NIGERIA MEDIA MONITOR

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#03-02 MONDAY 12 JANUARY 1998

*	ADMINISTRATOR THREATENS TO SACK RADIO MANAGEMENT
*	JUDGE WITHDRAWS CASE AGAINST JOURNALIST
*	JOURNALISTS REGAIN FREEDOM
*	DELTA RADIO ON TEST TRANSMISSION, BAYELSA PLANS STATIONS
*	RADIO KUDIRAT ON VACATION
*	COUP: THE DANGER ON THE BEAT
*	EXPECTATIONS OF A JAILED EDITOR'S WIFE
*	1997: ZEST AND THE MEDIA

	NEWSREEL

UBAH THREATENS TO SACK RADIO MANAGEMENT

Kebbi State Administrator, Col. John Ubah, has threatened to sack the
management of the state radio station. 

Speaking during an unscheduled visit to the broadcasting complex in Birnin
Kebbi, Co. Ubah said the management would lose its job soon if the station
was not heard beyond a 10-kilometre radius. 

"It is better not to have a radio station than having one that does reach
anywhere," he said. 

He also said the corporation's management had always blamed the problem on
its grounded second transmitter, but lamented that no improvement had been
made even after it had been repaired. 

Responding to explanations by some staff that the absence of a 50 kilowatt
transmitter was causing the station's outreach problem, the administrator
said the management had never brought that issue before him. 

Ubah, visibly angered by the situation, remarked, "You don't have to wait
until I visit you before you tell me your problems." 

The corporation's General Manager, Alhaji Bello Ribah and other management
staff were not at the station during the administrator's visit. 

CHIEF JUDGE WITHDRAWS CASE AGAINST JOURNALIST

The Chief Judge of Ondo State, Mr. Justice Sydney Afonja, has withdrawn an
allegation of false publication for which the state correspondent of The
Daily Monitor, Mr. Femi Afolabi, was recently arrested and detained. 

The paper, in its lead story of December 15, published that the Chief
Judge refused to go on leave contrary to the "practice for retiring Chief
Judges to go on three months' retirement leave" before vacating the
judiciary.  He allegedly told the government that he had the right to stay
in office until the last day of his retirement. 

The following day, December the reporter was arrested and detained until
December 18, when he was charged to an Akure Magistrate's Court which
released him on bail and adjourned the case till January 22, this year. 

But Afonja, in a letter to the Police commissioner, Mr. Iliya Lokadang,
titled:  "Withdrawal of Complaint" and dated December 29, (1997), said:
"Upon further deliberations on the matter, it has been decided that the
complaint and the charge against the said reporter be withdrawn in
furtherance of the usual good relationship between the state government,
the judiciary and the press in a common cause of maintaining peace, social
justice and fairplay within the community." 

It said:  "In view thereof, it will be appreciated if you will kindly
ensure that the said decision is carried out by the police prosecutor and
the presiding chief magistrate on the next date to which the matter was
adjourned." 

Copies of the letter were sent to the Attorney-General and Commissioner
for Justice, Secretary to the State Government, the Chief Registrar,
Magistate's Court, Chief Press Secretary to the Administrator and the
chairman of the state chapter of Nigeria Union of Journalists. 

TWO JOURNALISTS REGAIN FREEDOM

 Two journalists, Jenkins Alumona, editor, The News, and Akin Adesokan,
Senior Writer, Post Express, were released from detention January 1, 1998. 

Alumona was picked on Saturday, November 9, last year, at the premises of
the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Victoria Island, Lagos, where he
had gone to present his live sports programme, Masterports. 

Adesokan was arrested at Seme town, on the Nigeria - Benin Republic border
on November 6, 1997 while returning from a Writer-in-Residence programme
in Austria. 

DELTA RADIO ON TEST TRANSMISSION; BAYELSA PLANS STATIONS

The radio arm of the Delta Broadcasting Service (DBS) has commenced test
transmission from the state capital, Asaba, six years after the state was
created. 

