NIGERIA MEDIA MONITOR
#03-24 June 22, 1998
* CHRIS ANYANWU RELEASED * GROUPS QUESTION SELECTIVE RELEASE OF DETAINEES * GOVT URGED TO ABROGATE ANTI-PRESS LAWS * REGULATORY FOUNDATIONS FOR TELECOMM IN NIGERIA * GUERRILLA JOURNALISM IN NIGERIA NEWSREEL CHRIS ANYANWU RELEASED Imprisoned publisher and editor-in-chief of The Sunday Magazine (TSM), Christine Anyanwu, has been released. A government statement issued on June 15, said new military Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar had approved unconditional amnesty for Anyanwu on health grounds. She was released along with former head of state, General Olusegun Obasanjo, deposed Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki; former Oyo State governor, Chief Bola Ige; former Secretary General of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Workers (NUPENG), Frank Kokori; and former president of the Petroleum and National Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN), Chief Milton Dabibi. Also released were medical doctor and rights activist, Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti, defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP), presidential aspirant, Chief Olabiyi Durojaiye and Nwen Udah. Anyanwu's release was effected by the prison authorities in Kaduna on June 17. She arrived Lagos the same day. In July 1995, a special military tribunal secretly tried Anyanwu with 3 other journalists and sentenced them to life imprisonment for "accessory after the fact of treason" The sentences were commuted to fifteen years in prison by the Gen. Abacha-led Provisional Ruling Council. She was kept in Gombe Prison, north-eastern Nigeria, from where she was transferred to the Kaduna prison. The amnesty announced for Anyanwu and the eight others said nothing about other journalists in various prisons and detention camps across the country. Prominent among them are Kunle Ajibade (The News/TEMPO), Ben-Charles Obi (Classique), and George Mbah (TELL). Others are Bagauda Kaltho, Femi Ojudu, Tokunbo Fakeye, Rafiu Salau, and Moshood Fayemiwo. GROUPS QUESTION SELECTIVE RELEASE OF DETAINEES Pro-democracy and human rights groups have criticised what they described as the "selective release" of nine persons out of the over 150 being held by security agents nationwide. A statement by the Campaign for Democracy (CD) said the "selective approach to the release of political prisoners is aimed at fostering an illusion of freedom". Although it welcomed the release of its chairman, Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti, the statement insisted that "nothing short of a general amnesty for all political prisoners including Chief M.K.O Abiola, winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, will do". The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) said "the number released was far short of the 156 currently languishing unjustifiably in various detention centres and prisons in the country". The National Association of Nigeria Students (NANS) asked for adequate compensation for the detainees. It also called for the release of Chief M.K.O Abiola and the others. The Nigerian Bar Association (Lagos branch) asked the head of state to release Abiola and enter into a meaningful dialogue with him". It also demanded amnesty for General Oladipo Diya, Col. Lawan Gwadabe and others convicted in 1995 and 1998 by Special Military Tribunals (SMT) for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government of late General Sani Abacha. GOVT URGED TO ABROGATE ANTI-PRESS DECREES The Federal Government has been called upon to abrogate all decrees impeding the effective performance of journalists in the discharge of their duties. Participants at a one-day sensitization workshop of the National Association of Woman Journalists (NAWOJ), resolved that government needed to encouraged a free press in Nigeria by abrogating such decrees. In a seven-point communique issued at the end of the workshop, the participants said the journalists be adequately remunerated so that they could play their roles of informing women on active participation in politics. The workshop also canvassed for the establishment of a proper machinery to educate the people against political violence which "is a cankerworm that has eaten deep into the fabrics of our political life". REGULATORY FOUNDATIONS FOR TELECOMM IN NIGERIA (2) It is interesting to note that although Nigeria did not fully take part in this important negotiation as part of the GATS/NGBT negotiating process, the underlying goals and the existing rudimentary regulatory framework enshrined in the Act substantially conforms with the cardinal principles generally, adopted in the text of the WTO Negotiations by the NGBT. With the emergence of Liberalistion and competition firmly established as the testament of the new multi-latral trading system, telecomunications is bound to reap the benefits of enhanced development both in network and service provision. The Nigeria Telecommunications sector have responded positively to this development by the gradual process of deregulation of its telecommunications industry. Deregulation does not means absence of regulation at all. It only provides the rules of the game and ensures fairness by all competitors. However, real deregulation can be seen when regulators focus more on consumer issues and leave market forces to take care of most inter-operator issues. With the removal of monopoly of NITEL, the commissions is expected to step up its regulatory role with a view of not merely ensuring competition, but more importantly, ensuring systems efficiency and the prevention of anti-competitive practices in the industry. There is no doubt that commission as the institutional regulator will assume more prominet role in the ensuing dispensation which machinery have already being set in motion. The global trends in the direction of liberalisation and competition makes it a necessity for Nigeria to fully integrate as a player in the world and also the regional markets. >From the Africa development perspective, African countries have been enjoined to join forces "at the continental and sub-regional levels so as to promote the greatest extent possible the integration of their network and services and hence of their economies." This initiative in The African Green Paper, though