| The Osuji Lectures #8: The Media in Nigeria's Politics |
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| Wednesday, 12 October 2005 | |||||||||||||
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In renaissance Europe people began writing books and plays, a rediscovery of Greek style writing and plays, and that too became a form of spreading information. Later on, the novel was born and folks wrote fictional novels as a way of telling stories to each other about what was going on in their lives and world. A novel is a disguised way to talk about ones character and human character issues in general and to show how individuals' characters play roles in their life outcomes. Much later, when mass literacy was becoming a reality, newspapers and magazines came into being. Newspapers became a medium through which writers talked about what was going on in their town and world. People were educated regarding current events particularly political issues exercising people's minds. Newspapers made it possible for people to be informed about what is going on in their world and as such became less isolated from their neighbors. Newspapers informed people about who were the political big wigs in their town, who had the most pull and influenced political decisions at city council. Of course, newspapers also informed their readers about who were the richest in town and gave people tit-bits about the lifestyles of the rich, powerful and famous. People like to read salacious materials about the rich and famous. They are titillated by reading every goings on in the lives of the powerful. Apparently people derive vicarious sense of power and fame by reading about the powerful. People always want to read about the powerful; they want to read about their presidents, governors, mayors (and in eras gone by, their kings, dukes, earls, counts, marquis and other princelings). It seems part of human nature to want to know how the rich and powerful live and try to imitate them. American Tabloids wrote obsessively about the late Princess Diana. Her picture was practically on the cover of most ladies magazines, week after week. Apparently many women in America wanted to look like her. They imitated her hair style and clothing. If she starved (from some psychological disorder, anorexia-bulimia) they went on diet to look like Di. Even though the girl was a secondary school drop out, rich and well educated American women strove to be like her; she was their role model. That is how much power influences people's behavior. Power and wealth rules the world, not wisdom. When newspapers first came into being it was not unusual for the rich and powerful to take control of them and use them to slander their enemies. The wealthy funded papers to espouse their particular political views and desecrate their enemies political views. Thus, there were conservative and liberal rags, each unabashedly espousing its ideas of how human beings ought to be and behave and how governments ought to be. This era was called the era of yellow journalism. Newspapers did not make any effort to be objective and state the truth as they saw it but, instead, approached the truth in such a manner that their sponsors views were served. It took a lot of struggle for newspapers to train their writers, now called reporters, to merely report what they observe in the human polity rather than editorialize and espouse a certain position on issues. This attempt at objectivity was helped a lot when schools of journalism and mass communication came into being in the early part of the twentieth century. These schools trained reporters in a certain style of writing, writing that merely described what was observed without trying to suit any particular point of view. When reporters began to report news, without adding their individual opinions to them, the public began to see them as professionals and relied on what they wrote as independent source of information that they could count on. Journalists kind of became respected professionals. (Nevertheless, they invariably were among the lowest paid persons in the world. A few well known journalists make the big bucks, but the run of the mill reporter seldom makes enough income to buy his own house or support a family decently.) Alas reporters' touted objectivity is seldom true. Beneath the mask of objective reporting is a world view that the newspaper is espousing. For example, most of the big city newspapers in America's East Coast, The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe etc claim to be merely reporting news as they saw them happen. But an impartial analysis of their content shows that they tend to be tilted towards leftist views, liberal views. For one thing, they are owned by liberals and cannot help but serve the liberal social agenda of their owners. Of course, some papers tilt towards conservative views, some even right wing. One can think of Washington Times. Most American newspapers, however, tend to be in the middle, reporting on what the political establishment approves. By and large that is the liberal-conservative continuum. Liberalism and conservatism are the mainstream political ideologies in America; they are accepted as official ideologies. Any paper that steers within this liberal-conservative ideological spectrum will survive in America, but if a paper deviates from the norm and publishes, say, socialist or fascist views it is simply killed off by the powers that be, or is so marginalized that one must seek it out to see it. Those in America who want to read about non-mainstream ideas, from so-called alternative media, search for them. Sometimes one has to read foreign