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Channels TV’s NBC N5million: Intimidation, not regulation
When George Bush decided to take down Saddam Hussein, he packaged what could have been a personal dispute, perhaps in the oil business – since the both were in the same line – as a national issue. He told the world how then Iraqi President, was a global threat to peace and stability.
Of course, only a little scratch on the surface could have revealed the lies behind this line of story.
But many chose to ignore that simple action that would have raised the relevant questions which could, if asked, led to the abatement of the ill-fated onslaught not only Iraq, one of the most thriving countries of the world at that time, but humanity as a whole.
How could any question be asked when the established media took on the project and began to, in a projct, decked on massive propaganda of the German World War era, trumpet every imaginable scar-mongering, scenario that favoured the thinking of the White House in Washington.
Yet, it was that pregnant woman wheeled into the theatre by Bush and his acolytes at The Pentagon, that eventually delivered the hydra-headed monster that ran riot across the world and continues to do so, even till date. Bush did not only remove, Saddam, he killed him. But was that the end of the story?
Just like a man who strikes a machete on a hard rock should expect some to the specs to fly into his eyes, America has remained a major beneficiary, as it it is a victim of that campaign some two decades ago.
Some have said that evil campaign meant on the surface as an attempt to keep the world safe, was a plot for the US to sell weapons, as well as dip its hose into the rich Iraqi wealth, especially oil. But, if true at what cost? For instance, what was the human toll in the end? Millions on and still counting. How much did the US spend to contain the ISIS and how much was spent in the aftermath of the 9-11 including the huntdown of Ossam Bin Ladin and his Al Qaeda. Thse were all linked to the killing of Saddam and distabilisation of Iraq.
It was the same story when Barak Obama and his NATO allies, wanted to kill Muammer Gaddafi of Libya. They employed the same raw power and propaganda to do so. It was the tale of how the late Libyan strong man was “killing his people.” Images of massacres in Benghazi were released to a stunned world to back up the plot, of course with the imprimatur of the same established media.
After the onslaught and the death of Gaddafi, what has been the result? Many countries across Africa has been bearing the brunt of the proliferation of small arms and light weapons including Nigeria, where groups like Boko Haram and Fulani bandits have been on rampage for years.
When Ibrahim Babangida, as Military President was confronted by heavy resistance from Nigerians for annulling the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by the late Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola, he came out with the infamous statement – we’re not only in government, we’re in power, a clear threat to browbeat the agitators and have his way.
So the current din in Nigeria at the moment should not surprise anybody. In fact, few countries of the world have shown the propensity for the use of raw power as Nigeria, at least in Africa. In proving its authority, the institutions have always presented themselves as tools in the hands of government. From the first and second republics till date, public institutions have always come handy in the plots of government to whip the people into line.
While the electoral bodies became the purveyors of discredited elections, the courts were always there to validate them, while both the media and the police, provided the needed buffer in their own ways in this regard. It was in the second republic that Sunday Adewusi’s mobile policemen showed their massive skills in putting down resistance to the shenanigans of then ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN). Those were the days of landslide victories, on the popular Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Nigerians were forced to listen to bogus and bare-faced lies about election results, but were helpless to counter or do anything about it.
Today, however, despite the proliferation of private television houses in the country, and the fact that the NTA and such other megaphones are no longer the sole source of information, the government has found the a way around controlling what the public must hear.
That task is now with the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC). In recent years, this has been clear from the manner the agency carries out its functions. Nobody has been left in doubt that the NBC has become a tool in the hands of the powers that be to protect the government and or its actions against public view.
Take the recent fine of N5million slammed against Channels Television by the agency. What offence could anyone have ascribed to the station or its anchor, Seun Okinbaloye. How was he to know what Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed was going to say. In fact, what the whole public saw was an attempt to caution and direct his guest to the proper conduct. Short of shutting down the programme, what would he have done.
