Poisoned psyche

A consummate professional, Adeniyi Adesina, got recalled to The Nation for higher duties.

Another, Ismail Omipidan, got invited from The Sun to take Adesina’s place, as chief press secretary (CPS) to Gboyega Oyetola, the Osun governor.

Both exited and entered without fuss or ill will.

Nor did the governor exhibit any angst, beyond the reluctance of letting go a calm, measured and polished mind; replaced with great relief at finding an alter ego — in professional brilliance, focus and temper — to do the job.

But see how a fellow, on Facebook, captured the transition: “Gboyega Oyetola sacks Ijeshaman Niyi Adesina as his CPS; replaces him with Ila-Orangun man, Ismail Omipidan. O da baun!” (cynical Oyo Yoruba snap for “It’s alright”).

And then this follow-up: “Sacking a Christian to replace him with a Moslem. So Oyetola could be this intolerant?”  Ah!

And this yakking, after reasoned caution, to his hysterical post: “Is Adesina an Ijesha? Is he a Christian? Is he still Oyetola’s CPS?  Is Ismail the new CPS, a Christian, an Ijesha?”

The reminds you — doesn’t it? — of Irish poet, W. B. Keats, in his famous poem, ‘The Second Coming’ : “…The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity …”?

Talk of combative ignorance, cocky, reckless and unfazed!

Enter the menace of the media as meddler: base, petty, graceless, crass, cynical, petulant, manipulative and mischievous.

Still, a Facebook comment, by a cyber denizen, as reckless and they come in the cyber jungle, couldn’t possibly qualify as “media”, in the most basic sense of the word?  True.

You could even label — and with justification too — that categorization as a tad too sweeping.

But that is only when you view the media from the formalist stand point.

From the point of effect, that repudiation would appear cosmetic and artificial.  Otherwise, the social media, where you could unleash anything that suited your fancy on an unsuspecting and often gullible audience, could not have become such a menace.

In a contemporary Nigeria, where the line is becoming wafer-thin, between the conventional media (with its robust “gate-keeping”) and new media (with its mad rush at “breaking news”: even if it is often pure fiction, garbled truths or even spiteful lies as free and democratic commentaries, as this Osun case), the havoc of such steamrollers is real.

Why, even AIT, before its crunch with the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC), gloried in such unfazed mischief, by beaming social media inanities, which nevertheless fuelled some partisan bliss.

Even now, some radio stations are outright pests, pushing a brazen democratic right to misinform — nay, to disinformation; traducing and maligning those whose right of response, in full measure, could be distracting, if not outright impolitic; and unleashing  nothing short of media anarchy, that bucks all sane broadcast rules.

Enter: the birth, nurture and sustenance of the poisoned psyche, on a mass scale.

Yet, partisan reportage is not new.  The NTA, from nativity, sees and hears no evil, concerning the extant powers.

But should the tide change, as it did in 2015, the transition is prompt and dutiful.  Open sesame:  the clobbered of last night, become the new news toast this morning — all in the line of duty!

In the 2nd Republic, nothing the conservative National Party of Nigeria (NPN) President Shehu Shagari (Allah bless his soul!) did passed the muster of the opposition press; which, with a vengeance, cancelled out the NTA government doting, at least within these newspapers’ spheres of influence.

Still, all those were generally done within the confines of strict and robust gate-keeping: check and balances, at many layers of news treatment, to at least conform to journalism best practices.  Not any more!

Now, a new potent virus straddles the conventional and new media.  Those in government will ignore it to their peril.

In this particular Osun case, traducing an innocent Governor Oyetola, over base but empty clannish and faith allegations, would appear a continuation of the sickly Osun-as-media-ping pong of the Rauf Aregbesola years.

Independent sources, including mainstream local and international development agencies, hailed that government as nothing but revolutionary; in driving radical, human-centred development, dealing mass poverty lethal blows, even with puny cash in its till.

But to a section of Nigeria’s mainstream media, all those striving, rich practical equivalent of Jeremy Bentham’s “greatest happiness of the greatest number”, were nothing but crap.

Indeed, going by their own old wives’ tales, dished as hot and explosive media fare,  the former governor, with his then chief of staff and now governor, and other braves that laboured and sweated to lift their people, only qualified to be nailed to the cross, to parody Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel, Devil on the Cross.

Media terrorism was never more brazen!

That, for Osun, nearly proved fatal — fatal because, no matter what partisans may claim, had Osun voted otherwise, it would have proved more than a routine election lost and won.

The people would have been the ultimate loser, for a dawn of true people-centred development would have been tossed away, by partisan bile, no thanks to a poisoned psyche, deliberately and spitefully pushed by a section of the media.

It would have been well and truly tragic.

Both Adesina and Omipidan, the one returning to  journalism practice, the other crossing over to media-manage a government, must know it’s poisoned times.

But again, partisan journalism is not new.  What is new is the newfound toxicity that poisons all.

The earliest Nigerian journalism masters, John Payne Jackson and son, Thomas Horatio Jackson (Lagos Weekly Record); George Alfred Williams  (Lagos Standard); James Bright Davies (Nigerian Times/Times of Nigeria), and the great Herbert Macaulay (Lagos Daily News) were great crusaders against the colonial order.

Though they were no partisans for belonging to political parties, they were partisan — and proudly so — for their fiercely pro-native stance, against a harsh colonial order.

If history remembers them rather fondly today, it was just because they went by the highest ideals: in language, thought and temper, so much so that they corralled attention, if not grudging respect, from the uppity colonial order.

Not any more — for a section of today’s media appear blissfully luxuriating in the sewers: in language, thought and temper, fired with base emotions.

How will history remember the media of this era?  That should agitate the mind of Adesina and Omipidan — one processing the news, the order churning out stuff to project his principal — as they lead their new charge.

The media thrives on fairness to all.  So, a media that spews toxins that poison its environment of practice only digs its own grave.