The test transmission of the outfit tagged "Rainbow Station", which has
been on for some days, is being received on 97.92 Megarhertz on the
Frequency Modulation (FM) band in Asaba and environs. 

The test transmission has featured musicals mainly from albums released in
the 80's and some gospel tunes combined with cultural music from ethnic
groups in the state. 

The transmission is interrupted at irregular intervals with recorded
message informing listeners that the station was on test transmission and
that they should be free to write to the station on how the signals were
being received. 

Reception of the signals in Asaba has been clear and loud in the morning
hours but it fades off as mid-day approaches. 

It was gathered that the test transmission would be on for some weeks to
give room for perfection before the official commissioning. 

The Commissioner for Information and Culture, Miss Olivia Agbajoh, said
that the establishment of the station was a fulfilment of the state
government's promise to the people. 

About than N178 million ($2.09) has been spent by the government to set up
the radio and television station. 

Meanwhile, the Bayelsa State Government has said it is considering the
establishment of radio and television stations to help publicise its
activities and programmes. 

The state Information Commissioner, Mr. Paul Orieware, journalists since
the state government was trying to put some infrastructures in place, the
people of the area should be effectively carried along by making them
aware of the intentions and actions of government. 

The Commissioner, who said Bayelsa State currently relies on the Rivers
State Broadcasting Corporation, Rivers State Newspaper Corporation and
private newspapers for the coverage and dissemination of its information,
urged journalists in the state to be very discreet in the handling of
information meant for public onsumption. 

Bayelsa was carved out of Rivers State in October 1996.
 
RADIO KUDIRAT GOES ON BREAK

Nigeria's opposition radio, Radio Kudirat Nigeria is on a 2-week break for
maintenance in preparation for improved services in the "crucial months
ahead," reports THISDAY newspaper on January 7, 1998. The recess, it said,
would also allow for the re-packaging of the station's programming,
introduction of new broadcasters, improved scheduling and several
surprises. 

The station went off the air on January 1, 1998, for what the operators
termed "required maintenance work for the crucial months ahead." 

The main mouthpiece of the opposition, Radio Kudirat came into being in
1995 as Radio Freedom International and has been broadcasting on and off,
from band to band.  Its name was changed later in honour of Alhaja Kudirat
Abiola who was gunned down in Lagos on June 4, 1996. 

LET MY HUSBAND COME HOME-Bunmi Ajibade

With her hopes buoyed up by the announcement on November 17, last year, by
the Head of State, General Sani Abacha and later complemented by Chief
Alex Akinyele, the National Reconcilliation Committee NARECOM Chairman,
that some detainees would be released, Mrs. Olubunmi Ajibade, wife of Mr.
Kunle Ajibade, erstwhile Editor of The News magazine and one of the four
journalists serving jail-terms for alleged accessory to the fact of the
March, 1995 coup plot, had looked forward to celebrating the new year eve
with her husband.  In fact, people had already been congratulating her in
advance!  But that was not to be.  Her hopes were dashed as had been the
case several times in the past.  She spoke to The Punch newspaper. 

Excerpts:

Q:There is this information that the Head of State would soon release the
detainees of whom your husband is hopefully one.  Did you hear it?  
A:Yes I did

Q: Where and when did you hear it?  
A: I think I heard it on November 17 from the speech read by the Head of
State, General Abacha.

Q:So you listened to his fourth anniversary speech.
AYes I did.

Q: How are you then planning to recieve him?  A: He would come back and
meet us, no special plan for his reception.  I am not really bothered
about how he would come back.  My prayer is that he should come back alive
and very soon too. 

Q: Assuming he is released today, won't you rush to Makurdi to meet him? 
A:Not at all.  That has been settled, His people, I mean, his collegues at
The News would arrange for his homecoming.  I will be excited to receive
him.  I will be greatly happy but I would not go to Makurdi to bring him
down. 

