The media in the transition

It is thus obvious to us all that nobody can wait for this to happen. That is why there are proposals and propositions galore hauled from all directions-local, national and international -at the in-coming government. The signals emerging from the President-elect make the waiting intolerable as they reveal positive ‘earnestness of success’, and his determined […]

It is thus obvious to us all that nobody can wait for this to happen. That is why there are proposals and propositions galore hauled from all directions-local, national and international -at the in-coming government. The signals emerging from the President-elect make the waiting intolerable as they reveal positive ‘earnestness of success’, and his determined preparedness for concrete reconstruction strategies, even as he pleads patience from the anxious and expectant nation. Various bodies and institutions are churning out proposals, blue-prints and strategic plans which the new government must implement if change shall come from her staple. Strong leadership, fundamental system restructuring, infrastructural overhaul especially power, uprooting corruption, and so on!     Trust Nigerians and their inexhaustible and inexhaustive fountain of ideas that can catapult the nation to the First World in a jiffy! So, it is an unstoppable movement of transition for the entire nation and an incredible precipice to transcend for the new President and his team.
One area that there seems to be a deficit of attention in terms of challenge- throwing is the sphere of the media. This is rather curious, given the historical responsibilities and duties of the media in shaping the opinion of the people and setting agenda for the government.
 As we know, the Nigerian Constitution grants enormous powers to the media, besides the recent approval of the inadequately interrogated Freedom of Information Bill, thus; The Constitution recognizes the Media as comprising ‘The press, radio, television, and other agencies of the mass media.’  It upholds its non-negotiable freedom. It states that the Media ‘shall at all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this chapter (Chapter 2) and to uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people.’  The chapter concludes with section 24 regarding the duties of every citizen, reinforcing the duties of the press on the freedom of the people which remains sacrosanct. To cap the provision of freedom and rights, including for the press, Section 39 (2) entitles every citizen the right of press ownership thus;
Every person (can) own, establish and operate any medium for the dissemination of information, ideas, and opinions; provided that no person other than the Government of the Federation or of a State or any other person or body authorized by the President on the fulfillment of the conditions laid down by an Act of the National Assembly, shall own, establish, or operate a television or wireless broadcasting station
As things stand, the Nigerian media has been very active and highly regarded across for its versatility in its disbursement of its basic responsibilities and duties, especially its main task of recording history and events in the nation. Beyond the instant stories of the day, the media has helped in no small measure in shaping and influencing the course of history and events in the nation, long before the nation itself came into being. The right of ownership has also been well-enjoyed by state, institutions and individuals with the wherewithal and in all domains of media ownership-press and electronic.
Every journalist, with the most elementary tool of the profession in Nigeria, not to talk of media intellectuals and media historians, knows that the role of the journalist and the entire media in the evolution of the nation is so crucial that no change agenda can be embarked upon in this country behind the back of the media. It needs no restating that the media, especially the print segment of it, predates Nigeria itself, as we have come to know it.  Before Lord Laggard’s amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Protectorates in 1914, the press as an industry and as a profession had been.
The media began the anti-colonial struggle before the politicians came into the struggle as a body or as formations of resistance. Active veteran and ace columnist, Olatunji Dare ,had put this quite graphically, two decades back, when he let it be known , indeed quoting a British scholar of the media, that the ‘the Nigerian press was born of anti-colonial protest, baptized in the flood of nationalist propaganda and matured in party politics’. This clarifies for us the reality of the predatedness of Nigeria by its media-having come into existence since 1859 when Iwe Irohin was established in Abeokuta by Reverend Henry Townsend. Since then, and with varying growth stealth, the fate of Nigeria became bound with that of the press, as African intellectuals and politicians came to the awareness that the political and material development of Nigeria cannot happen without critical involvement of the media. This was why Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first appointed President engaged in the enterprise of newspapering, establishing a chain of newspapers, the best known of which was the West African Pilot, 1937. The media revolution, however, took off with the Daily Times which had been established by 1926 but incorporated into the London Mirror. Other politician-journalists who engaged the media for professional and political advancement were Chief Obafemi Awolowo who funded The Tribune, Azikiwe came back to champion the establishment of the Nigerian Outlook in the East and Sir Ahmadu Bello floated the New Nigerian, having absorbed into it the Hausa newspaper, Gaskiya Tafi Kwabo. Since then, ownership of a Media has become a source of political and material power and influence.
The main reason for this boring historical narrative of the indispensability of the press for government and governance is to re-establish in our minds that as we make the quest through the in-coming Buhari government for structural transformation of our country, the media must not just be carried along; it must be at the fore-front. We say this because, from the beginning of its presence in our nation’s life, even before the nation’s evolution, through the struggle against colonialism and the nationalist struggle for independence; from the post- independence period of our neo-colonial state through  the protracted military interregnum-1966-7; 1983-1999 to the present Fourth Republic, the media has been there to inform and speak for the millions of the citizenry through its crucial roles of surveillance, instruction-laden information disbursement, compelling cultural transmission and through is enforcement of the values and norms of our national culture , with the effect of impacting change and ensuring accountability and responsibility in governance. In the particular instance of the last general elections (2015), the visibility and impact of the media is unmistakable-even suspect and, I am sure, media intellectuals and historians will soon begin to analyze the role of the media in the last election-some of the roles which some of the media houses have not been able to leave down, in order to adjust to their normal responsibility of helping, in very professional, ethical and knowledgeable manner, to determine the way in which society is run and how those who struggle to acquire power to run society do so in ways that are humanizing, compassionate and regenerative.  
 No doubt, the media’s involvement in the last election, in their varying degrees and extent, cannot but be adjudged as immeasurably partisan, subjective, albeit significant and committed. Some of the media houses threw professionalism and professional ethic and caution to the wind as they took unrelieved sides with the political class in the propaganda, campaigns and conduct of the elections. The partisanship was so rabid in many instances that echoes of the performance of the media in the elections of the post-independence period, especially when governments virtually owned the media houses, could not but fill our ear-drums as the 2015 elections transpired. Again, Olatunji Dare’s alarm at the way in which the performance of the media became terribly disturbing as the 1983 election resonated during this past elections due to
 their (the media’s) failure to distinguish between the ruling party and the government, they were for all practical purposes, party organs financed by the public. Through crude and overzealous partisanship, they transformed opponents of the ruling party into dissents with disloyalty
The 2015 Elections showed partisanship of the press on both sides of the political divide-the PDP and the APC. The main but critical difference, essentially, is that the 2015 press did not toe ethno-sectarian lines. This, in essence, is why the media must inevitably be part of the change that must come in terms of social reconstruction and the development agenda that it has to set for the government and the people, even as the media returns to its traditional calling as watchdog of society.