History tangles the past with the present in webs of fact. Its practice is to treat things that exist here and now as though they concern the past and to use them in new compositions designed to equip people for the future.
Undoubtedly, society without a collective memory would be as disoriented, dysfunctional, incoherent and programmed for destruction as an individual without that critical faculty. The present, anchored on the past, is able to confidently navigate the future.
As a Democracy Day, June 12 does not only connect the younger generation to a significant part of the nation’s history, but also will continue to inspire questions about Nigeria’s perceptible structural problems that Hope ’93 wanted to address. The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) regime’s recognition of June 12 as Nigeria’s Democracy Day is a partial redemption of the June 12 watershed.
However, June 12, democracy and governance should be a means to an end: improving people’s lives; and delivering wellness, development and prosperity. Democracy Day deserves truthful confrontation with the socio-economic political conditions that we have brought into being to plague ourselves and thus, compel our acceptance of responsibility for whatever, and wherever.
Now that June 12 has come to stay as Nigeria’s Democracy Day, it is proper to assess the state of the nation especially from the mirror of sacrifices that went into the struggle to revalidate the annulled election. One is particularly interested in the activities of the vibrant press in resisting repressive acts of the military in the dark days of military rule in our country and how the Fourth Realm of the Estate has fared in the last 21 years of democracy.
Press freedom is the foundation stone of a democratic state without which the people would be exposed only to “information” deemed acceptable to those in power. Twenty-one years into the Fourth Republic, it is saddening to conclude that our version of democracy is killing the press and thus nothing spectacular has changed in our socio-political landscape. Sadly, there seems to be little assurance that much will change. What of the eminent space that anti-democracy elements still occupy in our political landscape?
Since May 1999, administrations from the Olusegun Obasanjo’s have adopted a high-handed strategy and approach in dealing with journalists and media houses perceived as being independent of government control through security agencies.
The current Buhari regime started with the abuse of a journalist. On June 1, 2015, police officers in Abuja, attacked Muhammad Atta-Kafin-Dangi, a journalist with Radio Nigeria, for attempting to cover a protest staged by commercial motorcyclists (Okada). On June 25, the publisher of Prime Magazine, Yomi Olomofe, was severely beaten inside the Nigerian Customs Service office in Badagry, Lagos. He was reportedly investigating reports that customs officials at the Nigeria-Benin border were assisting smugglers when more than 15 men attacked him and another journalist in front of senior officials, who did not intervene. Olomofe was beaten until he lost consciousness.
The media sector in Nigeria remains an easy target for state security agencies (police, Department of State Security, prison authorities, SARS etc) and has been continually abused.
The ranking of Reporters Without Borders (RWB), an international non-governmental organisation based in Paris, that conducts political advocacy on issues relating to freedom of information and freedom of the press, has seen Nigeria fall from 111 in 2015 to 116 in 2016, and 122 in 2017. In 2018, Nigeria moved to 119 and dropped a place again in 2019 to 120 among 180 countries. Nigeria’s rankings have fallen within the “red zone” for press freedom. It is imperative to understand that press freedom is not about physically restraining journalists from doing their work, but is also about denying them information meant for public consumption.
Going down memory lane, If we limit press freedom abuse under the military dictators to cases after June 12 annulment, we would recall that in 1993 alone, some 300,000 publications were seized, 54 journalists arrested, more than 20 of them summoned to appear in court, six reporters or photographers assaulted or injured, four publications and one radio station suspended or put under pressure by the authorities. Aside from that, 17 titles were proscribed by decree and 17 journalists (in government-owned media) dismissed or disciplined for political reasons; 10 of them resigned in protest.
Between March and late August 1993, the SSS agents raided the Lagos offices of The News Magazine several times, seizing tens of thousands copies of the weekly. Tempo magazine was also seized from the time it was banned in June 1993. Between early May and late August 1993, when General Ibrahim Babangida was forced to step aside, more than 200,000 copies of Tell magazine were seized.
Many could still recount how the military junta flooded the space with fake editions of opposition titles during the June 12 struggle. It was alleged that the SSS produced fake editions of these notable pro- democracy newspapers to confuse the public. Fake copies of the Tell, Tempo, The News and TSM magazines were especially in circulation in March 1994 when the Abacha junta began to employ the dirty scheme.
In 1994, in the thick of resistance against oppressive military rule, especially with the highly successful oil sector workers’ strike, the Abacha regime went a step further by banning media houses. From June 1994 onwards, offices of Moshood Abiola’s Concord and Punch newspapers were cordoned off by security operatives on the pretext that arms and ammunition were stockpiled on their premises. In mid-August 1994, it was the turn of The Guardian newspaper — whose owner, Alex Ibru, was serving as the interior minister to the despotic Abacha junta!
In June 1993, wives of Dapo Olorunyomi, one of the editors of The News and Shola Odunfa, Nigerian BBC correspondent, were arrested. With such attacks and sabotage on the increase since 1995, journalists had to cautiously handle warnings they received either directly or through relatives or friends working in the security services.
In 1995, the military regime set a new precedent by sentencing to life imprisonment –later commuted, under international pressure, to 15 years –four journalists charged with plotting to overthrow the government of the late Abacha. They were tried in camera by a military court in July 1995 alongside several dozens of Nigerian Army officers. The journalists were George Mbah, Deputy Editor of Tell, Ben Charles Obi, Editor of Weekend Classique, Kunle Ajibade, Editor of The News, and Christine Anyanwu, Editor of The Sunday Magazine (TSM).
In light of the above, as we understandably bask in the euphoria of June 12 celebrations, the media, especially, must remain deeply committed to the entrenchment of democratic values and norms in the country. It is essential to draw some lessons and stay on the track of truth and objectivity in this period when the country is at a crossroads. If current holders of power in Nigeria, most of whom were practically opposed to the spirit of “June 12”, are still characterised by the culture of brazen looting of public treasury, outright commercialisation of politics and personalisation of public offices, the press should know that it is not yet time to celebrate.
In sum, argument here is press freedom goes hand in hand with the freedom of expression, which together are inalienable rights of human beings. Once you mortgage one of them, you end up automatically limiting the other. Again, June 12 will only make meaning to the extent the people are integrated into governing process and accorded a free rein in leadership recruitment, policy making and even implementation. If we are to foreclose a return to tyrannical acts which the press suffered under the military, hardly can the press afford to be dormant in its denunciation of anti-democratic postures of current political actors. To do that might consume the media itself.
Musbau is a public affairs analyst based in Alausa, Ikeja.
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