Q: How have you been coping without Kunle around.
A: Coping?

Q: Yes 
A: God has been by my side and I have been coping. I thank Him for
His mercies. 

Q: Can you relate your experience?  
A: It has not been a pleasant one.  It
has been tough and tough but I have adjusted to the situation and I regard
it as one of the experiences in life. 

Q: Kunle is seen by many people as an almost perfect gentleman who could
not hurt a fly less being a coup plotter as alleged.  What do you think
led to this unfortunate incident? 
A: Like you said, he is a gentleman but the Nigerian government says he is
not, then what can anybody do? This is a government which would call you a
thief and so you are one without being given the opportunity to defend
yourself. 

Q: Recently, the acting Director of Defence Information, Colonel Godwin
Ugbo warned journalists to be cautions of what they write about the
alleged coup plot involving the chief of General Staff (CGS), Lt.-General
Oladipo Diya and 11 others so that they would not find themselves in
Kunle's shoes.  What do you say to this? 

A: That is unfortunate.  You mean journalists whose primary function is to
inform the public should stop doing so because somebody has threatened
somewhere?  What I want to advise is that journalists should tell the
truth, so long what they write or say is the truth, as long as they should
not be intimidated.  All I know is that journalism is for the coward.  At
the point of death journalists should still stand by the truth.  But if
you say because Kunle Ajibade, George Mba, Chris Anyanwu and Ben-Charles
Obi are in prisons and as such others should not say the truth to avoid
similar experience, I believe that would not help the profession and the
country. 

Q:Given the traumatic experience your husband and his family have gone
through, if he is released today, whould you encourage him to go back into
journalism? 

A: Kunle loves the profession very much. That is his chosen career. I
don't have any other job for him. I know it is a job he enjoys much and so
he should continue with it. 

Q:If he should remain as a journalist would you want him to go back to The
News/Tempo?

A:There is no problem with the organisation. He is one of the founding
team of the communication outfit. People should not make the mistake of
thinking that he is in the present predicament because he works with The
News. Not at all, his colleagues in other media ae facing similar
experience. 

Q: With Kunle's experience, would you encourage any of your children to be
a journalist? 

A: Why not? If any of them wishes to be a pressman I will not discourage
him. I want to believe that the profession is a noble one if it is allowed
to be practised. 

Q: It appears the experience has strengthened you.

A: You are right. I did not initially think I could cope. It was so
difficult at the beginning but I must say I am used to the whole thing now
as I now play the role of a mother and a father to our two sons, Mayowa
and Folarin. 

Q: When last did you see him?
A: July last year (1997).

Q: It appears your predicament has made you closer to God?

A: I am a Christian and I am my usual self I have always been close to God
who never fails me. 

Q: How have Kunle's colleagues at work been relating with you?

A: They have been wonderful. They have proven to be friends in need and
indeed. If friendship makes man rich, I must say that Kunle is one of the
richest persons, in the country. His friends have been supportive and I am
quite thankful for this. They are fantastic. Offten times, Kunle's
brothers and sisters come to cheer us up. My mother and mother-in-law do
come to this place too to play with us. I thank God for the glory and
protection over family.  Source: Punch, January 1, 1997. 

FEATURES
DANGER ON THE BEAT

The saying that governments come and go while the people always remain has
a salient instruction: The people always have a stake in every regime's
transition.  In a democracy, transition is treated as a necessary ritual
during which the people renew the legitimacy of representatives by
granting them mandate in elections. 

The role of the press is crucial.  It informs the people of the choices
available in terms of parties, programmes and candidates and serves as the
forum for contenders to contest ideas.  The press also monitors the
political process providing the civic education necessary for citizens
empowerment. 

The disruption of the constitutional order by military rule radically
changes the context and process of regime change.  First, the military
runs a command system and operates laws geared towards strict discipline
and obedience to orders.  Second, because of its unified structure, regime
transition under military rule operates as surprise attack on the ruling
faction by the rival power-seekers. 

