Opinion
By DR. Bisi Olawunmi
THE public spat between two prominent media owners – Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Television Continental (TVC) and THE NATION newspaper and Nduka Obaignena, proprietor of Arise News TV and THISDAY newspaper – with their media warriors engaged in mud fight on behalf of their principals, has unnervingly exposed the ugly underbelly of media practice in Nigeria. The surrogate media warriors, carrying the can on behalf of their principals, are the old guard of Dele Alake/Bayo Onanuga for Tinubu, in a tackle with the younger generation of Reuben Abati/Rufai Oseni. I will address the confrontation at two levels – as an academic interrogation and as public affairs commentary.
At the academic level, there is need to interrogate some operative words : free press, independent media , press freedom , blackmail, bullying and unethical practices freely bandied by the two parties. For a starter, perhaps, we could look at the titles of some of the statements issued by the two parties to have an appreciation of the depth of venom, animosity and the incense which characterized the personalised confrontation. These are some of the headlines in newspapers and online media platforms : Dec. 12, 2022 – You can’t silence free press, ARISE Editors tell Tinubu’s media campaign DG, Onanuga ; Dec. 13, 2022 – Nduka Obaigbena and his THISDAY/Arise News’ hypocritical grandstanding on public morality ; Dec. 14, 2022 – LIES HAVE SHORT LEGS. THEY DO NOT RUN FAR, Fake News from Bayo Onanuga and Dele Alake ; Dec. 15, 2022 – How Obaigbena is undermining integrity of journalism – APC Campaign.
In his December 14, 2022 statement signed by his Chief of Staff, Fauziya Mohammed, Obaigbena had dared Onanuga and Alake to present Tinubu for Townhall debate of more than eight minutes ‘’where questions are not pre-set, pre-arranged and rehearsed’’, stressing ‘’the resort to media bullying tactics , blackmail and fake news will not work’’. In its December 15, 2022 response, the APC Presidential Campaign Council’s duo of Dele Alake and Bayo Onanuga reiterated the party’s stand not to make Tinubu, its presidential candidate, available to a scheme that ‘’is nothing but a racket by the Arise TV owner designed to embarrass our candidate’’. It pointed out what it described as Obaigbena’s ‘’ well-known perverse and ignoble approach to media practice… that continues to undermine the integrity of the journalism profession in the country’’. Then, the APC –PCC brought the hammer down on the THISDAY/ARISE TV owner, pointing out that : ‘’ Mr Nduka Obaigbena (is) a congenital blackmailer and hustler’’ who ordinarily is beneath their level as ‘’well-bred media professionals to continue to engage in a public spat’’.
Perhaps the trigger for current virulent confrontation can be traced to the joint statement by THISDAY/ARISE News Boards of Editors reported on December 12, 2022 on what they claimed was APC’s efforts to silence free and independent press where they accused Alake and Onanuga of taking ‘’unprofessionalism, recklessness, picayune politics and blackmail to a new art form’’, snickering that the two men even threaten the free press with The Nigerian Press Council (NPC). THISDAY/ARISE News Boards dismissed The Nigerian Press Council as an agency ‘’that has been completely rejected by the mainstream independent Nigerian media precisely for the reason of misuse and abuse by an incipient dictatorship’’. This is reckless arrogance by the two boards and arrant mischief that has attended journalists’ , particularly print journalists’ opposition to the NPC, when the three umbrella media organizations – the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN) the Nigerian Guild of Editors ( NGE) and the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) – cannot exercise professional discipline on print media practitioners. So, the print media terrain is strewn with unethical practices, including news fabrication and non payment of salaries to journalists, for months. Perhaps, the Nigerian Press Council can seize the moral high ground on this issue by investigating the serious charges and counter charges of professional misconduct by the media combatants and make its findings public to exert moral pressure. Given its mandate, the NPC is not completely a toothless bulldog, though journalists would want to make it irrelevant.
The notion of free and independent press bandied by both parties exist in their warped imagination. It is a convenient labelling adopted by the media, that is not in accord with reality. Can THE NATION newspaper and the TVC owned by Tinubu be regarded as free and independent ? Similarly, can THISDAY newspaper and ARISE NEWS TV lay claim to being a free and independent press ? It is intriguing how in their blind anger and personal animosity, it did not occur to Dele Alake, Bayo Onanuga, as Tinubu surrogates and Reuben Abati/Rufai Oseni in Obaigbena’s corner that their very public spat has exposed them as lackeys in the slave camps of media owners. Their talk or posture on professionalism and free press , therefore, amount to brazen propaganda. But give it to Tinubu, he had refrained from getting into the gutter with his warriors, as opposed to Obaigbena, maintaining a presidential aloofness, even when he is the issue !!! His TEAM STRATEGY or surrogate replica ?