papers to see things differently from the way that the establishmentarian press wants one to see them. The American mainstream press literally brainwashes Americans to see the world in a certain manner. The average American is so programmed by his society's educational system and media that he, more or less, spouts the same ideas, even uses the same phrases and clauses in his speech. Americans are so uniformized that if you have talked to one you pretty much have talked to others. In fact, they even use the same words and speak in the same sentences. They are boring. (I am out of here, am off to where I can, at least, talk to people with minds of their own and can talk in individuated sentences, one tells ones self. Go to France and listen to real individuated opinions. Americans talk of their so-called individualism but are the most socially conformists people in the world.) One has to listen to foreign radio stations to hear how other people interpret the same news given liberal-conservative slant in America. And to prevent Americans from listening to foreign news and being exposed to alternative points of views, most of the radio stations in America are either FM or AM stations; they only reach a small radios; only short wave ratios have far reach. One literally has to search for places where one can buy radios with short wave in America. Most of the locally produced radios are AM/FM. These were designed to give listeners access to local news but not international news. This way Americans are kept unaware of what is going on in the rest of the world. Americans are the world's most isolated and parochial people. Even little boys in African villages know more about the larger world than city dwelling American kids. The political system did this on purpose, to get the people to think only in American terms and to support Americana at all costs, to not have international points of views. The more ignorant the people are kept, the easier it is to control them by the powers that be. This policy in the short term is clever but in the long run is self defeating. Americans ignorance means that very soon they would not be able to compete with others in an increasingly intertwined global market place. As it is, they are unable to compete with Asian well schooled kids. It is difficult to tell when the first newspapers came into being, but it must be after the discovery of Guttenberg's printing press in the fifteenth century. We know for certain that by the 1600s newspapers were published in American colonies, Boston, for example. Newspapers came to Nigeria with the advent of the British in Nigeria. The British occupied Lagos in 1851, primarily to remove the reigning Oba, Kosoko who, apparently, was incorrigible and adamant in selling his own people into slavery. With the settlement of the British at Lagos and the advent of British type education in Nigeria, a crop of Nigerians learned to read and write in English. By the late nineteenth century the first newspapers were published at Lagos. During the anti colonial era, newspapers became a weapon for fighting the colonial administration. The incipient anti colonialists of 1920s Lagos, headed by Herbert Macaulay printed papers in which they criticized the activities of the colonial administration that they found odious. These papers gave vent to the petty bourgeois desired for the colonial Administration to include them in governing. The Lagos elite, mostly composed of returned slaves and a handful of educated Yorubas, wanted the governor general to appoint a few of them to serve in the legislative council, at least, as ex officio members. These papers also documented the activities of the educated and, should we say, rich Lagosians of the era. Actually, those papers, like most African American newspapers of that era, even of today, tended to be of tabloid quality, giving information about the activities of the socialites of Lagos; writing about who married whom, who had a great party and who attended such parties and what fancy clothing they wore. A man who had a steady job at the post office, a clerk, was a big African man. Thus, when we talk about rich Africans we are talking about the petty bourgeoisie. While still in graduate school at Lincoln University, one of the negro universities in America, Nnamdi Azikiwe recognized the power of the media as a weapon for setting national agenda and correcting wrongs and made a decision to go study journalism at Columbia University. Instead of pursuing the PhD in political science, he satisfied himself with a master's degree in that subject and went on to obtain a one year training in journalism and returned to Africa. First Zik settled at Accra, Ghana where some rich Ghanaians bought him a printing place and set him up as a newspaper editor. When his association with his Ghanaian benefactor soured, he returned to Nigeria and settled at Lagos. He raised enough money to start his own newspaper and published what he wanted without being beholden to the dictates of his Ghanaian benefactor�the later had not wanted him to publish anti colonial issues for those got them into trouble with the colonial authorities, but instead to concentrate on tabloid matters. Azikiwe started his own publishing business and later had newspapers all over Southern Nigeria. Azikiwe's newspaper empire largely contributed to gaining independence for Nigeria. This is because Zik's newspapers documented colonial shenanigans and made them known to the emergent African literate class. His readers read about and understood how they were been shafted by their white masters. A white boy with only secondary school education, for example, would