Since regime change under the military is an intra-organisation affair and
the military places premium on security, the only role alloted to the
press in such changes is marginal.  Essentially the military uses the
press to inform the public what it thinks the public ought to know about
the regime change. 

This, evidently, conforms with the military's traditional definition of
its information department.  As far as semantics go, the Directorate of
Army Information and Defence Information are by the totalitarian culture
of that institution mega-phones, not watchdogs of the military
establishment.  Their officials can only release information eared "from
above". 

To illustrate, recall the role of Brigadier General Fred Chijuka, former
Director of Defence Information during the alleged Gwadabe coup on June 5,
1995.  Briefing reporters that morning, he stated that the trial would be
in batches and instructed Col. Godwin Ugbo, then his deputy to distribute
the list of suspects.  Long after the briefing was over, the military
spokesperson got a different brief and recalled the reporters.  This time,
he informed the journalists of the decision of the tribunal to take all
the suspects at once.  He ordered the journalists to return copies of the
list of suspects earlier circulated. 

On another occasion, Chijuka said he could not attend the trials which was
going on.  His words: "I have been there again only once and I did not
enter .. I didn't want to because they would not allow me.  I didn't carry
my tag.  Do you want one corporal to harass me saying oga, you know you
are not supposed to be here?" 

If military officials charged with information are under such
restrictions, one can understand why they relate to the press the way they
do.  Col. Godwin Ugbo's statement urging the press to crosscheck
information before publishing is better understood in the context of his
military environment. 

But the obstacle to reporting intra-military regime changes or coups is
not limited to the institutional limitations of its information machinery. 
It is also influenced by the penalties which failure to stage a successful
coup attracts. 

There are two basis laws which govern coup investigation and trial.  These
are the Military Court (Special Powers) Decree of 1984 and Treason and
Other Offences (Special Military) Decrees of 1996.  Offences under those
laws include concealment of knowledge of treason and accessories after the
fact of treason.  Any action which in the view of the tribunal could aid
the execution of a plot could be used to make a case of accessory after
the fact. 

Although these laws have been criticised, there has not been any serious
move to review them.  For instance, Major General David Jemibewon, former
Adjutant General of the Army who is now a lawyer, stated in his book, An
Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Military Law in Nigeria" that: 

"Proceedings of courts-martial consisting of non-legal men and having with
them no judge of law and applying a code that, though penal, is not
specific either in defining the offence penalty or procedure must be
expected to be and presently they are wrong from beginning to the end:
wrong in fact, wrong in law, wrong in the conduct of the inquiry, wrong in
the findings...wrong in everything. 

Although Jemibewon has faulted courts-martial this has not encouraged the
civil courts to exercise their judicial function in protecting public
interest during coup trials.  An example is the case brought before
Justice Vincent Eigbedion of the Federal High Court, Lagos by the family
of Akinloye Akinyemi, a dismissed Major of the Nigerian Army who was
alleged to be suspect in the alleged Gwadabe coup plot, urging the court
to stay his trial. 

Responding on the arguments of the counsel to the plaintiff, the learned
judge said "I will not make an order, but I am not refusing your
application.  I just want you to serve them.  You should not push me to
make an order.  This matter is very sensitive. What if they (the tribunal)
do not obey the order?" 

The above landmines have made independent reporting of coup bids a
dangerous undertaking for the press.  Considering that the press has no
specific protective legislation on which it could rely to defend its
efforts to inform the public, a journalist seeking to report coup bids
independently can only rely on his sense of social responsibility and the
watch-dog role of the press as a public trust. 

To date four journalists Chris Anyanwu, Kunle Ajibade, Ben Charles Obi and
George Mbah - are still languishing in jail on charges of being
accessories after the fact in the alleged Gwadabe coup. 

