General Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the world’s most powerful military commanders ever, once quipped that he had better face a hundred bayonets than a single newspaper. Obviously, what the French General wanted to point out was the lethal nature of the power which the press wields—even a single newspaper; no one can afford to face it. It is ironic therefore in Nigeria today that a particular citizen can beat his chest as it were and say “I have done what Napoleon could not do” because for eight years the man has been forced to face the onslought of a particular news media. That man is Chief Theodore Ahamefule Orji, the immediate past Governor of Abia State, who has been having a running battle with his predecessor in office Dr Oriji Uzor Kalu, publisher of the Sun newspapers. Please note that I only know both men by reputation.
Not for one day have we read any pro-Orji news or commentary in Kalu’s media. Nor have they ever published a rejoinder from Orji’s side to balance an ugly, skewed publicity equation. Thanks however to the open-heartedness of other media like The Nation, ThisDay, National Mirror, The Guardian, The Punch, Vanguard, Tribune etc. that have been the saving grace; otherwise T.A Orji would have been undone long ago. Those of us watching from a distance can no longer afford to keep quiet. This is media tyranny writ large. This is man’s inhumaniy to man. It is an abuse of privilege which William Shakespeare said manifests when people “disjoin remorse from power”. It’s also abuse of freedom—freedom to own or establish a medium of communication, which the framers of our Constitution purposely married with the right to Freedom of Expression, in Section 39. We should feel concerned because the abuse or denial of one man’s right anywhere is the abuse of other people’s rights everywhere. It is T.A Oriji today; it may be the turn of Abubakar or Adeyemi tomorrow. Why do we face this problem today? Marrying freedom of expression with freedom to own and operate a press or medium is a very good idea because it makes them a couple.
But then, like in every marriage where no law forbids abuse on either side, the marriage of the two freedoms in one and the same Section 39 of the 1999 Constitution is liable to abuse or selfish exploitation such as we are witnessing today in the Orji/Kalu drama. Therefore, in order to deal with such situations or prevent same, it is necessary to amend the constitution and add a fourth sub-section to Section 39(1) which says “every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference.”The amendment being proposed here which should come immediately after sub-section (1) or after the existing sub-section (3) is as follows: “Because it is impossible for everybody to establish their own medium, every medium or press established pursuant to sub-section (2)of this section, for the purposes of dissemination of information, ideas opinions and news shall enforce the Fairness Doctrine by ensuring feedback mechanism so that without discrimination in any form anyone reasonably feeling injured or hurt in anyway by the activities of the medium/media can exercise the right of reply in or through the same offending medium/media possibly in full measure.”
Be that as it may, this intervention was not necessarily prompted by any urge to seek remorse or relief for Orji. Far from that; essentially this intervention became necessary in order to condemn a worrisome trend that ridicules Nigerian journalism as exemplified in two recent write-ups credited to Ebere Wabara, Dr. Kalu’s media adviser. In the first write-up in Daily Sun of September 1, entitled “Koos James, Orji & Kalu,” the author wasted valuable space penning a high-falutin piece that bordered on ego-trip in the name of a rejoinder marred by poetic licence, empty grandiloquence and an attempt at rogue intellectualism with a disastrous result. In fact, the very second paragraph of the piece made up of 40 odd words had no finite verb and therefore ended as a meaningless phrase. The second in Daily Sun of September 7th entitled “Justice Abang blasts T.A Orji” proved more disastrous as it raised serious doubts about his grasp of basic principles guiding judicial reporting. One doesn’t need to be an egg in order to recognize a bad omelette. Although I am not a journalist, I can always point out bad journalism any day. If Wabara and his team have run out of issues in their self-declared fight with T.A Orji there is no sense in resorting to unprofessional hara-kiri. The right thing to do is to call a truce and move on. Kalu no longer needs all this ridiculous fawning by Wabara who delights in addressing him as “FIFA President” even when he is yet to enter the race proper; not an adviser who delights in addressing him as “Forbe’s billionaire” or “Pillar of sports in Africa” – all in a useless attempt to curry his favour. Rather what he needs now is a media adviser who knows that in writing a rejoinder to an unfavourable publication by your opponent, you don’t go about repeating the same offending negative words used against your boss. For example Wabara said in his full page verbiage of 1/9/2015: “Government is a continuum. There is hardly any former governor who never left a conflagration of debts”, (column 4, line 10). Really? So Kalu left not just a huge debt in Abia but a “conflagration of debts”? Well, we are hearing this dimension for the first time. All we knew all this while was that the man left a huge debt amounting to N55 billion. Anyway, Wabara may be right because leaving N55 billion debts in 2007 with nary a legacy to account for it in a poor state like Abia could have sparked off a conflagration but for the mature way T.A Orji handled the matter. Wabara also argued in his ego-trip that because Kalu contributes to the anti-corruption debate in Nigeria the man could not be grouped among the corrupt—a position that contradicted Kalu who in his write-up in Saturday Sun of 12th September 2015 clearly grouped himself among corrupt Nigerian civilian rulers thus: “what we have witnessed rather sadly within the few years that civilians have been in the saddle of leadership in Nigeria is endemic corruption. And with corruption came other vices”.
So what was Wabara trying to tell us?
- Mr. Agarzue writes from Abuja.