The tragedy of an unconscious media
The truth is, for any Nigerian with conscience, being away from home is not a license or an immunity against the naked reality on the ground. For many, exile is not a planned option, it is as imperative as the natural zeal to self-preservation. You have hardly worn off your jetlag when phones start ringing […]
The truth is, for any Nigerian with conscience, being away from home is not a license or an immunity against the naked reality on the ground. For many, exile is not a planned option, it is as imperative as the natural zeal to self-preservation. You have hardly worn off your jetlag when phones start ringing from friends and relatives who traditionally believe that the tree behind your hotel or house grows dollars, florin, pound sterling or whatever currency they use where you are. If you were lucky enough to have a little savings net before you left home (just in case) it stood to reason that on January 1, 2012 when President Jonathan spontaneously ‘withdrew the subsidy’ on petroleum products; inflation has decimated your savings. One does not have to be a genius to know that.
So, while one may be spatially separated from the physical geography of Nigeria, one must be constantly abreast of the geopolitics or the effects of maladministration; lack of a cogent fiscal policy needed to propel our great nation. Consequently, when one writes about the situation ‘at home’, while one may be far away from the physical reach of Boko Haram bombs; kidnappers, armed robbers; the darkness we bought with a record $16 billion plus we are never emotionally separated. At any rate, the duty of a critic is not to self-immolate to show discontent as much as it is for them to point to do a comparative analysis of life elsewhere, think about where and how we get it wrong and proffer solutions to those who live the practical reality.
For a journalist critic, it is patriotism borne out of the reality that news is history in a haste needing a detached but contemplative analysis conscious that politicians would get away with blue murder and be garlanded if given the chance. Having said that, it is shameful that the Nigerian media, for all their ebullient historical antecedents as midwives of our cherished flag of independence and the present pseudo-democracy, they are finally asleep. The tendency of waiting to be fed at press conferences or through press releases has taken the shine off our natural duty of breaking the news and pointing the way. There is an eerie feeling of professional lethargy and geopolitical cleavage which beclouds the vision of those who suffer the consequences of political incongruities.
It is a shame that serious issues get pushed behind the diary of mundane regionalism. The story of the victims masticated by a trailer while obeying the command of armed robbers to lie down flat on coal tar has fizzled out without resolve. Nobody followed it up. The campaign is to ban night travels rather than look into the reasons why roads are not safe as they should 24/7. In a country with an ‘elected’ government and national assembly, and before our very eyes, school children traveling in a rented commercial bus were robbed and raped at gunpoint between Enugu and Lagos? No member of our NASS made it into an issue of national importance. Our President took a well-deserved vacation without talking about it. His minister of education, a woman had nothing spectacular to say about it, neither did that of women affairs. No word from the Inspector-General who should secure all Nigeria. None from the minister of Internal Affairs who should say this is unacceptable.
That horrendous event flew out of the front pages in favour of whose turn it would be, in 2015 – (clear three years away) to loot, plunder and rape our collective psyche and to blight the future of our children. That story is pushed behind so that ethnic leaders could ventilate their anger at the way the ‘other ethnic group’ is ruining the country. My northern brothers have ruled Nigeria for nearly 30 of the years of flag independence, yet early this week, President Jonathan went to Sokoto to launch an almajir integration school; the North has the lowest rate of school enrolment, the highest per capita indices of disease and poverty stretches across the landscape like the encroaching desert. The Niger Delta will not fair better even if Jonathan bites Mugabe’s bug and remain until he dies in office. Or how have Abeokuta and Ogun State, which produced more Yoruba leaders than any section of the West fared better with their sons as leaders?
Are these the issues – really? How have Muslims fared better with Boko Haram than the Birom whose land has been turned into Akeldama – the land of blood from its bastion of peace and tourism? How did getting to the bottom of these carnage on our roads become less important than who ruins our country in 2015? Have we, in the media lost touch with our roles and responsibilities as the nation’s conscience and its GPS to the true way? How did we fail to find so-called northern leaders who now say they would marshal their forces against Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 but could not rally against the killing fields in their own backyards? Just how do we explain to our children that their safety and their future are less important than who rules Nigeria in three years?