be given a high placed job within the colonial order, whereas a Nigerian with university degree would go begging for a job. When educated Nigerians eventually obtain jobs, it is to serve the secondary school educated white boy. Zik's flagship newspaper, West African Pilot became the anti colonial mouthpiece of the era. It was a must read paper for those seriously engaged in fighting colonialists. The colonial establishment had its own sponsored papers, such as the Lagos Daily Times. The Daily Times wrote status quo stories, stories that did not rock the political establishment. Reporters working for the daily times had more prestige for they were part of the Lagos colonial elite. Zik's papers wrote stories that aroused African emotions and got them to resolve to fight colonialism. Zik's newspaper writings propelled him into the political lime light and made him a household name in Nigeria. He became his people's champion and began making public speeches. It was reported that hundreds of people packed auditoriums where the man spoke. Indeed, people looked forward to go listen to him speak. His speeches cheered the oppressed African crowd of the 1940s Lagos. His speeches were probably the only thing that made the depressed Africans of his era feel cheerful; they enjoyed hearing him rant and rave against what white men did to them. He was their undisputed hero, the champion of their course. African manhood was slighted by colonialists and Zik helped African folks to rehabilitate their humiliated egos; he made Nigerians proud to be human beings once again. (A good leader must make his people feel proud to be alive. He does so by emphasizing their good aspects and stressing their enemies bad sides. Objective writings that try to show ones peoples faults would never get one their vote. These lectures, for example, would never buy me the peoples respect for I am pointing out their short comings. As it were, I am making the people feel bad about themselves. A leader, on the other hand, must make the people feel good about themselves. Let us just say that there are several types of leadership functions and that one is serving one such function. Ones goal is not to insult the people but to correct their unacceptable behaviors. This is or should be the role of the scholar. Nevertheless, one is acutely aware of a depressing aspect to ones writing; talking about what people did wrong is depressing.) The people adored Zik for here he was, an African talking back to the then feared white man. Colonized Africans were impressed with their alleged inferiority. Africans were taught not to look the white man in the face and never to talk back to him. They were cowed by their colonial masters. But here was one of them looking the white men in the face and telling them what he felt about them, telling them to get lost. He seemed so bold and courageous that some of his African contemporaries, in fact, thought that he had magical powers. Some even thought that he was born by the gods for certainly a mere mortal African could not look the colonial governor general in the face and ask him to go jump into the lagoon and get away with such audacity! Rumor, in fact, spread that the man had magical spells that no white man could kill him. Zik probably encouraged all these primitive views of his prowess, it served his purpose, to mobilize the masses and give them courage. In his autobiography, My Odyssey, Zik made his birth at Zungeru, Northern Nigeria seem auspicious, giving the gullible reader the impression that he was special, and had godlike birth. He, apparently, read his Homer's 'Odyssey" too well (and Illiad) hence built himself up along Greek hero proportions. In Greek mythology, the hero, such as Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon and Paris, was always born through the intervention of the gods and are on earth to play heroic roles. Zik, in that boyish, extraverted nature of his, apparently took such fairy tales too seriously and made his life out as such. Of course, he was a mere mortal and had no supernatural powers. When he irritated the colonial authorities enough they tried to arrest him and he fled to the East and laid low for a while. Emissaries were sent to placate the colonial authorities so that they would not throw him into jail when he returned to Lagos. The man was one of the few anti colonialists who did not spend the obligatory time in jail. Doing time in prison was a badge of honor for anti colonialists. Zik not doing time in jail as Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and Nelson Mandela did, actually makes some folks to question his anti colonial credentials. They wonder whether the man publicly talked tough but behind the scenes begged the colonial authorities for mercy? Zik liked to write and talk in grandiloquent language; he employed big, big words, sometimes inappropriate words, but no matter. Whether Zik understood the English language is in question, but that notwithstanding, his people admired him for talking in the colonial master's language and seeming to do so eloquently. Zikism became synonymous with talking in big words that may or may not be in English dictionaries. Radio was discovered in the 1920s but did not really come to Nigeria until the 1940s. When it did come to Nigeria, radio was primarily limited to the few urban areas of the country, such as Lagos, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Kaduna, Kano etc. Radio became a means of spreading news. The news was read in the colonial master's language, English, and then translated to the three main languages of Nigeria: Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo. Not