with no binding force, achieves the desired objective of promoting regional awareness for integration and the endorsement of specific imperatives for development such as movement of public sector activity from ownership to policy making and regulation, private sector participation and market-oriented operation, and the introduction of competition into service provision. Although, this effort emanates from ITU in collaboration with some African administrations and organisations; it complements the entire WTO initiatives. on the whole, there is no doubt that the WTO protocols have engendered significant African consciousness on the potentialities of its telecommunication capacities and market and have created the forum through the GATS/NGBT process to participate in the ongoing global changes. This provides more than enough ground for intensified action in the Nigerian scene in order to catch up with the pace of development in other African countries like Ghana, Coted 'Ivorie and South Africa who has introduced liberalisation of telecommunications clearly behind Nigeria. It is submitted from the foregoing analysis of developments that Nigeria, within a period of a decade (1985 - 1993) has progressively achieved at least five basic initiatives consistent with the evolution of a viable and deregulated telecommunications environment. *a formal separation of telecommunications from the old P&T operations (starting with NET and now NITEL as an independent entity). *commercialisation of NITEL. *establishment of an independent regulatory body, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC); *introduction of competition and diversity in service by licensing operators and prospective carriers (demonopolisation of NITEL). .Privitisation of NITEL as a progressive step towards liberalisation, enhanced private sector participation and investment, and systems effeciency in telecommunications in Nigeria. These are part of the materials for laying a solid foundation from which future reforms and developments can legitimately take place. With more than a basic and rudimentary telecommunications law in the Act, there is still a basis for legislative and regulatory reform generally and as it affect some of the fundamental objectives for setting up of the commission under the Act. With the operation of NITEL in an inchoate state of demopolisation through interconnecting agreements and libralising initiatives, the path to enhanced competition and market efficiency in the Nigerian telecommunication sector is clearly evolving. This is particularly so having established earlieir in this paper that there is indeed no legal basis for NITEL's continued monopoly since the Act came into force and that NITEL ought to be subject to the regulatory powers of the commission. There is also the need for specific amendments to further ensure compatibility of our laws with the WTO/GATT specific initiatives on basic telecommunications and the commitments reached in the NGBT negotiations. The commission, in pursuance of its statutory function of managing Nigeria's input in thet provision of international standard for telecommunications should take more active part in the WTO/FATT protocols on telecommunictions. The independence and autonomy of the commission cannot be overemphasised, particularly in view of the complexities of the policies and economics of telecommunication in the context of the Nigerian environment. It needs to be insulated from government dominance both in ownership and control. Nigeria and other developing countries can no longer afford to leave telecommunications to civil service administration as public sector can no longer manage alone the change required to meet to the challenges of network expansion and consumer demand. However, there is today no sound basis in the argument that the traditional role of government in providing essential utilities such as water, road, energy including telecommunications services dictate the need to control or own the means of providing them. This thinking only provides a model for government monopoly with the attendant restricted market access and other barriers to trade. The conntemporary and radical shift in many jurisdictions has been to create environment for these utilities to be efficiently deployed and profitably owned. The view taken here is that as essential utilities, government's responsibility to ensure their effective and efficient provision does not necessarily approximate to their owning or controlling them, rather, it should create a conducive and regulatory environment for their provision and conduct. Hence, the government assumes the role of the regulator. This regulatory role has extended to virtually every sector like the financial insitutions, education, and energy including tourism. The privatisation of NITEL with the retention of 40 per cent equity, though many have conceptually satisfied the IMF recognised standard (50 per cent) for government participation, at best it merely depicts a picture of psudo-privatisation in the Nigerian context. A more significant reduction in government's ownership and control to say 15 per cent or less would effectively and meaningfully open up enterprise to full benefits of increased public and consumer confidence which would in turn engender increased pivate sector investment, competition and the desired market efficiency, coupled with a conducive regulatory environment provided by the commission. Telecommunications development is an indispensable agent in dynamic process of economic growth and in the emerging world order. Our participation and integration in this order is equally a national imperative notwithstanding the intractable problems of deployment of resources and organisation of the environment, The phenomena of competition and liberalisation are the acceptable means or process of achieving the desired goal, they are not the ends themselves. These processes are already taking place and must be kept on course. Concluded. The first part of this article was published in the last edition. Adewopo is of Department of Business Law, Faculty of Law, Lagos State University (LASU), Lagos, as well as a partner, Laoye & Adewopo, a firm of legal consultants. GUERRILLA JOURNALISM IN NIGERIA by Sunday Dare. As you read this, armed Nigerian military officers