Nigeria, Journalism and respect for rule of law
September 6 2015 By Abi Giwa
Late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, always almost alone, fighting the powerful and their allies, to respect the rule of law
The truth is sacred. It is why whoever calls himself or herself a reporter or journalist, is always bound to be in trouble. The reason is not farther from the fact that the truth is his or her reliance, and the world hates the truth.
The world of course is constituted by people from the upper class strata of the society to the poor in the lower rung of the ladder. People in the upper class have money to own newspapers and televisions, and people who have risen from lower level working as journalists work in media houses owned by the people from the upper class.
Various journalists' associations have what they call 'codes of conduct', expected to guide journalist to ensure that the truth remains sacred beyond what anyone can mortgage. But then, various publishers and television house owners also have their own 'codes of conduct' as employers, which sometimes runs counter against the journalists' associations' codes of conduct, and only the journalist who wishes to be dispensed by his or her employer will prefer to embrace the associations' to the detriment of his or her employers's wish. A case of serving two masters and choosing the one to obey.
Would any journalist come out and say any evil he or she knows about the employer or write anything against the employer's interest and expect to retain the job? And yet as journalists we are expected to protect the observance of the rule of law with all our strength and life. A position expressed recently by Mike Awoyinfa, one of Nigeria's foremost journalists, on his view about the rule of law, lack of justice in the death of his bosom friend caused this rumination.
"It doesn’t really bother me. As I said, Igwe has forgiven whoever killed him. If police arrests the man who killed him now, of what benefit will that be? Will it bring back my friend? This is not like the Dele Giwa situation where people will ask, who killed Dele Giwa? I don’t give a damn about who killed him. I have forgiven him and I know my friend has forgiven him, too," Awoyinfa said in an interview published by the Nigeria Sun.
I believe that Awoyinfa is free to forgive those who may have been involved in the accident in which his bosom friend, Dimgba Igwe, was a victim. But can such forgiveness help the rule of law without the police arresting and bringing the suspect before a court of law for adjudication? Awoyinfa mentions of Dele Giwa, the media's resort to asking questions about 'who killed Dele Giwa' in the absence of seeming lack of information to pursue justice in the his murder case, in comparison to lack of information in tracing the driver who may have caused Igwe's injury that led to his death, and expresses carelessness about the police arresting the guy eventually, is nothing but a demonstration of lack of sense of commitment to the rule of law.
Awoyinfa's mention of Dele Giwa should concern me. He was killed in cold blood with a letter bomb, and I believe that if those who knew about his life and what happened to him in the Concord Press, where he was a notable editor of the Sunday Concord, the issue between him and his publisher, which led to his unceremonious departure from the newspaper house, I believe that perhaps if Concord journalists had spoken out about what they knew, newspapers would have had something close to a lead over issues that could have warranted anyone to have him killed with a bomb, beyond all that Nigerians heard concerning his assassination.
Awoyinfa was a Concord journalist the same period with Dele Giwa. He actually worked under Dele Giwa, when Dele was editor of the Sunday Concord, and not as conveyed in Awoyinfa's interview that Awoyinfa was Sunday Concord's editor. I respect Awoyinfa as a Weekend Concord's editor. However, I will not give him the credit that rightly belongs to another person. But the topic here remains the observance of the rule of law, the need to ensure justice in every murder case, to deter reoccurrence capable of turning the community into a jungle, where the safety of human lives is not guaranteed, and injustice becomes an order.
I am saying that if those community of journalists at the Concord Press, from Doyin Abiola, to the likes of Awoyinfa, who all knew the reason why Dele fell into Abiola's displeasure for having the temerity, resolve and desire to date a female reporter, whom Abiola said belonged to him and that the consequence was Abiola's removal of Dele as Sunday editor before his marriage to the female reporter, the veil behind who may have been behind the coup that ended Dele's life would not have been difficult to unravel, if they have spoken out.
But what did the public witnessed happened. Up till today, no one has come out to talk about the war of attrition Abiola waged against Dele over the female reporter that resulted into lifetime of enmity between the two. It is true that Dele was assassinated with a bomb in his home, with information of a close encounter between him and security agents over allegations he wanted to usher in a socialist revolution, employ a former police officer, and for alleged gun running, and that the envelope that contained the bomb that killed him had the imprint of the head of state as the sender.
Chief Gani Fawehinmi wasn't wrong either to have based his legal struggle for justice in Dele's murder on available information. The question is why did the whole number of journalists in the Concord Press at the time kept mum about the truth they knew of the war between Dele and Abiola. Wasn't there a war between Dele and Abiola, which story needed to be told or aired? Why was the story killed, who were those who killed the story and for what reason? Because as journalists, they could not bring themselves to write a story, which would have their employer throw them out of the office to begin a search for another employment.
This is one factor that has taken freedom away from journalism and journalists, and it is currently part of classroom discussions in journalism schools about how employers of journalists are capable of discouraging reporting of the truth, in matters where their interests are involved. and has made the 'new journalism' - enabled by the availability of the internet for all - required freedom for practitioners, away from the willful power of media owners.
Of course, countries where media owners play life and death role over journalists' lives cannot claim to have press freedom and the freedom to publish without internal censorship. It is the jungle Nigerian journalists have traveled for some long time with questionable rich people becoming media owners. Nigeria has been in the jungle for a long time, with the rich playing godly roles, government leaders in conjunction with the rich turning the people's patrimony to their personal use and the rule of law is whatever they think fit from the comfort of their bedrooms.
