Some lies are native to the pen: that being cynical equals true patriotism; that a combative press has Nigeria’s best interest at heart.
These lies pulse through the Fourth Estate of the Realm. Thus, the inclination of certain journalists, at home and abroad, towards dubious altruism and self-love.
Every journalist now fancies himself a revolutionary, but most are simply mercenaries of narrative warfare. We decry injustice not because we abhor it, but because we are paid to amplify it, selectively.
Every newsroom pretends to be the bastion of patriotism while amplifying tribal resentment and sectional bigotry. This is the heart of our posturing. The sanctification of self-interest disguised as national concern. And when hate becomes editorial policy, democracy dies, quietly.
The participation of large segments of the press, like the civil society, is driven by funded partisanship, but like Arundhati Roy would say, “I’m not against people being funded—because we’re running out of options, but we have to understand, ‘Are you walking the dog or is the dog walking you? Who’s the dog and who are you?”
The situation triggers existential questions about the quality of professionalism of the press as a social institution. How do we define professionalism? How do we determine real and funded patriotism? How do we educate and commit Nigerians to the precepts of political participation astride the politics of reality and memory? The jostling over both becomes more intense in an oppressive clime where they distort to preserve the status quo of exploitation or repudiate it.
No doubt, we are living through an epistemic crisis: a post-truth era where feelings are elevated above facts, and opinions, regardless of their merit, trump evidence. In this clime, journalists, who should be society’s navigators through the fog of propaganda, have become the fog itself as the truth is doctored, relativised, and distorted to suit an ideological whim or political vendetta.
There is blood on the byline. And the stench of carnage pervades the newsroom as the pen, once consecrated to truth, now pricks at Nigeria’s soul like a poison-tipped dagger. From the tip drips venomous gaslighting, manufactured consent, and post-truth propaganda.
Everyone in this charade pretends. Thus, the preponderance of the self-styled truth-teller and hyperbolic patriot in the Nigerian newsroom. If the press is truly the last free social institution and moral high-ground, why does it dawdle on the leash of shady puppeteers?
We talk a great shop on Nigeria’s need to re-create its public sphere. But to achieve this, our newsrooms must recommit to a narrative of redemption against the backdrop of ruin. The press must inspire national pride, not just despair, sponsored chaos and hedonism.
Of course, tragedy is a given of human society, but it should no longer command our practice. We must sieve and winnow catastrophe to extract positive lessons amenable to the growth and survival of our people alongside our sociocultural institutions.
And to those baiting foreign intervention, we must always remember that the Libyans, Afghans, and Ukrainians, to mention a few, wildly embraced a dandy dream of ‘American-NATO-styled freedom, but instead, got trapped in a sinister nightmare. To date, they are paying dearly for it.
I know war. Of my over two decades in journalism, I have walked through the minefields and aftermath of conflict in Liberia, Nigeria’s northeast, and Cameroon’s Far North. I have witnessed how innocent lives are dismembered by bombs and bureaucracies. I have seen villages turned to ash and humans to fodder, all in the name of peacekeeping, counterterrorism, and regime change.
But most heartbreaking of all, I have seen how the language of the press has evolved, no longer as an instrument of outrage or healing, but of appeasement and misinformation. I have seen the language of identification and analysis segue from outright condemnation of terror to a patronising patois of political appeasement. Terrorists have become “non-state actors,” murderous anarchy is misinterpreted as “civil dissent,” and terrorism is whitewashed into “insurgency.”
These dangerous reframings are the currency of gaslighters. They are the scripts handed to us by hegemonic hands seeking to recolonise Africa through trapdoors disguised as development, diplomacy, polite euphemism, and digital disruption.
And the Nigerian newsroom, too lazy or complicit to resist, has lent itself as both stage and opera for this theatre of manipulation. And yet, the violence that takes the most lives in Nigeria today does not always resonate through artillery or drone strikes. It pulses into our homes via newscasts and headlines. It speaks the dialect of division and punctuates every “breaking news” ticker with innuendo. It wears the powdered face of punditry and masquerades as editorial independence.
The newsroom is no longer a sacred space but a weaponised confessional, where sin is sanctified in partisan ink. We are bigots with bylines, paid mouthpieces masquerading as moralists. We scream “rule of law” but ignore the rule of decency.
When journalists amplify lies, romanticise insurgents as misunderstood rebels, and twist economic facts to suit their political loyalties, they rob citizens of truth and autonomy. They reduce the electorate into cynical bystanders, unable to discern right from wrong, and too weary to fight back. Such arrant misinformation often triggers demoralisation. And in that vacuum of public trust, dubious demagogues emerge.
To reclaim Nigeria from collapse requires a collaboration of the political left and right. Ralph Nader’s recent founding of The Capitol Hill Citizen is instructive. His vision for a left-right alliance, to push back against corporate greed and political inertia, is instructive.
Such a coalition cannot thrive in a media landscape overrun by zealots and saboteurs. It needs a patriotic press that treats Nigeria as a sacred ground to be defended with honesty and empathy, not as a battleground for clickbait and artifice. If journalists continue to act as enablers of partisan warfare, they will thwart every attempt at a national consensus.
Read ALSO: Nigeria, China to unlock $2b maritime investment
Nigeria needs us to embrace our duty as fair arbiters and truth-tellers to birth a truly progressive democratic renaissance. But right now, we don’t seem interested in building bridges. We are setting them aflame. Each camp is too obsessed with winning the argument to win the country. Obidients vilify BATists. BATists mock Obidients. Everyone screams. No one listens. And Nigeria bleeds.
This is not a call for censorship. The Nigerian press must remain free; ferociously so. But freedom without responsibility is not liberty; it is licentiousness. Tact is not timidity. Responsibility is not repression. A patriotic press must espouse accuracy, fairness, and social responsibility alongside love for the country and the fragile lives teetering on the edge of chaos.
Nigeria is in dire need of a detribalised newsroom. We need a press that does not mistake Western hegemony for enlightenment, or editorial loyalty for nation-building. We need newsrooms that defy foreign interests seeking to recolonise Nigeria through narrative warfare.
In our march towards redemption, journalists must be less social mirrors and become compasses. We must stop amplifying society’s bigotries and start guiding it towards greater empathy and accountability.
To the younger journalists reading this: you do not have to be heroes. But you must not be villains. You must not be tools in the hands of dubious demagogues and activists. You must not lend your bylines to the machinery of misrule.
It’s about time we questioned our headlines, tempered our hot takes and acted better. For in a country teetering on the edge, the distance between peace and war may just be one journalist who chose the truth over the trending lie.