NAVIGATING AROUND THE DILENMA OF INTERESTS

Okechukwu Uwaezuoke

“Is there a free press in Nigeria?” 

Jörg Armbruster, a German television journalist, asked me this question with an unmistakable twinge of concern in his voice. His unexpressed reassurance that he would understand if, for fear of my safety back home, I refrained from answering any of his questions lurked behind the apparent harmlessness and matter-of-factness of this particular question. 

It was sometime in April 2009 and I was among a group of foreign journalists huddled around a conference table, during a press conference he was hosting for the Goethe-Institut in Berlin that sun-drenched morning.

So, how did I respond? I’ll tell you about it as we go along. But, strictly speaking, that isn’t relevant here because I wouldn’t want to stray from my brief, which is to review the book Pen Parrot. Suffice it to say, Ambruster’s question dredged up issues revolving around the word “freedom” and our perceptions of it. For example, do the guarantees of our fundamental rights, as well as the removal of external constraints and deterrents to the free exercise of our will, imply that a society is free?

These thoughts about freedom kept buzzing around in my head, nonetheless. This is even as I skimmed through the engaging stories in the 91-page collection of investigative reports originally published in the community newspaper Fresh Insight between 2015 and 2021.   

Talking about the collection, the stories are classified under subheadings such as agriculture, royalty, crime, education, and health according to their homogeneity. For the journalists, these are, in a sense, streams of expressions to which they can apply their resourcefulness and tenacity. Indeed, it is their tenacity in uncovering the facts that makes the stories so excitingly worth reading. 

Almost a decade in the game, Fresh Insight has remained committed to its purpose of exposing wrongdoing. While this stance understandably earns it formidable enemies in government circles, it also continues to endear it to the state’s opposition parties. This means that it has had loyal readers on both sides of the political divide at some point over its seven-year lifespan. Perhaps, this is why Dr Abdullateef Isiaka Alagbonsi of the University of Rwanda’s College of Medicine, in the book’s preface, described what this newspaper is doing as “a perilous job”. And he added: “Not every medium, which is for-profit, can be anti-government.” 

In case this point was overlooked, Fresh Insight is not a non-profit organisation. Indeed, it is not quite similar to the privately-owned French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, which also relies on investigative journalism and leaks from inside the French government, political and business circles, as well as jokes and cartoons, but does not accept advertisements. “Over the years, Fresh Insight has emerged as a foremost investigative media house, exposing societal rots, sharp practices, massive corruption, ensuring the voiceless are given a voice and making firm stand on issues bothering on socio-political and economic inequality, human rights and democratic development,” the book’s introduction corroborates. “This self-imposed mandate is being faithfully and consistently carried out even at the detriment of the brand’s commercial interests.” 

The stories in the agriculture segment (dated 21st July 2020, 23rd July 2020, and 3rd August 2020) give readers a taste of what to expect. Talking about these stories, they are part of a three-part report on contract inflation in official circles, and they are nostalgically reminiscent of investigative reports from the era of defunct newsmagazines like Newswatch and Newbreed. Abdulrasheed Akogun (in Ilorin) and Godwin Irue (in Abuja) found themselves balancing the balancing act of sleuthing around, asking the appropriate questions, and dutifully reproducing the answers of their interviewees in their “exclusive” report, titled “Multi-million-naira Scandal Rocks Kwara Tractorization Exercise?”

Following closely on the heels of the stories in the preceding segment are other incisive reports bordering on controversies surrounding the process of selecting a new monarch, which comprise the segment tagged royalty. Following that is a smorgasbord of crime stories involving not only the usual suspects such as kidnapping, cultism, murder, rape, and robbery, but also the ghost worker scandal in government offices. 

The reader notices that the same undercurrent of impropriety pervades the stories in the education segment. This makes him wonder if the reports should not have been included in the crime segment. 

As for the concluding segment on health, the stories are exclusively about the COVID-19 pandemic. The stories detail who tested positive for the pandemic, who died as a result of it, the closure of the Kwara State Government House clinic during the pandemic scare, and the misappropriation of funds intended for frontline workers, among other things.

The newspaper, whose primarily online publications are supplemented by a limited print run of hardcopies, has earned all of the praise lavished on it in the book’s foreword by former Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Bolaji Abdullahi. “I have watched the evolution of this media platform over the years and I have watched how it has stepped in to occupy the otherwise vacated space of community journalism in our clime, while establishing, what I would comfortably describe as the strongest platform for aggregating the voice of ordinary citizens on topical issues ranging from the most serious to the most mundane,” Abdullahi wrote. 

However, it must be acknowledged that the newspaper’s editorial content could benefit from some professional assistance. Because time would not permit my listing all the howlers in the book, I will be content with citing just two examples. The first is a paragraph on page 13, which asserts: “Fresh Insight investigation showed that, at no time did all the tractors left [instead of leave] the government house simultaneously at once.” Then, another story confuses the reader with its headline on page 127, which says: UNILORIN PREVENTS BEST GRADUATING STUDENT, 3 OTHERS FROM CONVOKING. Now, since the word “convoke” means to “call together or summon (an assembly or meeting)”, it is clear that the headline is misleading. Its true meaning can be found in the story’s opening paragraph, which reads: “The University of Ilorin earlier today denied four of its graduating pharmacist students from convoking, at the 4th induction/oath taking ceremony for 2018/2019 academic session held at the University Auditorium. Investigations by Freshinsightnewstv.com revealed that the affffected [wrongly spelt] students, one of whom was the best graduating student for the set, Lawal Ameenat Adeola,who was number 20 on the published graduands’ list, Abdulrahman Hamdalat Modupe number one on the list and 2 others were prevented from accessing the convocation arena under the guise of ‘not duly’ graduated.”

To wrap up this review, I’d want to return to my response to the question posed by the German television interviewer. My response, tinged with patriotic zeal, was that the press in Nigeria is as free as it is in Germany. What’s my justification? No newspaper, including Die Berliner Zeitung, where I interned for a month, is indifferent to its owner’s interests. So, my question to the publishers of Fresh Insight is: how can they avoid offending their advertisers? 

•The foregoing are excerpts of the review of the book, Pen Parrot, which was presented on Saturday, March 5 in Ilorin, Kwara State