My travail in Sokoto as a community newspaper publisher – Dr Emman Shehu

As the Director of this journalism Institute, what has been your experience so far?It has been an interesting but challenging experience. I think it’s related to the Nigerian experience, where there are good ideas but the things to support the ideas are basically lacking. The enabling environment is not properly provided. At the end of […]

As the Director of this journalism Institute, what has been your experience so far?
It has been an interesting but challenging experience. I think it’s related to the Nigerian experience, where there are good ideas but the things to support the ideas are basically lacking. The enabling environment is not properly provided. At the end of the day, you discover that much energy is expended in keeping the place going rather than getting it to develop to perform maximally. So, it’s the society that suffers because the objectives are not properly met. In a nutshell, that is what it has been.
 
What are those critical needs that are lacking?
A lot of things are lacking. But first of all, there is lack of appreciation of the role of the media in the society. I think that is where the fundamental problem arises from. The society does not really understand that the media has a critical role to play in the development of society and in the sustenance of democracy. That is one. Two, the powers – that be think the media can be manipulated at their own convenience to deceive the public. That is another problem.
Therefore, it affects the process of developing media practitioners because you are unable to have an efficient environment for training. So, it affects your end-products.
 
You said the powers- that be think they can manipulate the media. Have you ever had any terrible experience?
Yes. In all my years as a practicing journalist, and as a media consultant, there have been many cases where you see that the facts are manipulated because the facts portray the powers – that be in a negative light. There are many instances.
When I was running a community newspaper in Sokoto, we ran some stories and at the end of the day, we were officially sanctioned for it by getting all the government institutions not to provide adverts for our publications. We also had threats. There was a time the personnel of the State Security Service (SSS) came to my office in Sokoto and tried to find out who I am. Of course, I have nothing to hide. I showed them what I had. It tallied with what they had.
So, they had nothing to hold me for because what we published was a fact. And I had the fact. I was ready to go to any length to establish the fact. So, it has been like that all across. I have seen stories that have been spiked in all the organizations that I have worked for simply because the powers – that be have ordered that those stories should be spiked. But it doesn’t help the society. It doesn’t help the sustenance of truth. It doesn’t help the development of our democracy.
 
How can we address this kind of experience?
It’s a fundamental societal problem. It is part of the reasons why Nigeria finds itself where it is now. We want to play by the rules that we create. We forget that there are already established rules. The rules that are established constitutionally. The rules that are established by our faiths.
Those things, therefore, create an environment of decency. As long as we do not want to play by those rules and we continue to play by the rules that we think favour us selfishly, what it does is that it erodes decency in the society. Then it becomes an obstacle to development. I will give you a typical example. Few days ago, a new Head of Service was appointed by the President.
Now, this is a gentleman, who from all indications has a problem professionally because a White Paper indicted him in one of the places where he had worked before.   By every sense of decency and by what White Paper means in the civil service, that gentleman should not be enjoying the position he has been promoted into. What has been done is to promote and accept that it doesn’t matter if the rules are circumvented to suit certain purposes. The society cannot develop like that. I have just discovered too, while doing my research, that the Minister of Health, was apparently also indicted some years ago as the Chief Medical Director of an institution.
Look at what has happened. He gets indicted. But a couple of years later, he gets promoted to be Minister of Health. What happened? How did he pass through the screening process to become the Minister of Health? What was the Senate doing? Did the Senate investigate this when the record was even available on the internet? So, this is the kind of society we find ourselves in, where we do not want to play by the rules. As long as we continue to do this, the values of the society will be warped.
We will continue to regret. We keep making noise that we are Christians. We are Muslims. Yet, we do not want to live by the fundamental ethics of our religion. Nor do we want to obey the constitution.
Therefore, what we have is a society where corruption thrives. As long as some people who are in control create the laws that favour them and not the subsisting laws that affect everybody across the board from top to bottom, our society will continue to degenerate.
 
So, you don’t see any way out of this challenge?
I don’t see any way out until we are honest with ourselves, until we play by the subsisting rules in the society and accept that everybody is under the law of the country, especially the constitution. We say we have a democracy.
Is this what you call a democracy?  Definitely, it’s not democracy. This is ‘lutocracy’, where you behave as if it is the laws of the jungle that subsist and where robbery, thievery, and roguishness are celebrated. That is the society where we are in. Therefore, we do not have decency any more in our society.
 
Let’s go back to issues relating to the IIJ. Is there any link between the IIJ and other foreign journalism institutes in terms of exchange programmes?
Initially, yes. At the beginning, this was supposed to be the international arm of the International Institute of Journalism for Africa. This was supposed to be the campus for the whole of Africa because the International Organisation of Journalists (IOJ) has created this Institute across the continent for capacity training. Then, Africa didn’t have any. A case was made for Africa to have one. And the IOJ agreed.
Then, Nigeria was chosen. But subsequently, with the fall of Communism, and IOJ being largely sponsored by the Communist Bloc, the IOJ ceased to exist. So, that was the end of our international connection. This has been solely converted into a training wing of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ). So, we don’t have any international affiliations.
 
Are you saying that the NUJ was providing the financial needs of the Institute?
Technically, yes. But we actually derive our funding from the funds that we generate from the tuition fees. Actually, it’s not the NUJ that funds the IIJ. The Institute funds itself by getting tuition fees.
 