Come to think about it, what really did the Vice Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), say that was out of place? The proper reading of the entire statement, was that it would be illegal for Bola Ahmed Tinubu to be sworn in as President, because he did not satisfy one of the key provisions of the law, mandating a candidate of a political party in an election to score 25 per cent of the votes in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), outside winning majority of lawful votes and winning 25 per cent votes in 24 of the 36 states in Nigeria?
Now the next day or so, the same station, on the same Politics Today programme, gave Festus Keyamo, spokesman of the Tinubu campaigns an equal airtime to counter Datti-Ahmed, where he spoke as forcefully as only he could, using even stronger words to emphasise why Tinubu should be sworn in.
But you would be falling into their deceptive trap to think that it is about what was said and not said, rather than an attempt to ensure that the government position is promoted over and above the public position on matters concerning the country. It is simply a function of not wanting to be held responsible for the embarrassment that has become the lot of the government over the 2023 elections.
It is a damage control mechanism to stifle popular opinions than any form of professional infractions. It is also a warning to other stations to be wary on whom to invite to their programmes. Because other stations may not have a grasp of what their guests would say, the safest bet is to leave out the opposition or at best, invite those with supine, insipid and watery views, who would rather call a spade an agricultural instrument.
Indeed, anybody who knows the workings of these agencies would be surprised that the NBC toed the line it did in this matter. The letter of Bayo Onanuga, to the body calling out Channels, was nothing less than an order for it to act. And what else is there for a body whose leadership are all appointees of the government, but to fall in line? The alternative is resignation. But whoever resigns in Nigeria?
Incidentally, the radio and television, which belong to the broadcast arm of journalism, does not enjoy the level of freedom the print media enjoys as a result of the historical evolution. Newspapers and magazines self-regulate and therefore not open to the vice grip of government interference given out as regulation. Outside libel, they have very little to fear from government outside, perhaps lack of patronage in terms of advertisements.
Besides, at the extreme, where there were deliberate clampdowns, especially during military regimes, such moves had always been met with stiff resistance as they had always fought back through many means, including the courts.
The outcome is that the government even in many times of great discomfiture and annoyance, remain circumspect in toeing the line of any official actions. Thus, confrontations are few and far in-between.
In the instant case, it is clear that the attempt on Channels TV smacks more of intimidation than regulation. What remains is if the organisation would allow itself to be so gagged or fight back. What it would of course determine the role the broadcast segment of the Nigerian media contributes in the larger picture of nation-building. Will it buckle or fight back? Whichever way, Nigeria’s future is at stake. So is its democracy.
I will always refer to the encounter I once had with Kenneth Idiodi. He was then the leader of the Rosicrucian Society in Nigeria, otherwise known as Amok. It was a sit-down at Zodiac Hotel Enugu. Then, I was the reporter of The Guardian in the Coal City.
You know the Amok faith bases its philosophy or belief on the law of Retributive Justice – the law of Karma. That is to say, everything you do in life has its rewards or punishment in equal measure – much like the measure you give, the measure you receive.
I don’t know how much this society draws or links this belief from or with the Bible, but I do recall Jesus Christ warning Simon Peter – return your sword to the scabbard – for he who kills by the sword, dies by the sword.
As a child growing up I listened to one of the epics of Oriental Brothers with the lyrics – ogbu mma ga-esi n’mma na, ogba egbe ga-esi n’egbe na ooo! Translated – he who kills by the sword will die by the sword, he who kills by the gun will die by the nozzle of the gun.
Now, here is where this is relevant in present Nigerian reality – the reason I’m putting details of that encounter out publicly once again, having done so previously.
During that encounter, Idiodi used one event in Nigeria to illustrate his point. He told me of a Nigerian leader who commanded the troop that carried out the Asaba massacre in the heat of the Nigerian civil war – an episode, said to have claimed over 2,000 able-bodied men who had come out to welcome the Nigerian soldiers with songs and dances only to fall in the hail of bullets that descended on them like rainstorms – was not spared by fate.
