Courting Presidency and Gagging the Press

The recent forceful prevention of an ARISE NEWS Channel cameraman from covering a dialogue between the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, and members of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group ahead of a crucial general election signals danger both for the media and Nigeria’s fledgling democracy, Louis Achi writes

In Nigeria, the media is often criticised – accused of trespassing on personal privacy and hunting witches, which exist only in its own imagination. But then, the traditional and new media have been like this for centuries in many countries all over the world. Nigeria is not different.

All that is new is that technology has given them a bigger bite. But it is hard to see how a democratic society can fully flourish without a free media. Some of the demons it pursues and the devils it reveals deserve their fate. If it tramples upon privacy, the result is often the truth. It holds the ring between vested political interest and the common public good. It is the Fourth Estate.

It is against this backdrop that the unseemly ruckus that occurred penultimate Friday in Abuja when the Presidential Campaign Council’s (PCC of the All Progressives Congress (APC)) forcefully prevented an ARISE NEWS Channel cameraman from covering a dialogue session between the APC’s presidential candidate, Senator Bola Tinubu and members of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) can be best assessed. Tinubu had unfolded his economic plan before the organised private sector under the aegis of NESG.

Of course, angry reactions have trailed this deliberate attempt to gag the media.

In its studied reaction, the Media Rights Agenda (MRA) held that “the APC-PCC’s blatant disregard for the rights of a journalist performing a constitutionally-protected function at a time when the party was still seeking to persuade Nigerians to vote its candidate into the highest office in the land, portends grave dangers for the media should that candidate prevail in the elections.”

In a statement issued in Lagos, last week, MRA’s Programme Director, Mr. Ayode Longe, stressed that the action of the party’s PCC that was made public by its Director of Media Publicity, Bayo Onanuga, was bizarre, highhanded and a violation of the rights of the media.

Apparently unaware of the potential backlash, Onanuga had claimed on Twitter that the ARISE cameraman was caught, allegedly clandestinely live-streaming Tinubu’s campaign event without authorisation and had accused him of being “on espionage mission.”

But Longe expressed outrage at the allegation and the justification for the unconstitutional action, describing it as ridiculous and baffling.

According to Longe, “What authorisation does the journalist require to perform his professional duty of covering a political campaign event? How can a purely journalistic act by a cameraman from a television station filming a public political campaign event and beaming it live to a public audience be characterised as espionage?

“Should the cameraman have first made a public announcement that he is covering the event so as not to be accused of doing so clandestinely?” he queried.

It was not the first time the APC-PCC would attempt to gag the media. At the peak of calls for presidential candidates to attended town hall meetings, the spokesmen of the PCC had cleverly excluded their principal, Senator Bola Tinubu. They defended and resisted it vehemently. Nothing to contrary made them see reason why Tinubu should attend any town hall meeting. This was followed by attacks on the media houses which dared to question why the APC presidential candidate should come forward to tell Nigerians how he hope the salvage the country if elected president.

This perhaps was what further clearly miffed Longe when he said he found it “particularly bewildering because Mr. Onanuga, who issued the justification and made the accusation of espionage, spent a significant portion of his career as a professional journalist engaged in what came to be known as guerrilla journalism, for which he and the two media outlets, TheNews and Tempo magazines, where he served as an editor, were widely applauded by people like Senator Bola Tinubu.

“It is the worst form of irony that he is now attempting to condemn a journalist engaged in his professional pursuit as having committed a capital offence.”

Further according to the MRA’s Programme Director, “If this attitude is indicative of the vision of the party or its presidential candidate on the role of the media in the democratic process, then we shudder to think of what the future holds for journalists and the media community should this attitude and mentality be brought into the highest political office in Nigeria.”

He also noted that it was the duty of the media to scrutinise and hold accountable public office holders and institutions as well as public figures, including political parties and candidates seeking public office, and to ensure that the members of the public have as much information as possible about them, their programmes and their track records in and out of office.

“The media cannot properly play their role in the electoral process if they are prevented from having access to public events which form part of the process,” he said, noting that anyone unwilling to be subjected to scrutiny by the media has no business seeking public office.

It was contrary to the code of journalism practice in Nigeria and everywhere else in the world that institutions or individuals who were being held accountable should be the ones to determine the media organisations or journalists that are allowed to hold them to account, he stressed, insisting that journalists are entitled to and should be given the fullest access to all electoral events, and that such access should be non-discriminatory. 

Effective media interface between the political parties, government and the public is especially important in countries in transition like Nigeria, where major changes in all aspects of life have left the citizenry uncertain about the incoming political leadership and their often foggy agenda. This is such a period.

To reach large numbers of the population, political parties and governments everywhere rely heavily on the media. The media filters and analyses information, making these available to the citizens, thus enabling them to take informed decisions. Political parties need to learn to tolerate and appreciate the role of an independent media in the democratic process as an essential supplier of feedback as well as a communication channel.

According to the Texan economist and philosopher, Clarence E. Ayres, the essence of democracy is the idea that each citizen has a voice, actualised in the right to vote, and when these diverse voices come together a majority rule is formed. But democracy is not just the fact that the majority rules, it is the process of inquiry by which consensus is formed.

Former US Secretary of State, Condeleza Rice, at Edward R. Murrow Journalism Programme at the State Department, keyed into the foregoing distinctions when she held that, “There is no more important pillar of democracy than a free and active press,” what American “founding father” Thomas Jefferson called “the fourth estate.”

What Jefferson meant, according to Rice, was that without a free and active press, “the people could not be certain that their views would be known to their leaders and that their leaders’ views would be known to them.” A free and independent media is one of democracy’s most important institutions.

Clearly, gagging the media, either by governments or political parties aspiring to rule, is a form of dictatorship that no serious democracy should accommodate. A deep democracy functions in no small part through an informed and engaged citizenry. The media helps to shape this through open and responsible journalism.