For the last two days ASAA Pyramid Hotel, probably the biggest private hotel in Kaduna, hosted journalists from the seven states of the North West geo-political zone for a workshop on effective coverage of next year’s general elections organized by the Nigerian Press Council, the country’s regulator of the print media. It was the third in a series the press regulator, whose Acting Executive Director is Nnamdi Ejemanze, has been organizing to help journalists build capacity for reporting the electoral process ahead of next year’s election.
Three resource persons delivered papers on various aspects of the subject. I was one of them. The following is the edited version of my paper.
The last time we had elections for choosing candidates for various posts or offices was over three and a half years ago and, as we all know, it wasn’t a happy story before, during and after. The violence that accompanied those elections, especially that for the presidency, was one of the worst in the country’s history. The question is, how do we avoid a repeat of 2011 and what role should the media play in doing so?
The answers are at once simple and complex. Simple, in the sense that the only way to avoid violent elections is for politicians as the main actors in the electoral process to talk about issues and character and avoid whipping up emotions – ethnic, sectional or religious – and also allow elections to be free, fair and credible. The media, on their part, have the role of holding up politicians to their responsibilities for ensuring peace, harmony and progress in society. It’s all as simple as that.
However it is also complex at the same time. Complex, in the sense that for both politicians and the media the proper behaviour and conduct expected of them are easier said than done. But shying away from such proper behaviour and conduct is not an option if we truly wish to establish genuine democracy in the country.
In a way, the greater responsibility for ensuring free, fair and credible elections lies with the media than with politicians in the sense that most people learn about issues, events and people from the media, whether these media are newspapers and magazines, radio or television, or the so-called social media, the latest of them all. In other words, the media have immense power to set society’s agenda because they are arguably the most important sources of information and knowledge.
Of course the media’s power to set society’s agenda is not unlimited and is often exaggerated. However, anyone who underestimates this power does so at his or her own peril.
In talking about the media’s power to set society’s agenda, I would like to use the feline metaphors we as journalists are fond of. We all pride ourselves as society’s watchdogs. But we cannot deny that many at times we often allow ourselves to become someone’s or some group’s lapdogs or attack dogs. If we want to set society’s agenda in the best interest of society rather than only in the partisan interest of someone or some group, we must, obviously, never ever be anyone’s or any group’s lapdogs or attack dogs. Instead, we should even go beyond being society’s watchdog and be its guide dog.
Playing the role of a guide dog or even the easier one of a watchdog entails being knowledgeable and well informed about the issues, events and personalities that we report about. It also entails keeping to the ethics and sensible laws governing our profession.
As we approach next year’s general elections beginning in February, we as journalists must become well informed and knowledgeable about the variables whose interplay can foster or mar a free, fair and credible election, depending on how we handle them. These variables are structural, environmental and the resources available to the contestants.
The structural variables include the Constitution and the laws of the land, especially on elections and media practice. What, for example, are the limits of free speech and freedom of association? These structural variables also include knowing the workings of the country’s political system which, since 1979, has been the presidential system, as opposed to the parliamentary system we inherited from our colonial masters in 1960 and practiced up to 1966 when the military staged its first coup.
Not least of these structural variables, we must be well informed and knowledgeable about how our voting system works. What, for example, are the constitutional and legal requirements for being eligible to contest in and then win an election?
The environmental variables we must inform ourselves well and be knowledgeable about are the big issues of the period. Right now these include insecurity, corruption, unemployment and poor infrastructure. As good journalists we should not allow politicians to divert the public’s attention away from their records of performance on these and other issues relevant to the peace, harmony and progress of society.
Finally, we must ask questions about the resources the political parties and their candidates possess that can enable them solve the country’s problems. Do they have competent leadership? How much internal democracy have they demonstrated? What is their level of integrity?
These, of course, are not the only questions journalists must find answers to if they, in turn, are to inform and educate members of the public about the choices before them and this way effectively play their role as journalists of ensuring free, fair and credible elections next year. However, finding the answers to these questions is essential for the establishment of true democracy in the country. And so far what we have had in this country since the end of military rule 15 years ago is civilian rule rather than true democracy.
As I said in effect at the beginning of this short paper, finding the answers to the questions I have raised won’t be easy. But then, as the saying goes, nothing good comes easy. As the saying also goes, the price of democracy is eternal vigilance.
Probably few of us here have heard of Paul Krugman. Well, he is an American professor of Economics and a celebrated columnist with The New York Times, Fortune magazine and Slate, an online journal. Six years ago he won the Nobel Prize in Economics. The author of several books on Economics, he reduced many of his columns on the subject into a book titled The Great Unravelling: From Boom to Bust in Three Scandalous Years. The 2008 book was about how the economic and political policies of President George Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, drove the boom economy they inherited from President Bill Clinton in 2000 into bust within three years.
In his introduction to the book Krugman enunciated what he as a self-styled “part time journalist” called “Rules of Reporting.” He listed five of them. He meant them to serve as guides in reporting the politics and economics of Bush and Cheney. I believe they are pretty much applicable to the kind of politics we have experienced in Nigeria the last 15 years. Certainly they will serve as useful guides for effectively reporting next year’s elections to ensure they are free, fair and credible.
Krugman’s rules of reporting in my own paraphrase are:-
1. Never assume the Nigerian politician means what he says or says what he means. Always maintain a healthy scepticism and crosscheck the credibility of his words.
2. Always do some homework to find out what his real objectives are.
3. Expect him to break the rules of the game whenever he finds them inconvenient even in the slightest way.
4. Expect him to respond to even the slightest criticisms by all means, mostly more foul than fair.
5. Remember most politicians are Oliver Twists; the more you try to appease them, the more they want.
Obeying these rules is a tough call but disregarding them is not an option if we as journalists want to effectively report next year’s election and thus begin to lay a sound foundation for true democracy in Nigeria.
RE: For a better Customs Service
Sir,
What I was anxious to read from you last Wednesday was a tribute to a veteran journalist and prominent northern elder, Malam Magaji Danbatta, and not a PR for the Customs CG. Why the sudden departure from tradition?
Babangida Mamman,
Bauchi.
+2348039098744.
Sir,
I have been reading your write ups since your days in the New Nigerian through the Citizen magazine and elsewhere. In all I am very disappointed in the views you expressed in your “For a better Customs Service.”
I have tried painfully to suppress the feelings that you were induced to stress the views expressed in the write up without success. With the findings that arms have been imported by CAN through the ports with the obvious connivance of the Customs under the supervision of your hero to kill and maim innocent Nigerians, mostly in the North, do you think he justifies his PR as the legendary Mohammed Ali?
I never knew you could descend this low. As a younger brother I wish to advise that you consider your integrity first.
Sule Labbo,
Abuja.
+2348035271677.