That commander was to meet his own death in a hail of bullets even as a Head of State. He never mentioned the name of the military top brass. But I used my tongue to count my teeth to come to the answer. You could also do same – use your tongue.
Now, how does this relate? You may have followed the outing of General Yakubu Gowon at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja, where he presented his autobiography titled: My Life of Duty and Allegiance, that contained what seemed his memoir on the Nigerian civil war, which he prosecuted as Head of State.
I’m sure you must have been observing the debate therefrom that event. Now, I’m not so much enamoured of the debate as I’m of the nuances surrounding that unfortunate episode and the role of Gowon in it, given my takeaway from that Idiodi encounter some two decades ago.
Does Gowon, now a nonagenarian really believe that presenting a pious, if not saintly account of himself to the world as snippets of his book, which I picked up here and there suggests, truly suffices for the atrocities of that period?
Take the Asaba massacre for example. Was that the handiwork of Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, whom the former Head of State seems to blame for everything that went wrong. Was he also the one that commanded that mass slaughtering of innocent men?
Under your nose as Head of State, you watched citizens slaughtered mercilessly like infested herds in the streets – you watched young girls corralled into leprosy colonies and wantonly raped before being wasted – you watched as train coaches bearing people fleeing the scene were stopped and their human cargoes thrown alive into River Benue like rotten goods for fishes to feast on – you watched all these and didn’t lift a finger.
Then as Head of State, you not only supervised but watched millions of children with distended stomachs, tiny feet, glazy eyes, heavy heads on ropelike necks, practically begging for death to come quickly and save them from further punishment.
You supervised and watched the cataclysmic eruptions from the blitzkrieg on churches, markets and hospitals – all to keep Nigeria together. In your mind the brutal and merciless butchery of innocent people who were not soldiers and had nothing to do with the war could be explained away just like that?
O! It was Ojukwu that caused it. Ojukwu was the one who released the bombs, caused the blockades that led to the kwashiorkor that killed millions or other atrocities thereof? What a pity!
Now, I return to Idiodi. How else could anyone interpret today’s Nigeria without introducing the law of retributive justice that the Amok leader spoke of? How do you fault the link of the commander who massacred over 2,000 souls dying by the barrel of the same gun, even as Head of State?
How could anyone fail to relate what is happening to our Gowon today with the past? This is a Geneal that wakes up to see hundreds of his brothers and sisters being buried in mass graves as was done during the onslaught he supervised against another people and he still thinks it has nothing to do with him?
Now, the story you told at that event in Abuja on Tuesday, is not new. You simply repeated yourself. My interpretation of that event is that you’re a man undergoing daily torture. You wouldn’t be a human being otherwise, given what is before you, which didn’t start today.
You’re probably trying to escape your fate by appealing to public sympathy. How helpful could that be in the face of the clear evidence of your culpability in the deliberate wasting of more than three million souls? Nobody would believe you.
Yes! They could humour you. But that’s the best anyone could do for you. I hear money rained like a fountain and that you left the scene with billions of naira in your kitty. At 90? Haba General!
Now, here is the thing General. None of these would help.
None would work. You have tried prayers. But you forget that the prayer of sinner is an abomination and a reproach before God, unless he repents. You have also written the book. Surely, this too would end up in the trashcan of history – meaningless piece of conjectures, propaganda, half-truths and outright lies – perhaps!
But, why don’t you try the one thing you have been running away from, for more than five decades – go on your knees in total supplication and surrender, repentance and penance – then rise, call all Nigerians and empty yourself with the truth.
Thereafter openly apologise to the millions of souls whose tormenting wailing you probably hear every day during your disturbed sleep and in your quiet moments, but choose to suppress with these baby tales. Ask them for forgiveness, genuinely and see. There may lie the answer you seek.