THISDAY/ARISE Team shot itself in the foot by alluding to its alleged fake news by Alake and Onanuga as copycat of former American President, Donald Trump’s penchant of tarring mainstream American media as purveyors of fake news. This exposes the media outlets’ shallowness, illiteracy and lack of diligence, as it implies that the charge of fake news peddled by some big American media establishments, as exposed by Trump, was false. Nothing can be further from the truth. I will illustrate the validity of Trump’s fake news charge against the American media with one classic example. The CNN, the global leader in international broadcasting had on June 22, 2017 , barely five months into the Trump Presidency , published an article on its website, indicating federal investigators’ probe of a meeting between then White House adviser, Anthony Scaramucci and director of a Russian investment fund, Kirill Dmitriev, which the anonymous source quoted by CNN disowned, and had to be retracted by the CNN. Four days later, on June 26, 2017, three top CNN journalists, including Eric Litchblau , a Pulitzer Prize winner, journalism’s highest recognition award, were forced to resign their roles in the article. Today, the menace of Fake News has become a global issue of interest, thanks to Donald Trump.
Now, to the second segment – the public affairs commentary on the saga that pitted ageing Alake/Onanuga against the younger Abati/Oseni with Obaigbena providing backup for his boys. Rufai Oseni, in his early 40s is the youngest. He carries on with a cocky arrogance, apparently conscious of his high standing with the audience. I have not read any record of his journalism training, except that he has worked in several radio and TV stations, majorly as sports reporter and analyst. And sports is about entertainment, so he brought the titillating touch to anchoring an interview programme which is a serious business. Oseni read Animal Anatomy and Physiology, and given the clinical way he confronts quests on the Arise TV programme, perhaps the Jagaban is afraid the young man may dissect his political anatomy and expose his innards to public view ! The $460,000 Tinubu forfeited in connection with a drug trafficking investigation in the U.S. remains a major burden that won’t go away, in spite of the strenuous efforts of his propaganda team. Oseni has the nickname ‘ Ruffdfire’ , surely the Jagaban won’t want fire to burn him in an Oseni incendiary !!. So, is Tinubu afraid to ” lule ” ( crash ) to ambush questions from Oseni ? Reuben Abati read Theatre Arts (PhD) but at least had a minimum professional qualification with a certificate in journalism from University of Maryland, United States (1996-97) As a Theatre artist, Reuben is a master of word play, beautiful spoken English, except that he often forgets that his duty, as anchor, is to ask questions, not sermonizing his quests in long, winding sentences, laced with editorializing. He apparently has not read Larry King, of the famous ‘Larry King Show’ on CNN who gave the injunction that if it takes more than three sentences to ask a question, it is a bad question. Dele Alake is the pugilist per excellence who must have infected Onanuga with his stridency. He is aggressiveness personified and Tinubu seems to be his new God, after Chief M.K.O Abiola. I sympathise with Alake. In spite of serving Tinubu loyally, he had not been able to go beyond state level appointment while those who came on board the political train after him have become governors and ministers. Somebody said maybe villagers from his Ikoro-Ekiti hometown are ‘’ following him’’ ! Alake loves to project intellectualism, posturing as a scholar. I sympathize with him. You see, with a 1981 Masters degree in Mass Communication, Dele Alake has been stuck in the halfway station on the intellectual train journey to PhD destination. He is apparently putting all he has in this last-stand political battle for a last laugh to get a federal appointment in a Tinubu Presidency, hence the no-holds-barred dogfight with Obaigbena and his THISDAY/ARISE NEWS crowd.
Bayo Onanuga qualifies as a journalism professional not only by mass communication academic training and media practice, but by the integrity and ethical conduct he has brought to journalism practice. For instance, he resigned from Concord newspaper rather than accept MKO Abiola’s directive to apologise for a factual story the military leadership considered offensive. That is passing the integrity test. He did an investigative report on an investment icon of his Ijebu-Ode hometown, based on principle, devoid of ethnic consideration, and also got a reporter who fabricated a story fired when he was Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria, despite opposition from vested quarters. That is passing the ethical Journalism test. But at age 65, Onanuga and Alake , 66, are ancients in active mass and strategic communication practice, but who have failed to display the maturity that age bestows.
Overall, the media is on the ropes, world wide, largely because journalists have become partisans, guns for hire to vested interests. The public spat between the Tinubu and Obaigbena camps has highlighted the self-serving, but unmerited self-righteousness of many journalists, that bothers on irrationality. This is manifested by the two warring camps breaching the ceasefire agreement of letting bygone be bygone brokered by Chief Segun Osoba and Mr. Sam Amuka Pemu, the Vanguard publisher, as elders of the journalism profession and the leaders of the Nigerian Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria, NPAN, the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and Nigeria Union Journalists (NUJ ). This is disrespect and intransigence of the highest order, and exposes the fallacy of preachment of press freedom as freedom from any restraint, either by government or professional body, which media scholars term negative press freedom. Journalists and other media practitioners must be made to understand that the media is a strategic industry that at some point, risks government intervention, as warned by the Hutchin’s Commission Report of 1947 on the Freedom of the Press in the U.S where the media failed to self regulate and be professionally, ethically responsible in its conduct.
Dr. Bisi Olawunmi, Senior Lecturer, Department of Mass Communication, Adeleke University, Ede, Osun State, is former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria. Phone(SMS ONLY) 0803 364 7571 Email : olawunmibisi@yahoo.com.
A.I
Tags: Bayo Onanuga Bola Ahmed Tinubu Dele Alake Nduka Obaignena Reuben Abati Rufai Oseni