Certainly, the press needs laws to fall back on.  But until that happens,
it would have to continue to be the proverbial man whose head must be used
to break coconut.  Source: Midweek Concord, January 7, 1997. 

1997:  ZEST AND THE MEDIA
by Odia Ofeimun

In all the hoopla and festivations about the end of year 1997, one
hardly-mentioned event is the shock of the new represented by ThisDay in
Nigerian newspapering.  Not just its propensity to break news and its
colour-seduced face that had drawn the general love of colour in other
newspapers out of the closet. It's also about its back page burner.  All
of it adds up to a stylish concept that advances the business of informing
and entertaining to a top notch.  ThisDay, for this and more, deserves to
be celebrated in the manner in which the arrival of The Guardian, blurbed
ever since as the flagship of Nigerian journalism, has deserved its hype. 
ThisDay may give the impression of transience that The Guardian has never
given, but its innovations are clearly figments of our reality that won't
go away. 

This needs to be said because it is not good for a profession not to know
how to celebrate its own; even if the maverick pedigree of new directions
may raise fears about how well the new directions will last. 

On this score, as 1997 passes away, one wonders why there is so little
self-celebration of the media in a country where no other formality,
institution, or agency has been able to represent the country any better. 
Call it narcicism.  But, looking around, the political terrain calls for
it: with so many journalists jailed for knowing and writing about
allegedly attempted coups! Editors and reporters detained, not for lying,
but writing impressively about events that have actually happened! And,
with news magazines being threatened with dire consequences for playing
like the ombudsman, political party, and human rights counsellor, in a
country where prefects with horsewhips act the ombudsman and political
parties dare not have visions, aggregate opinions, or articulate goals! Or
where it now requires a special certificate granted by traducers of human
rights for a human rights group to exist!  The press may well play like
the lizard, in the proverb, who nods gloatingly as if to say I've tried,
I've tried after successfully leaping to firm earth from a high-branched
Iroko tree. 

The nod that the media can afford does not however amount, nor should it
be allowed, to amount to gloating.  Let's keep it modest.  As it happens,
the war in which the media is engaged is never fully won although so many
battles may be won.  The media, so to say, may succeed in demonstrating
the hollowness of a government pronouncement but it still must leave the
job of a changing government policy to pressure groups, political
activists and gladiators in the field.  The press may paint the picture of
a better society or a better world but those whose job it is to actualise
that better world are out there beyond the precincts of the Editorial
Board or News Conference.  As the saying goes, newspapers do not take over
governments although stupid governments have always essayed to take over
newspapers.  The particularly purblind amongst them have, in fact, always
sought to determine what should appear on the pages of newspapers or on
radio and television.  Because they have no respect for reality, they seek
to turn their wishful thinking into popular norm; they, literally, pursue
the day when they will dribble themselves, or drown in the torpor of their
own retch. 

The pity is that, faced with government and a lot of seduced
collaborators, who gambol in sheer unreality, the public is often forced
to think that the media are being sensational.  Put in another way, the
media are pictured as dredging down to some form of magical realism.  But
not really.  When core organs of central decision-making in a society have
been overtaken by a zeal for sustaining unreality, it is they that ought
to be blamed for creating sensationalism if only because they criminalise
whatever the rest of us would have accepted as normal.  Of course, those
who buy into the offical sense of unreality do not always give the game
away because they manage to give the impression of being smart and
realistic.  Their strength lie in drowing out, or keeping out of
circulation, regular people, such as journalists and writers who simply
wish to be allowed to practice one vocation or profession that they are
happy to call theirs. 

No question about it:  when this is the case, it is serious business being
in a profession that can take you down a dungeon but does not necessarily
put a full plate on your table.  It can sometimes lead to self-doubt. 
Arguably, not every journalist knows how to beat his and her chest about
the civilising influence which the uncelebrated media practitioner
motivates to change the world, to change the country, alter moribund
perceptions, set national agenda and prefigure that 'glorious down' which
some non-poet, but very astute visionary, once made into the poetry of
opposition politics in Nigeira.  To think of it, there is every need to
celebrate the untold, immeasurable influence that the journalist wields.
It's narcission or ego-tripping only when it becomes a daily fare. 

