The Role of Nigerian Media in Nation-Building (II)
It is any speech, gesture, conduct, writing or display which could incite people to violence or prejudicial action. The problem is that hate speech is often the gateway to discrimination, harassment and violence as well as a precursor to serious harmful criminal acts. It is doubtful if there will be hate-motivated violent attacks on any […]
It is any speech, gesture, conduct, writing or display which could incite people to violence or prejudicial action. The problem is that hate speech is often the gateway to discrimination, harassment and violence as well as a precursor to serious harmful criminal acts. It is doubtful if there will be hate-motivated violent attacks on any group without hate speech and the hatred it purveys.
Though hate speech is often condemned – and rightly so- there is an inherent problem in trying to contain it in an environment in which the protection, defence and sustenance of the country’s democracy rests mainly on free speech – including speeches that offend, shock and awe – being protected.
Do the above mean that the Nigerian media, in the performance of their roles, are fated to undermine the country’s nation-building processes? Not at all. There are several restraining factors:
Countervailing functions
For instance the NTA and the FRCN, as government parastatals, are generally seen as the megaphones of the party that controls the federal government. This means that states governed by parties that are in opposition to the federal government often have a need to have their own TV and radio stations for ‘adequate’ coverage of their own activities. It could be argued that various broadcast media, by articulating local concerns or giving certain slants to their story play countervailing functions by cancelling out one another and ensuring that no one partisan narrative dominates the public space. In other words, the proliferation of media ensures that even if some media present slanted views of events, such will be countervailing since there will always be avenues to present contrarian views.
Competition
One of the impacts of media in Nigeria is the competition it generates among the federating units. Though units in a federation are supposed to be cooperative in striving towards the attainment of socio-economic goals, it could be argued that a certain level of competition is healthy in improving efficiency. For instance regional pride and politics interfaced to explain the emergence of the first television station in Nigeria. The impetus for this was that Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was the leader of the Western Region and his party men had walked out of parliament in protest against a constitutional debate on the eve of independence. The federal government used the all-Nigeria Radio Broadcasting Service to condemn their action but denied them access to the medium to reply to the allegations against them. In response Awolowo established a television station, (which actually became the first operational television station in Africa) the Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) on 31 October 1959, with the slogan, ‘First in Africa’. Goaded by the success of Awolowo’s WNTV, the former Eastern region established its own Eastern Nigeria Television Service (ENTV) in 1960. This was followed by Radio- Television Kaduna established by the former Northern Nigerian government as an arm of the Broadcasting Company of Northern Nigeria (BCNN) in March 1962. A month later the federal government joined the race and established the Nigerian Television Service (NTS) in Lagos
In essence both the federal government and the three regional governments in the early 1960s all had their own television stations.
With the creation of more states, starting from 1967, virtually every state government created its own radio and television station, partly to help broadcast the activities of the government and partly because they have become part of the paraphernalia of statehood in Nigeria.
Commercialism
The process of acquiring a licence to start a television or radio does not favour community radio and TV stations which are designed to propagate only regional or community values. A prospective applicant for licence must for instance have a limited liability company registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission and such a company will have to purchase a set of application forms for N50,000 and if the application is successful the company will then pay licence fee for an initial period of five years, which is again renewable every five years with huge sums of money. This means that apart from state governments, there will be commercial pressures for individuals in the media to break even or to respect the sensitivity of advertisers and potential advertisers.
The above shows that just because the country is polarized and the media houses often dance to the tunes of their owners does not necessarily mean that their reportages will be antithetical to the nation-building process.
Party loyalty
If, as we argued the media owners influence the contents, then given that the political party affiliation or loyalty of the owners may not be coterminous with state boundaries, then the political party affiliation of the owners could be one of the centralising tendencies in the country among the media.
Media Regulators
The media regulators – the Nigerian Press Council (set up in 1992 in the Ministry of Information) and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), which was also set up in 1992 are parastatals of the federal government. Their ability to sanction local media, especially when done fairly, can moderate the centrifugal pulls of those local media with irredentist inclinations.
Conclusions and Recommendations
From our discussions, we can see that just because our media practitioners operate in a highly polarized environment (where the various owners with their own agenda control content), does not necessarily mean that in going about their work, they will necessarily undermine the nation-building process because of other centralizing or countervailing tendencies and structures in the society.
But our journalists can contribute far more than they currently do towards the nation-building process. A precedent step for this however will be the resolution of the current crisis in the nation-building process. Certainly resolving this crisis will make Nigerian journalists feel like stakeholders in the Nigeria project, forcing them to report with sensitivity, especially in times of conflicts.
Better training and better and timely payments of journalists’ salaries will also moderate the tendency to be driven by the imperatives of ‘stomach infrastructure’ as they ply their trade.
With respect to the ubiquity of hate and offensive speeches, in the media, I will recommend the following:
There is an urgent need to develop, in conjunction with critical organs of the society such as media owners and practitioners, a taxonomy of what constitutes hate speech. Media houses through their unions should incorporate these as part of good journalism practice and impose sanctions on erring members who publish or broadcast hate speech-laden materials.
The National Orientation Agency, in concert with civil society groups and community leaders, should also embark on a campaign against the use of hate speech. In the same vein, Internet Service providers should be encouraged to bring down blogs and websites they host which publish, promote or give unfettered space for the expression of hate speech. Above all it should be impressed upon the political leadership at all levels that a deep distrust of the government is at the heart of the sort of free speech jurisprudence they have in the United States and that Nigerians have the same level of distrust of their governments.
Perhaps one of the most effective ways of combating hate speech is to ensure that purveyors of such speeches are marginalized. For instance in the UK, while the racist British National Party and the ideas it purveys are not banned, it will be political suicide for any politician to be seen to associate with the party’s members. In Nigeria hate speech mongers are adopted as regional and ethnic heroes.
Media owners, in conjunction with media regulators and relevant civil societies can develop a taxonomy of what constitutes hate speech and the type of sanctions to be imposed on any journalist found to have violated such. Self regulation and self censorship are better routes to combating hate speech than trying to use legislation to outlaw it.
More importantly Nigerians should learn to laugh at themselves. This is already happening in some ways with our comedians who dish out jokes based on ethnic and regional profiling. In fact it could be argued that since every region and ethnic group in the country is both a victim and a victimizer when it comes to hate speech, they countervail and cancel out one another.
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Adapted from a paper presented at a training workshop on ‘Objective and Sensitive Reportage of Conflicts’ held at the Institute of Governance and Social Research, Jos, (June 8-10, 2015.)
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