many Nigerians could buy radios. Until the 1960s the average Nigerian could not afford to buy radios so radio was really a luxury for the few educated Nigerians who at that time was less than 1% of the population. Television became a reality in the West in the 1940s. By the 1950s most American households had black and white Television. By the early 1960s television came to Nigeria, mostly to a few urban areas such as Lagos, Enugu, Kaduna and Ibadan. Only a few, the middle class could afford television. The Middle class in Nigeria through the 1970s was less than 5% of the population so less than five percent of the population had TVs. These days just about every urban dweller in Nigeria can afford Television. Fax machines became available to the masses in the 1980s. Fax machines had being available for American military and hospitals' use many years before they became available to the general public. People could now fax their letters and documents to people all over the world. This became a means of spreading news. However, to use fax, one must have access to telephones. Whereas third world countries like Nigeria have had telephones right from the time the technology was discovered by Alexander Bell in the late 1800s, unfortunately, very few Nigerians lave access to phones. As I write, very few of them have access to land phones. The discovery of mobile phones has helped matters a lot, for it helped bypass the difficult task of laying telephone wires all over the country. Now all a country has to do is pay the advanced countries to help it put a satellite into space/orbit and it coordinates its mobile phone system. These days, most Nigerian secondary school leavers have access to mobile phones. This would be about ten percent of the population. Mobile technology has improved communication in Nigeria. Folks can now share news almost instantaneously among themselves. A person at Lagos can now directly communicate with a person at Owerri and not have to wait on the incompetent Nigerian postal service to deliver his mails. (Most letters sent through the Nigerian postal service are opened by the criminals that work for that outfit, are rifled through, in search of possible enclosed money to steal and or documents that they could use in their nefarious criminal activities. Emails and mobile phones have reduced business for Nigeria's postal crooks.) In the 1970s Personal Computers became a reality in North America. By the 1980s most middle class Americans were buying computers. Today, most American middle class households have several computers at home. By the 1990s most Americans had access to the internet. The Internet was originally developed for the United States army in 1967 but was not put to civilian use until the late 1980s. Today, the world wide web is probably the quickest means of spreading news. Most people in the West have computers and email addresses and can pretty much communicate with each other. The world wide web has made communication among people very easy. You sit and type a letter and mail it and a few minutes later the person you sent it to read it. The Internet is probably the quickest and best way of spreading information. (For example, you are probably reading this material in the Internet?) The media is a means of spreading news and opinions on subjects in the public domain. The media is a powerful means of educating people and persuading them to think in a certain manner. As such, whoever controls the media, more or less, controls what the people think about. Whoever controls the media has the power to set the political agenda for public discourse. In America, white middle class persons control the media. White folks own most of the newspapers, magazines, radios, televisions, internet etc in America. This means that whatever these folks permit to be printed or to have air time is given public forum, and what they do not permit access to their media is not heard of. In effect, white folks decide what the general American public thinks and talks about. They decide what social issues are given prominent attention and which ones are ignored. By and large, issues that concern African Americans are ignored by the American media. You can read the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times and not read about black American issues. You can read Time magazine, Newsweek, US News and World Report and other weekly magazines and not read about 12% of the population, African Americans. You can listen to radios in America and not hear about issues relating to blacks. You can watch American television and not hear about issues relating to black Americans. Indeed, you are most likely to see only white faces on American television even though one out of every ten American is black. Academia is no exception. American academic journals publish whatever serves white American interests. Try submitting articles on black issues and or African issues to these journals and they would not publish them. Years ago, I tried to publish something at Columbia University Business Journal. In that article, I argued that management in contemporary Africa is equivalent to what obtained during American's revolution and compared African leaders with American leaders. The editor of this so-called academic journal went ballistic, asking me why I dared compare 'primitive Africans" with, what to him were sophisticated founding fathers of America. He could not see how Azikiwe is equivalent to Thomas Jefferson. How can an African be like a white man, he probably thought. Of course, he did not publish the article. America's gate keepers, be it in academic publishing or in mass publishing serenade