It is why it painful that a journalist of Awoyinfa's calibre would for any reason or dogma, disregard the role of the rule of law and justice in his friend's death.
The world of course is constituted by people from the upper class strata of the society to the poor in the lower rung of the ladder. People in the upper class have money to own newspapers and televisions, and people who have risen from lower level working as journalists work in media houses owned by the people from the upper class.
Various journalists' associations have what they call 'codes of conduct', expected to guide journalist to ensure that the truth remains sacred beyond what anyone can mortgage. But then, various publishers and television house owners also have their own 'codes of conduct' as employers, which sometimes runs counter against the journalists' associations' codes of conduct, and only the journalist who wishes to be dispensed by his or her employer will prefer to embrace the associations' to the detriment of his or her employers's wish. A case of serving two masters and choosing the one to obey.
Would any journalist come out and say any evil he or she knows about the employer or write anything against the employer's interest and expect to retain the job? And yet as journalists we are expected to protect the observance of the rule of law with all our strength and life. A position expressed recently by Mike Awoyinfa, one of Nigeria's foremost journalists, on his view about the rule of law, lack of justice in the death of his bosom friend caused this rumination.
"It doesn’t really bother me. As I said, Igwe has forgiven whoever killed him. If police arrests the man who killed him now, of what benefit will that be? Will it bring back my friend? This is not like the Dele Giwa situation where people will ask, who killed Dele Giwa? I don’t give a damn about who killed him. I have forgiven him and I know my friend has forgiven him, too," Awoyinfa said in an interview published by the Nigeria Sun.
I believe that Awoyinfa is free to forgive those who may have been involved in the accident in which his bosom friend, Dimgba Igwe, was a victim. But can such forgiveness help the rule of law without the police arresting and bringing the suspect before a court of law for adjudication? Awoyinfa mentions of Dele Giwa, the media's resort to asking questions about 'who killed Dele Giwa' in the absence of seeming lack of information to pursue justice in the his murder case, in comparison to lack of information in tracing the driver who may have caused Igwe's injury that led to his death, and expresses carelessness about the police arresting the guy eventually, is nothing but a demonstration of lack of sense of commitment to the rule of law.
Awoyinfa's mention of Dele Giwa should concern me. He was killed in cold blood with a letter bomb, and I believe that if those who knew about his life and what happened to him in the Concord Press, where he was a notable editor of the Sunday Concord, the issue between him and his publisher, which led to his unceremonious departure from the newspaper house, I believe that perhaps if Concord journalists had spoken out about what they knew, newspapers would have had something close to a lead over issues that could have warranted anyone to have him killed with a bomb, beyond all that Nigerians heard concerning his assassination.
Awoyinfa was a Concord journalist the same period with Dele Giwa. He actually worked under Dele Giwa, when Dele was editor of the Sunday Concord, and not as conveyed in Awoyinfa's interview that Awoyinfa was Sunday Concord's editor. I respect Awoyinfa as a Weekend Concord's editor. However, I will not give him the credit that rightly belongs to another person. But the topic here remains the observance of the rule of law, the need to ensure justice in every murder case, to deter reoccurrence capable of turning the community into a jungle, where the safety of human lives is not guaranteed, and injustice becomes an order.
I am saying that if those community of journalists at the Concord Press, from Doyin Abiola, to the likes of Awoyinfa, who all knew the reason why Dele fell into Abiola's displeasure for having the temerity, resolve and desire to date a female reporter, whom Abiola said belonged to him and that the consequence was Abiola's removal of Dele as Sunday editor before his marriage to the female reporter, the veil behind who may have been behind the coup that ended Dele's life would not have been difficult to unravel, if they have spoken out.
But what did the public witnessed happened. Up till today, no one has come out to talk about the war of attrition Abiola waged against Dele over the female reporter that resulted into lifetime of enmity between the two. It is true that Dele was assassinated with a bomb in his home, with information of a close encounter between him and security agents over allegations he wanted to usher in a socialist revolution, employ a former police officer, and for alleged gun running, and that the envelope that contained the bomb that killed him had the imprint of the head of state as the sender.
Chief Gani Fawehinmi wasn't wrong either to have based his legal struggle for justice in Dele's murder on available information. The question is why did the whole number of journalists in the Concord Press at the time kept mum about the truth they knew of the war between Dele and Abiola. Wasn't there a war between Dele and Abiola, which story needed to be told or aired? Why was the story killed, who were those who killed the story and for what reason? Because as journalists, they could not bring themselves to write a story, which would have their employer throw them out of the office to begin a search for another employment.
This is one factor that has taken freedom away from journalism and journalists, and it is currently part of classroom discussions in journalism schools about how employers of journalists are capable of discouraging reporting of the truth, in matters where their interests are involved. and has made the 'new journalism' - enabled by the availability of the internet for all - required freedom for practitioners, away from the willful power of media owners.
Of course, countries where media owners play life and death role over journalists' lives cannot claim to have press freedom and the freedom to publish without internal censorship. It is the jungle Nigerian journalists have traveled for some long time with questionable rich people becoming media owners. Nigeria has been in the jungle for a long time, with the rich playing godly roles, government leaders in conjunction with the rich turning the people's patrimony to their personal use and the rule of law is whatever they think fit from the comfort of their bedrooms.
It is why it painful that a journalist of Awoyinfa's calibre would for any reason or dogma, disregard the role of the rule of law and justice in his friend's death.
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