have sealed off the administrative offices of TheNews/TEMPO/PMNews group, for which I work. They have carted away all the computers, printers and scanners and have arrested seven staff members. Soon I will slip back across the border of my motherland and, with my colleagues, attempt to keep alive one of the few journalistic enterprises trying to tell the truth about political events in Nigeria. Fifteen years ago, no one thought things would get this bad. In the previous decade petrodollars had poured into Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, and all sectors of its economy had been rapidly developing. For the greater part of this period the government of Gen. Yakubu Gowon was in power, but the Nigerian press nevertheless enjoyed considerable, though not absolute, freedom. During the eighties, however, things began to change under decrees giving new powers to the military, which has ruled Nigeria for all but brief periods since the country gained its independence in 1960. Several journalists were arrested on trumped-up charges and handed long jail terms. And by the late eighties, when I began my journalism career, Nigerians who earlier had seen members of the military as messiahs began to perceive them as being worse than the civilian rulers. In 1992 things came to a head as the press took on Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, then Nigeria's military ruler, and exposed his secret plan to hang on to power by every conceivable means. Proscriptions, arrests, death threats, burning of newspaper offices and seizures of magazines became norm. As a correspondent of TheNews/TEMPO magazines - PM News, a newspaper, had not yet been started at that time - I was in the centre of the heat. In a vindictive move, Babangida removed his defense minister, Gen. Domkat Bali, then the longest-serving general in the Nigerian Army. Unwilling to be so disgraced, Bali resigned his commission and withdrew from the military government. As the correspondent based in the Middle Belt, the geographical region from which Bali hails, I was assigned to seek him out for an interview. An insider, General Bali not only confirmed Babangida's political agenda but also predicted that if Babangida refused to hand over power to a democratically elected government, a coup d'etat would remove him. The second day after the published interview hit the newsstands, a combined team of the state security service and the police stormed our corporate headquarters in central Lagos, tore down office doors, broke into the newsroom and impounded every available copy of that edition. On the street, agents and vendors were harassed and their copies seized. I melted into the underground, along with my editors, to escape arrest. Less than two months later, The News was banned and its editors were declared wanted by the government. Currently, sixteen editors and reporters of the magazine and its sister publications remain in detention without trial, while The News's senior correspondent, Bagauda Kaltho, has been missing for three years with no trace. For me, there have been many close brushes with arrest. Last September, security agents of Gen. Sani Abacha, Nigeria's current military ruler, stormed our office because of that week's cover story on the panic generated by Abacha's ill health. While they tried to force their way through the gates, the editor and I took flight, some into the lavatory and some onto the rooftop or inside the office wardrobes. Others headed for the high fence separating our building from the next one, for a dangerous climb to safety. Paralyzed with fear, I prayed and asked for divine intervention. I made for the fence and escaped. Out of this consistent pattern of persecution has come a form of publishing we call guerrilla journalism. Under guerilla journalism, unconventional means of news gathering and conducting editorial meetings have been adopted. The idea of the static editorial setting is forgotten. Watch carefully - in the stadiums, theaters, taxicabs, bars, restaurants an hotel lobbies, the groups of four or five casually dressed people that you see are the new breed of guerrilla journalists, debating story ideas and deciding the contents of what might turn out to be the next explosive edition. They are constantly on the move, to keep ahead of the security agents. Most of us now move around, sleeping and holding meetings in designated hideouts. Our homes are no-go areas, because of the fear of being abducted at ungodly hours. Most of the time we make do with sleeping on rugs, tables and rows of chairs. Practicing journalism the guerrilla way means wearing ragamuffin or casual dress and carrying a small backpack containing essentials just in case the need arises to run for cover in the course of duty or one receives an invitation for a chat with the security agents, from which one is never sure of returning. Social life is restricted and circle of friends very tight. Constant alertness is the rule. Also, as part of guerrilla journalism, the production schedule has been reduced from the normal six days to three, with most of the editing work done in a mobile way-moving from one hideout to another and dropping off materials at different points. Production is largely clandestine. This strategy, though highly effective, is risky and tedious, and it raises costs. Circulation presents the toughest task. Several times, rather than send parcels by air to our distributors, we opted for private and commercial vehicles, which usually have to travel as much as ten hours under cover of night to make deliveries to agents and vendors in the outlying areas. For about ten weeks, at one point, editors and reporters distinguished as circulation men and vendors took to the streets on foot and motorcycle because the licensed agents and vendors had been harassed and warned not to sell our magazines. Four months ago I took a respite from this struggle. Now it is time for me to rejoin a respite from this struggle. Now it is time for me to rejoin the effort to advance the cause of democratic government, a cause to which my colleagues and I are irrevocably committed. * Dare, General Editor of The News * TEMPO magazines, first contributed this piece to The Nation magazine in New York, U.S. A.
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