Is there any plan to have exchange programmes with foreign journalism training schools?
Well, we have been working towards that. But there are lots of problems in the process of changing it from being owned by NUJ. We have just succeeded in finally straightening out some of the bottlenecks. Of course, you know that some of these affiliations you cannot do it until you go through the right channels in terms of the bodies that oversee educational organizations in the country. So, once those ones are sorted out, I’m sure those affiliations will fall into place.
 
I’m talking about exchange programmes?
Yes, that is what I’m talking about. You can’t just do foreign things without getting clearance, especially with the way things are now in the country.
If we are going to do any foreign exchange now, we have to ensure that it does not contravene our relationship and affiliation status with the University of Maiduguri or our impending relationship with the Board of Technical Education.
 
The joy of any boss is to see his students performing wonderfully well wherever they work. What has been the performance of students who graduated from the Institute?
We have seen our students going out and at least some of them are making impact which is encouraging. But we know we can do a lot better if we are able to improve our own capabilities here. That for me is part of what drives me to see that we improve the capabilities here because our curriculum is up to standard. If we have a very good enabling environment, we can even produce better products from this Institute.
 
Can you just mention some of your past students who are performing well?
We have quite a lot of them. For instance, the publisher of the Nigerian Pilot is a product of this Institute. We have quite a lot of them who have gone ahead to become not just media professionals but people who have played important roles in politics.
Some of them were in the Senate. I think one of them died two years ago. We had another one who was in the Senate. He lost his bid to come back. So, we have had quite a number of people like that.
 
Let’s go to the issues relating to the ethics of journalism. This is one area where there have been challenges. As someone who is training journalists, when you hear reports of journalists of being induced financially, how do you feel?
Well, it is bad. But again it is a reflection of the society where we are in, where we think money can be thrown at every problem. You get people to do the wrong thing once you can buy their conscience. Obviously, what we believe in the society is that everybody has a price. That is what has come to be an accepted norm in the country now.
Once you can establish somebody’s price, then you can buy him. So, it affects the profession because it means that a lot of media professionals have put aside the ethics of the profession and justify their elitist action. They say it is the norm. Unfortunately, it is a wrong norm. It’s not the right norm in the society. So, it is sad.
But then, part of the problems is because we have deliberately created a situation where there is no accountability in the society. This also reflects in the profession. We have the Nigerian Press Council which is virtually a toothless bulldog. It cannot sanction anybody.
Complaints can be made. But nothing can be done in terms of sanctioning offenders. And it’s a deliberate thing by both the government and the media practitioners who have refused to see the need for a proper Press Council that will help the development of journalism in the country.
 
When you say that it is deliberate, are you saying that they are culpable?
How many years has the Press Council been existing? Nobody wants to do the right thing. The right thing is to have a Press Council that is effective – a Press Council that can sanction journalists for doing the wrong thing. But nobody wants to take the bull by the horn because it is convenient for both sides. It is convenient for government. Government will make its noise and say things have been done wrongly.
Whereas it is the government that also is encouraging those things to be done wrongly. Then, the media people will also say things have been done wrongly when they know that they are doing things wrongly. At the height of the BringBackOurGirls advocacy, when the foreign country decided to come in and support the rescue of the girls, you remember that a newspaper published a story that was fake and put a picture that was not even related to the story.
The picture was taken from an incident in the Central African Republic (CAR) as a front page story in a national newspaper. That paper was not sanctioned. We have had several cases like that.
 
Why do you think that the current Press Council is not effective?
By the law that set it up, it is not empowered to be able to sanction offenders. So, that is the problem.
 
Who should now empower the Press Council?
The parties involved; the people who set up the Press Council. Both the government and the journalists themselves who have refused to do the right thing.
 
Do you think that the government will be happy to do it?
Government will not be happy to do it because the way it is now favours government. I told you that we are not running a proper democracy. So, it suits those who want to manipulate the processes; who can do things wrongly. For instance, some of the outputs we see in some of the media organizations that we know definitely are not proper but favourable to government, government is happy with them. Whereas, in reality, the media is not supposed to be a spokesperson of government.
The media is supposed to be the fourth realm of the estate. It is supposed to be part of checks and balances of the system that we run in the country. It is not servant of the administration. So, this is a very unfortunate development. Our profession cannot develop properly as long as we continue like this.
 
The current phenomenon in journalism is the online media. Does the IIJ have any provision for online journalism in its curriculum?
Of course, with the arrival of digitalization, we now have new media. Part of the aspects of new media includes the social media.
As a training Institute, we have to marry into the latest trend so that students are grounded as proper professionals. By this, they can hold their heads high and can be maximally effective wherever they go to. Yes, we have accommodated this new development in our system.
 
On a final note, what advice do you have for media practitioners?
My number one advice is: ensure that you are a journalist because you have a passion for it, not because you are turning to it as a fallback option because all other things have failed. Number two, develop yourself to the best of your ability. Look at all the advantages that are available in developing yourself professionally.
As you have rightly noted, the arrival of the new media is creating new challenges for all of us – both practitioners and the public. Therefore, as a media person, you must professionalise to keep in touch with the trends. The other thing is to, as much as possible, ensure that you are familiar with the ethics of the profession and keep within the ethics of the profession because it will help in improving and sustaining the integrity of media professionals.