Try that and see if it wouldn’t be a more efficacious cure for this decades-old wound than this Ojukwu-bashing and those wasted prayer sessions. You might not only have atoned for the past, but saved the future. May God guide you.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice
“Now that the court has ruled against it, we are sure that, in the coming days, we will witness a mass exodus from the ruling party,” were the words with which the African Democratic Congress (ADC) welcomed Wednesday’s ruling of the Federal High Court, Abuja reversing the deadline for party primaries, among others.
Bolaji Abdullahi, spokesman, who conveyed the party’s excitement over the development, said it viewed the ruling as vindication of its objections to key aspects of the electoral body’s guidelines at the time they were issued.
Recalling its specific objections to the strict timelines on membership registration as well as the conduct of party primaries, the statement, said: “The decision of the court on these issues, including those that directly contradict the constitution, is therefore a welcome vindication of our position.”
Stressing that the ruling, which removed the impediment placed by the guidelines on politicians who wished to seek alternative platforms to contest elections, was a positive development that would promote freedom of association, the statement, added: “We believed at the time that that particular restriction was designed to prevent people from leaving the ruling party, APC.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Cuba on Thursday that the United States was laser-focused on changing the communist system, after the island was stunned by a US indictment of its former president Raul Castro.
The US military announced that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its escort warships had entered the Caribbean, although President Donald Trump, asked if the deployment was meant to intimidate Cuba, said, “No, not at all.”
Rubio, a Cuban American and vociferous opponent of Havana’s government, described the island 90 miles (145 kilometres) from the US shore as a “failed state” as it suffers a major economic crisis.
“Their economic system doesn’t work. It’s broken, and you can’t fix it with the current political system that’s in place. What they’ve gotten used to all these years is just buying time and waiting us out.
“They’re not going to be able to wait us out or buy time. We’re very serious. We’re very focused. The US preference is always a diplomatic solution, but President Donald Trump has other options at his disposal.”
Stating that Cuba had tentatively accepted an offer by the United States of $100 million in aid in return for reforms, he said it was unclear if the United States would accept Cuba’s terms, as Washington insists on circumventing the military-backed conglomerate GAESA, which dominates the island’s economy.
Rubio said Thursday that the GAESA chief’s Florida-based sister, Adys Lastres Morera, had been arrested and was being held by US immigration authorities, adding in an X post: “Managing real estate assets…while also aiding Havana’s communist regime, until I terminated her permanent resident status.”
The charges against Raul Castro — younger brother of Fidel Castro, the late iconic US nemesis who led Cuba’s communist revolution that culminated in 1959 — stem from the deadly downing of two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots in 1996.
Cuban authorities called on citizens to protest the “despicable” indictment, with the official newspaper Granma urging Cubans to gather outside the US embassy in Havana on Friday at 7:30 am (1230 GMT).
“This isn’t really an accusation, something from more than 30 years ago, but rather a public attack on a public figure,” Fabian Fernandez, a 30-year-old accountant, told AFP in Havana.
Trump in January seized on a US domestic indictment of Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro to send in US forces to depose him and take him into custody.
“The idea is to say, we can do to you what we did to Nicolas Maduro,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
The Maduro operation led to the end of free oil from Venezuela to Cuba, which relied on its ally for nearly half its needs.
Cubans have suffered power outages of up to 20 hours a day and taps running dry.
Runaway inflation has caused the price of basic goods to soar and mountains of trash have piled up on the streets of Havana.
In addition to murder, Castro has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and destruction of aircraft.
The Cuban government called the 1996 shootdown was “legitimate self-defense” against an airspace violation.
China and Russia both criticized Trump’s steps on Cuba, which come as he tries to end an unpopular war he started with Israel against Iran.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a press briefing that Washington “should stop brandishing the sanctions stick and the judicial stick against Cuba and stop threatening force at every turn.”
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We believe that under no circumstances should such methods — which border on violence — be used against either former or current heads of state.
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