By Nnamdi Nwigwe
Nigeria’s Politics is in such a sorry state today because the Editors of the nation’s mainstream media – both print and electronic – have not realized their true potential as game changers and arrowheads in our march to full nationhood.
Basically as a result of the background and a lack of professional grounding of many of our Editors, they don’t have the self confidence to confront and challenge the political actors who routinely pocket them by doling out the filthy lucre to them.
An Editor with personal integrity and solid training in journalism would ordinarily feel insulted to be offered a bribe be a politician to publish, or refrain from publishing a particular material.
A journalist who is faithful to the ethics of his profession has an obligation to only the readership and the listening audience of their media. In other words the interest of the citizenry is the sole determinant of the approval or spiking of any piece of information or intelligence that comes to the Editor’s table.
Ideally, politicians should have a healthy dread of Editors and indeed journalists as a whole.
In the more industrially developed countries with equally more advanced politics, Editors and other senior personnel in the media are so highly respected that some of them are consulted by both the government and the national security hierarchy on some critical State matters.
Having the necessary background briefing, Editors in such climes are better poised to know how to put out public information, especially such that concern security, diplomacy or even the national economy.
Indeed many trained journalists are drafted into the intelligence community of their nations. Such that the so-called Foreign Correspondents with their Press Accreditations are a little more than your ordinary reporters.
The embassies of a number of the countries in Nigeria receive additional intelligence directly from their nationals operating as “foreign correspondents” who freely interact with the locals in a manner that their diplomats cannot.
Many of our journalists – both senior and junior – unwittingly give away information of restricted nature to foreign “colleagues” over drinks at hotels or Press Clubs.
If only our Editors can firm up their self confidence and assert themselves, they will also earn the level of trust and respect which their peers overseas receive from their home governments and politicians.
If our media practitioners can shun the peanuts given them by politicians to sing their praises or to suppress merited news of the activities of their opponents, we may be getting somewhere in sanitizing our politics.
One needs to observe critically the filth and rubbish that pass as journalism on the unedited internet. A barely literate person sits cozily at home and fabricates “news” which has no verifiable source and the mainstream media gobble up such junk and publish.
And as one wonders where all this is coming from, the baseless story is further edified as the serious media latch on it for Panel Discussions and bogus “Expert Opinions.”
What is more worrisome is the ease with which the perennial professional politicians hoodwink our journalists and Editors who are, in the main more academically qualified than them.
Well, one might as well wonder how semi-illiterates get university professors on INEC ad hoc assignment to manipulate election results in their favour because of bribe.
The contention here is that it was time the Editors in Nigeria truly lived up to the mantra of “show the way” so that our political actors would harken to the right track.
Granted that poverty has been unfortunately weaponized in the country, the truth is that it can be reversed.by good governance.
Let’s learn to ask the hard questions to those who boldly step out to want to rule over us and determine our fate. It is the duty of the journalists to pry from them the reason they believe they are so qualified.
What are their credentials, qualifications and their vision for the country and its inhabitants?
What bouys their ego and conceit to want to decide my lot and yours?
For those now in power, it is bounden duty and obligation for the Editors to subject them to a regular media briefing to be faced by unrehearsed reporters who will ask them questions on their performances.
The political office holders voluntarily opted to serve and sought our mandate to do so via an election. They therefore have a duty to periodically brief the electorate about what they are doing with their commonwealth and their mandate.
We must perish the extant habit of the President or Governors believing that facing the Press is an option they can pick and choose whether to give or not.
It is an obligation.
Simpliciter.
And our media Editors must insist on it and institutionalize it.
We let our politicians to get away with blatant irresponsibility and gross impunity because those who should hold them accountable – our journalists and Editors – do not demand so.
Rather they would, at press briefings, ask peripheral questions self-boosting questions that are often supplied by the interviewees themselves.
Attached to such questions are of course envelopes containing laughable amounts that get the media guys jumping up.
Let our Editors wake up to their statutory obligations to the citizenry.
The common folk cannot continue grumbling and whining from generation over poor governance.
This country has a surfeit of honest and visionary men and women who can lead Nigeria effectively to the next level.
Such people need to be intentionally encouraged and supported by our Editors.
There has to be a stop to bland, unimaginative and “echo journalism” in which professionally qualified media operatives surrender their knowledge and integrity to merchants masquerading as politicians.
Our Editors who know their onions should take the initiative to dictate the appropriate behaviour expected of those who seek to rule or govern the rest of us.
Nigeria has to be shunted out of the rut and groove in which it has been trapped in the past 65 years of our Flag Independence.
Mazi Nwigwe, a veteran journalist and broadcaster, writes from Mbaise, Imo State.