And so, as one year passes, it seems perfectly natural to look around and
thank Goodness that in spite of the financial squeeze that has cut
newspaper buyers off the vendor and the newsstands, there are still large
enough mercies to celebrate. 

There is still a newspaper called The Punch, punching away, revived,
returned to popular favour after a forced-draft hibernation in limbo.  It
is strenghtening a resistant platform against tyrannical rule and joining
in the hotyard that once made the Nigerian Tribune into a legendary
tabloid.  The Tribune had, very sadly, regressed, but true to the spirit
of its founder, it has threshed comeback by re-learning old ropes and
catching on to new ones.  Of course, the Nigerian Tribune always manage,
in hard times, to draw upon its captive consituency.  Its trail of
goodwill is re-demonstrated by the rejuvenating fervour of Uncle Bola's
column on Sunday.  Folksy, readable and forthright, it belongs to that
redoubtable tradition of which Aiyekoto was a Godsend.  Sorely, the
platform misses a John West.  Sorely.  But that's the way of the world: to
miss what cannot be re-couped.  It invites nostalgic revisits to the days
in Nigerian journalism when Ebenezer Williams, Peter Pan, Sad Sam, Allah
De, Tai Solarin, Candido (of the first wave New Nigerian) kept humour and
a flinty satirical eye trained on the public space.  Well, you can't have
the return of all yersters.  Many may not have known how to keep afloat in
the maelstrom of 1997. 

Of course, it would have been such a feast simply to be able to have on
board all of them and those other enliveners of the media-Gbolabo
Ogunsanwo, Stanley Macebuh, Ama Ogan, Olatunji Dare, Sully Abu, Sonala
Olumese, Haruna Mohammed, Sina Odugbemi, Eddie Iroh.  Many of them seem so
distant now even when like the Newswatch trio-Dan Agbese, Ray Ekpu, and
Yakubu Muhammed, they remain-so present. 

One has to save oneself from the heartache of so dampening a year as 1997
by cadging on to those bright stars still undimmed by the fiat of power,
dime, unbelief or exile.  It was particularly heartening to have so many
whose belief in the country kept them impinging on the media space in
various ways.  Of the outsiders, Wole Soyinka has been the easiest easy to
take for granted. Exile or no exile, he is at home in the Nigerian media.
In the same tradition, civic faith simply gushed from the pen of Reverend
Father Mathew Hassan Kukah. Unflagging, relentless, his pulpit never
failed the media. An interventionist of a different key, from a Pat Utomi,
so much quieter in 1997, bristling all through the year as did Jide
Osuntokun and the more desk-bound columnists across the newspapers and
magazines whom I prefer to represent through my two favourite columnists
of the year 1997. 

