Ese: What else is new?

Ever since I cut my teeth in journalism, at the Triumph newspapers, way back in 1989, I have known that the Southern press spares no pains when it comes to Northern bashing. It was therefore a surprise to me when commentary after commentary by Northern writers and some Southern Muslims, expressed dismay at the bashing […]

Ever since I cut my teeth in journalism, at the Triumph newspapers, way back in 1989, I have known that the Southern press spares no pains when it comes to Northern bashing. It was therefore a surprise to me when commentary after commentary by Northern writers and some Southern Muslims, expressed dismay at the bashing we received in the wake of Yunusa/Ese affair. As a rookie journalist, in those days, I used to agonise, endlessly, at the unbalanced reportage and unkind opinions that always followed every news-making event within the defunct region.
I remember columnists like Owei Lakemfa and opinion leaders like General Ejoor, distorting history and turning facts on their heads, just to make the point that the North was inherently evil. Of course it didn’t help matters that the government of General Ibrahim Babangida was busy courting controversy through policies that were not always popular with most Nigerians. However, to the average Southerner and the Lagos/Ibadan axis press, all of Babangida’s ‘sins’ were ‘Northern sins;’ so we all had to pay for them.
It was while trying to understand why we were being made to suffer this collective verbal punishment that I visited my eldest sister, Yaya Binta and her family in Jos, in April 1993.  During my short holiday there, I strode into a bookshop one day and found what I can best describe as a treasure house of wisdom. I saw a small book titled ‘Work and Worship:’ Selected speeches of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the late premier of the Northern region’ and immediately bought it.
I’m not sure what I expected to find there. I believe I bought it for sentimental reasons because my parents always talked about Sir Ahmadu Bello with such reverence and affection; and I just grew into it. What I      found when I went home to read the book was worth much more than every kobo I spent buying it. The book was an eye opener on the politics of the First Republic and the challenges Sardauna and his team faced, while trying to champion Northern interests in the Nigeria of those days.
My all-time favourite, in the book, was the speech he made at the launching of the New Nigerian newspaper, on the 1st of January 1966.
Suddenly I found myself, that cold Plateau evening, applauding a speech that was delivered even before I was born, because it contained the answer I desperately needed. If I thought facts were being distorted and history was being tampered with, in the pursuit of an anti-North agenda, well Sardauna and Co had experienced that directly and lived to tell the tale.
In his own words ‘This region has in the past been a frequent victim of prejudice, distortion and downright falsehood on the part of certain organs in the newspaper world. I hope this newspaper (the New Nigerian) will not descend to such levels against anybody, anywhere.
The greatest weapon is the truth.’ I realized there and then that anti-North bashing was the stock-in-trade of Southern based papers and intellectuals for decades, and that no amount of agonizing on our part could change that.
Since we are dealing with a people who have refused to understand, if not respect, our religious and cultural differences, and instead make mountains out of molehills whenever issues arise that subject us to ridicule, the solution is not to cry and complain but to hit back in a proactive way.
This is why in the last few weeks that our writers have gone boo-hoo-hoo over the Yunusa/Ese affair, I have been thoroughly amazed by their grief. There is absolutely nothing new in the insults, the sensationalism and negative press the saga has caused us. What remains is what we wish to make of the whole unpleasant experience. When Sardauna was faced with a similar situation he set up his region’s own paper and charged them to champion the cause of the North without descending to the level of their detractors.
So the first proactive step to take against media onslaught by our biased, Southern counterparts, is to set up more media houses, or else support the few existing ones. For instance, a lot has been made of the fact that there was little coverage and condemnation of the daylight abduction of three school girls in Lagos, by a pastor and his two accomplices. Some say we, the Northern press, should have blown the issue out of proportion in the same way the Yunusa/Ese issue was treated.
But how many voices are we that we can match the many and powerful media outlets Lagos? Add to that the fact that about 50% of our press houses today can’t even pay their workers salaries? So if our rich and influential people are bothered by this phenomenon, the first proactive step is to bring much-needed succour to our industry. They can establish new ones or assist existing ones and more importantly stop hindering the efforts of those that have managed to survive without their help.
This last bit is very important because a lot of our people have no tolerance for the media. At the slightest provocation they drag a media house to court or stop giving them adverts and continue threatening to do them harm because of some personal reasons. A situation that can be ironed out through a civil discussion with a medium’s management will end up in court because the aggrieved Northern notable is only interested in having that newspaper or radio house closed; to teach them they have messed with a big shot. The few newspapers that have survived here in the last two decades, did so not because of the efforts of Northern big shots but in spite of them.
When remembering Sir Ahmadu Bello, during his 50th memorial last January, I did a second piece on this page which I called ‘Sardauna and the press.’ There, I harped on his respect for and tolerance of the press, by giving an example of how he did not deal punitively with the New Nigerian for an editorial comment he found offensive; just four days to his death. Our big shots need to imbibe this spirit of media tolerance, if they want a vanguard to help them deal with the kind of negative press we had to endure in the case of Ese Oruru.