princess America and ignore issues black. (This idiocy will soon come to hunt them, for the average American is so uneducated, so ignorant of what is happening all over the world that it comes as a surprise to him that other countries are doing quiet well; the idiots will wake up one day and find that the rest of the world has long surpassed them.) America's media completely shuts out issues African and African America. Black people's agenda seldom make it to national news and, as such, do not get discussed when public policy is discussed. Public opinion determines public policy and if black public opinion so ignored policies favoring blacks are ignored. The media is very powerful in influencing public opinion. Therefore whoever controls the media controls public opinion. Nnamdi Azikiwe must be given credit for realizing the importance of the media as a weapon in correcting the colonialist generated fear of white men and women. The colonial masters made themselves seem superior to Africans and propagated that nonsensical view in their colonies. Indeed, even the colonialists themselves believed in that propaganda. The typical white boy serving in colonial Africa actually had the delusion that he was superior to Africans. He was in fact psychotic for he believed in what is not true as true. To feel superior or inferior to any human being is to have delusional disorder. Mental health lies in accepting the truth of our human equality. All people are the same and equal, and if you believe differently you are insane. If you feel superior (delusion/psychosis) or inferior (neurosis) to other people, you belong in a nut house. Your false feelings and beliefs about the human reality needs to be corrected. Correct thinking accepts all people as the same and equal. GOVERNMENTS ALWAYS TRY TO CONTROL THE MEDIA Control of the media is sought by governments. This behavior is not restricted to any particular form of government. Both capitalists and communists do so. By and large, all governments try to influence, if not out rightly control, the media. If newspapers print what the government considers seditious, the paper's editors are generally invited for a chat with national security agencies. They are subtly warned and intimidated to refrain from saying anything against the government. In America the intimidation of the media is done subtly. Most American newspapers and magazines are funded through advertisement. If a paper writes anti American stuff, it can kiss goodbye to advertising. Thus communist papers seldom have any one advertising in them. This practice means that communist and socialist papers do not have the money to publish on a large scale. At best, they manage to publish a few pages of material that they cannot even circulate widely, since the national distributors would not touch them. America is a velvet dictatorship and uses refined means to keep undesired opinions out of the public domain. America rewards and encourages those opinions that support it. Other political systems out rightly censor opinion that is not their system supportive. In communist Russia, the leaders simply owned all the newspapers, radio stations and Television outlets and decided what is permitted publication and viewing. The communist monoliths controlled what the people read. Of course some bold souls defied the powers that were in Russia and managed to publish contrary opinions. These dissidents were generally hounded, picked up and jailed and the keys to their jail cells thrown away. In fact many of them were tortured. In Soviet Russia, they even tried using their psychiatrists to drive dissidents insane and failing to succeed, ship them off to the Gulag in Siberia and work them to untimely death. In contemporary China, the powers that be censor not only newspapers but even the internet. They monitor folks emails and clamp those expressing anti government views into jail. In America, the government has authority to selectively monitor people's emails. Those who oppose the political system are known to the system's gatekeepers and are generally marginalized. Oppose Citadel America and kiss goodbye to obtaining good jobs in it. America is not crude and will not arrest and throw you in jail but will get you where it thinks that it counts most, in your pocket book. America is probably the most totalitarian, authoritarian and dictatorial political system in the world. It just goes about its social control in a subtle manner. I should observe that America has dug its grave. It mostly permits the nonsense that supports it and keeps out objective information. The system is mediocre beyond belief. American high school graduates are virtual illiterates. American college graduates are practically not much better. What America does well is technology, its graduates tend to be technology savvy but intellectually underdeveloped. Try talking to an American medical doctor who makes over a $100, 000 a year, and you would be shocked at the poverty of his general knowledge; it is like you are talking to an elementary school kid. This is sad, very sad. In a misguided effort to protect itself, the system deliberately keeps its people ignorant. It does not want to produce smart people who could question its misguided policies. Emergent third world countries are even more pernicious in their efforts to control the media. Most African leaders tried to own their countries newspapers, radios and televisions. These crude dictators would, in fact, send their goons squared to go beat up newspaper men who dared to publish opinions critical of them. The death of Dele Giwa, the editor of Nigeria's New swatch is still unresolved. Who