They are: Ocherome of the Vanguard and Reuben Abati of The Guardian -for
their unstinting commitment to political good sense and style.  Both have
had the analytical savvy, really shaping up in sundry ways across the
media, which makes you think of the surgery of drama among the literary
arts.  Or, of the fluid prose with which Harry Garuba sought to hitch me
closer to the fledging Post Express whose literary supplement, I must say,
lacked no competitor throughout the year.  All the same, I won't let it
pass that I do agree with Abati's kindergarten son who thinks that
columnists like his father can be olodo who do not know that it is better
education to know about an okada before the more generic motorcyle.  It's
for this reason that one relishes the consistency of conversations, like
Bisi Lawrence's in the Vanguard which represents in folksy prose, the
culture heroes who helped give local colour to days gone by.  The matter
was heightened for me on a work-a-day basis whenever I came face to face
in 1997 with the culture and arts pages.  Call it surfing in my proverbial
turf.  It's one area in which the Nigerian media have increasingly bested
itself.  A creeping professionalism in the area, still being resisted in
some print and electronic media, was hamstrung through the year thus
preventing fair representation of the vibrant creativity in the nation. 
But the spirit was always in ascent.  For those who enjoy luxurianting in
anything literary, there were so many saving graces.  Layiwola Adeniji of
The Guardian takes my Christmas turkey for adventurous literary reporting
in the year. Unfazed by in-house tilt from brainstormers to more homely
reportage, his fair stood up with Ibrahim Scheme's deft handling of the
culture pages in the New Nigerian as prime ways of bastioning for the
literary life.  Were they and Obi Nwankama of the Vanguard, Oji Onoko of
ThisDay and Nduka Otiono of Post Express to have slept through the year,
some cynics would have been forced to boast that literary creativity in
Nigeria died of military fiat, SAP, or rude Abachanomics. Thankfully, they
presented widening peepholes through which we could visualise social
potentiality outside the rampart sassiness of empty headed political
propaganda and econo-babble. On the latter, the core legacy in the year
came from the heady syndication from the Financial Times, New York
Times-some consolation for a country where it ought to be possible to buy
the whole loaf rather than chitty stuff from the foreign media. In spite
of the valiant domestication that The Guardian and ThisDay attempted in
wide-bodied articles, the truth is that they merely made us aware of how
little is the capacity for innovative thinking at home and how much has
been rubbished by the regressive economics of military politics in
Nigeria. Anaemic analysis by captains and consultants of industry standing
check by jowl with count-and-number columns on a dying economy completed
the year. It all showed that there is no more "economics" only a taxonomy
of untold robberies sucking up to the age of the World Wide Web. The media
focus on economy simply turned good hands into embarrassed grooms without
their brides. It was just same-same wastage of space reporting politics as
if some rationality were still to be found in the business. 

For that matter, trying to write plainly about a denatured "economy" and a
vastly denatured politics put the media in a form that either normalises
the abnormal or frames a resistant ethic around work-a-day events. This is
where the weeklies such as TheNews, TELL and TEMPO had to come into
contention. Inexorably. It is fair to say that if you didn't read them
during the year, you didn't really know Nigeria. Or that you knew Nigeria
by delayed reflex. The good thing is that the weeklies never angled for
respectability through undue silence or waffling.  In a country where
those who hide information are the first to attack the media for not doing
their job, they unfettered the field of play for others to enjoy the
pleasures of routine journalism. In a different environment, unspoilt by
illiberal governments, they would have been map-makers and hard-drivers
for the fulfilment of social goals. They would have allowed for the dind
of whacky laughter that, these days, only the still vibrant but, largely
de-humoured field of cartooning still manages to achieve. No question,
it's a different field they plough from the so-called junk magazines. I'm
a voter for the so-called junk mags because they often provide more
acutely correct pictures of the Nigerian society than they are given
credit for. They are unbeaten social historians on the run, digging from
the unpleasant to the fatuously celebratory. They make meals of social
graces and disgraces. With the political weeklies, they have formalised a
manner in the public space that, whether we buy it or not, teaches all
comers that no one in public eye ought to pretend to be an island with a
code that we may not affect even if it affects all of us. 

Admittedly, not every citizen may wish to celebrate the media for what
they got. But it is one agency and institution that represents this
country in a way that no other institution, not the law-makers or
administratios (all one and the same coin) nor the military nor the
traditional rulers, nor the business community, nor name other
professionals you like, do.  It may be conceded that if they represent the
country by representing all, they could also represent nobody. Which is
really the point being made: that those who want the media dead may only
therefore succeed in either defeating the whole country or defeating
themselves. This logic makes occassioanl selfpraise for the media a
celebration of the whole country.  Ofeimun, Chairman of the Editorial
Board of The News & Tempo magazines, was until recently, President of the
Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA).  Source:  The News, January 12,
1998. 

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