously unlawful act include Leadership, The Nation and, to a lesser extent, Punch and Vanguard newspapers.
Not since the inglorious days of the Newspaper Act of 1964 and in the most repressive elements of Nigeria’s military regimes have we as a nation come to witness such brazen onslaught on the press and freedom of expression as what has transpired in the past few days under  what is supposed to be a democratically elected administration. In the early hours of last Friday, soldiers were deployed in many cities and towns to intercept hundreds of thousands of copies of the day’s edition of newspapers of the media houses, in an incipient deployment that soon developed into a full-scale affront on the nation’s newspapers and continued on Saturday. In fact the military seem to have escalated the operation as all newspapers were prevented from distributing their copies in the whole of Northern Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory on Saturday.

Bewildered publishers, and a public, aghast at this bizarre conduct, began asking questions of what the crackdown was all intended to achieve. The military authorities, through the Director of Defence Information, Major General Chris Olukolade, said the action was necessary because they had received ‘intelligence reports’ of movements of materials ‘with grave security implications’ across the country, ‘using the channel of newsprint-related consignments’. The defence spokesman was at pains to say that their vice grip on the media at the weekend was not aimed at harming press freedom or operation as contained in his statement.
‘’The Defence Headquarters wishes to clarify that the exercise has nothing to do with content or operation of the media organizations or their personnel as is being wrongly imputed by a section of the press. The military appreciates and indeed respects the role of the media as an indispensable partner in the ongoing counter-insurgency operation and the overall advancement of our country’s democratic credentials. As such, the military will not deliberately and without cause, infringe on the freedom of the press’’, he noted.
The trouble with this explanation is that the military has never hidden its dissatisfaction with the media’s coverage of the insurgency, suggesting that the press should only report its own version of events. Anything less than that has been interpreted by the security establishment to characterise the constitutionally guaranteed role of the media as sympathy for the insurgency. However, even a cursory look at the editorial pages of Nigerian newspapers will show clearly that like every right thinking citizen, we all stand together with our troops and those who abhor the violence, bloodletting that has characterised the insurgents who are against us all.  With reference to the weekend’s trampling on press freedom, it defeats the military’s position that even when nothing incriminating was found on any of the newspaper distribution vehicles, they were not released throughout the day or let off when the day was too far gone. This suggests a more sinister motive of strangulating the newspapers and crippling them financially by allowing them to print before denying them the chance to deliver the papers to the market. It also impedes the constitutionally guaranteed right of all Nigerians to information.
 The Jonathan administration’s reaction to the disturbing development bore its trademark attempt at doublespeak, denying it was involved, yet suggesting that the media should bear what was coming to them.
In a press statement, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr Doyin Okupe said suggestions that President Jonathan may have ordered that the media be suppressed and prevented from carrying out its constitutionally guaranteed responsibilities of holding government accountable to the people were untrue and unfair, and out of consonance with the president’s position on press freedom. “The reported incidence of checks being carried out by the military on major Nigerian roads and cities is not targeted at newspaper vans because of the contents of the publications as insinuated in the reports,” Okupe said. “Rather, the military had explained that those routine checks were being carried out following intelligence reports on the possibility of some elements within the society using such vehicles to convey ‘materials with grave security implications across the country”.
The public outrage that the soldiers’ action precipitated should be sufficient warning to whoever issued those ‘orders from above’ on which the troops claimed they were acting, that a line has been crossed. It is equally disturbing that the military can carry out such an ouster of a section of the Nigerian Constitution without the knowledge or the nod of the Commander-in-Chief.
What could give the game away about the government’s denial of ordering the clampdown on the press is that a few days before the action on newspapers the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) issued an order to all broadcast stations, meaning radio and television that henceforth, they must furnish it with the list of guests in any live political programme two days ahead of time. There is hardly any other word to describe this than censorship as it is impossible to satisfy such draconian provision.  To demonstrate what it could do to the independent press, the NBC went ahead to suspend a popular political programme of an Abuja-based FM station, Vision Radio 92.1.  With the next election just eight months away, the move is clearly aimed at shutting out voices and views that have for long been excluded from government-owned stations.
Not surprisingly, this has upset private broadcast houses under the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON), in the same way the latest draconian tactic on the print press has roiled the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), which released a statement drawing the government’s attention to the fact that the soldiers’ action in seizing  entire editions of newspapers, which it strongly condemned, was inconsistent with the values of any democratic society and the Nigerian Constitution.
The government has already done too much damage by this action of the military, and should rein in the troops and stop any further attempt at muzzling the media; it would earn it nothing but the rightful odium of all free and democratic societies. The authorities should also be clear that since this is aimed at basic freedom of Nigerians, it is not a battle they can win.