murdered Dele? The goons squad of the military dictatorate? A few months ago, the wife of the president of Kenya, Mrs. Mwai Kibaki, went to a newspaper room and destroyed every thing in sight. She and her goons physically roughed up reporters they believed wrote against her husband's corrupt government. Kibaki came to power promising to clean out corruption in Kenya but, if anything, corruption has skyrocketed during his watch. He promised to write a new constituent for the country within the first 100 days of his administration; several years later, there is not a new constitution; the draft he has managed to write makes him more dictatorial than his predecessors. In Nigeria the government controls the media in several ways. The Abubaka Tafawa Belewa government set up its own newspaper, The Nigerian Morning Post, to combat the strident writings of West African Pilot. The Nigerian government owned radio and television stations. Radio and television simply spouted what the ministry of miss-information wanted said. The various military governments were crude and simply beat up journalists who wrote negative news about them. In time, reporters learnt to look the other way as the criminals in government looted the government treasury. Indeed, it is reported that some reporters were in the government's pay roll. Such reporters had nothing better to do with their time than write serenades of the powers that be. They covered every Owanbe party at Lagos and did not write about the sufferings in the shanty towns of Lagos.. The present Obasanjo civilian administration in Nigeria seems to have left news papers alone. The current administration simply ignore the views of the media. Obasanjo and crew simply do whatever they want to do and let news papers cry their hearts out and ignore them. The man is so tough skinned that he does not seem to loose sleep from anyone talking about the corruption in his government. Apparently, Obasanjo discovered that there is corruption in Nigeria when he went oversees begging for debt relief and his creditors insisted that he do something about Nigerians rampart corruption. The man every now and then croaks about his government's commitment to anti corruption. If the man was committed to anti corruption how come no high government official has been jailed, or better still, executed? It takes the British to arrest a money laundering Bayelsa state governor. And who does not know that Nigerian governors convert the money they obtain from Federal revenue sharing into their own private moneys? These criminals have mansions all over the world while their country men live in poverty. If Obasanjo is not corrupt, I can sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. For starters, it is corruption for Obasanjo to live at luxurious Also Rock while the average Nigerian lives in a shack. The mass media in Nigeria somehow manages to tell the world what is going on in Nigeria. One must raise ones hat for them. The quality of Nigerian news papers sometimes rivals, even surpasses the quality of American newspapers. I find the Guardian, Champion, This Day, Vanguard and other Nigerian newspapers as good as any in the world. The quality of writing in these papers are comparable to any in the world. The media is one area where Nigerians are as good as their counterparts in other parts of the world. CONCLUSION The media is a means of spreading information in a polity. It is a means of expressing opinions on issues of the day. It is a means of trying to influence public opinion and public policies. Access to the media is a good way to influence what the political system does. In America, the media is controlled by white folks. Moreover, American media is very expensive. To advertise in the New York times sets one back thousands of dollars. Poor folks do not have that kind of money hence are shut out of the media. The media mostly propagates what serves the system's interests, this means white folk's interests. In Nigeria, the media is relatively free but it is ignored by the powers that be. The rulers of Nigeria leave newspaper men to do their thing and ignore them. As they say, who needs to pay attention to what starving reporters write about? Ignore them and pay attention to the other power players in the polity. Share wealth with those capable of kicking you out of office and ignore what riff raffs in the media say. This is the situation in Nigeria. The media is relatively free to say whatever it likes but it seldom has effect on public policy. The big boys of Aso Rock simply do whatever they want to do and the public be damned. The Nigerian Media is doing an outstanding job. It is one bright spot in the darkness that is Nigeria. It is one of the few spots in Nigeria where men and women of courage seem to exist. Reporters write negative materials about the country's leaders and sometimes risk arrest and beating, even been killed. These reporters are real human beings, they are not afraid of death. They are fully alive for a human being is fully alive only when he is not afraid to speak the truth even if it means being harassed and killed. The Nigerian media is to be commended for doing an outstanding job. Unfortunately, the media's marvelous job does not seem able to change Nigeria. Nigeria's problems are too entrenched for good journalists alone to make a positive dint in them. There is no cause for despair. The good work of journalists is laying the foundation for a renascent Nigeria, a Nigeria where there is the rule of law and men and women serve common interest rather than only self interest.
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Posted by Robot| 12.10.2005 15:10