The title of this essay should reverberate among people who had become adults around 1984. I don’t belong to that age bracket, but the precocious in my generation would remember the statement “I will tamper with press freedom” wistfully. Yes, wistfully. We were enjoying the Harmattan and conviviality of yuletide and New Year in pristine Evwreni on 1st January 1984 when the news of an end of year coup d’ tat got to us. We were innocent children savouring the rare taste of Christmas rice and stew and getting set for our masquerade show that earned us dough. Our only awareness that things had gone awry was that some of the items that constituted our menu had begun to vanish. Tea was no longer on our table just as bread was no more for breakfast. Rice had also become a rare item, except for Christmas and New Year. But we heard our parents and guardians and even teachers talk about corruption and rigging of election. We heard them, but they meant nothing to us. All of that changed in January 1984 in our first year in secondary school.
The teachers in the residential quarters where we lived bought many newspapers that January as that was the most authentic and lasting record of what was going on in Lagos, then the seat of power. Curiosity made some of us to begin reading the newspapers intensively as if for an examination. The stories were exciting as they detailed the actions of the new rulers who were young and good looking soldiers as evidenced in the pictures in the newspapers. Stories of arrest and detention of politicians of the deposed regime made the headlines. Our parents and guardians hailed the soldiers and we children adored if not admired them. Then one day we saw one newspaper, I think it should be National Concord, with the headline “I will tamper with press freedom”. The statement was attributed to the Major General Muhammadu Buhari, the young military head of state. His picture was on the cover. He was trim, young, good looking, likable, and austere. As children we didn’t know the impact of that declaration. We were rather enchanted by the power and authority the statement commanded. We soon adopted the phrase “I will tamper with” in our dealings in school. Our prefects also borrowed the phrase “with immediate effect” from the new military rulers.
Yes, Buhari as military dictator did tamper with press freedom. I am sure, not too long after that declaration Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, both of The Guardian were sent to prison. Two notorious military legislations reinforced the gross violation of human rights and the muffling of the press. One was Decree No. 2 and the other was Decree No. 4. The former allowed the regime to detain anybody indefinitely without trial. The later was an artillery nozzle aimed at the heart of the press. In its quest for scapegoats the soldiers branded many deeds, even innocuous ones, as sabotage. Thus, for twenty months the media gasped for breadth under Buhari’s jackboot. He waged a war against the nation in the name of War Against Indiscipline.
When Major General Ibrahim Babangida, Buhari’s buddy for twenty years, shoved him aside and took over governance he did so under the excuse of redressing the excessive human rights abuse and gagging of the press experienced under the latter’s draconian regime. But military rule was military rule, because even though Babangida pretended to be a reformer he entrenched Buhari’s assault on the media. The situation got worse under General Sani Abacha who usurped the Interim National Government (ING) to crown himself head of state. Thus, for sixteen years, from 1983 to 1999, the soldiers in power tampered with press freedom. Dele Giwa paid the supreme price. Others spent time in Abacha’s gulag or were “jailed for life” as Kunle Ajibade experienced and wrote.
Yet, in spite of the media’s gory experience in those sixteen gruesome years many journalists stood up in defiance against oppression. Those brave souls who founded and worked with news magazines such as Tell, The News, Tempo and others typified the heroism of defiance in the face of military barbarism. They proved that the pen was truly mightier than the armoured tank and not even the sword. The press created a site of struggle which took a pan-Nigerian dimension. The experience became a recreation of the role the press played in the quest for independence before 1960. Yes, the 1990s was the decade of struggle for a second independence from benighted military rule. Nigerians won mainly due to the role of the press.
The recent closure of the AIT and Raypower, both media outfits of DAAR Communications Limited, is the true to type of the abrasive assault on the press for which soldiers in power are known. When Ishaq Modibo Kawu the pugnacious Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) reeled out reasons for the closure of the station it was merely an act intended to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. It is still fresh how the presidency blacklisted and barred the AIT from Aso Rock. Soldiers also invaded and occupied the offices of Daily Trust. Daily Independent journalist was also unlawfully incarcerated by the DSS. Many other instances of tampering with press freedom now abound because we are back to 1984.
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