For broadcasting, a meeting long awaited

I know the fire in broadcasting – pictures and sound, like wind, the impact can be instantaneous and spread very rapidly. The landfall, if you want to describe it that way, can be extensively devastating in the extreme but can also be wholesome and redeeming. But it is the danger in broadcasting that authorities fear; the reason broadcasting was never going to be deregulated in Nigeria until as recently as 1992.

To handle the hidden demons of broadcasting some governments ensure there is regular stakeholder engagement with broadcasters to lure them into the activities of government and let them begin to have a buy-in in their activities or sometimes endure some vicarious guilt where certain disclosures cannot be made. Those still buoyant enough to enjoy the conspicuous taste of satellite TV will confess to seeing the American President address the media on a regular basis from the Rose Garden but you need to have some level of chutzpah to control the fallout.

You can then imagine how overjoyed I was recently when the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, called a session with members of the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON) to brief them of the efforts of government in resolving the #EndSARS intractable problem. For me, this meeting should have happened a long time ago, when the nightmare started to unfold.

My optimism is pegged on the fact that I love developmental journalism. I have always been of the opinion that no matter how damaging a situation is, there is a good that can emerge from it, a seed of hope in the wreckage of disaster. There is always that good story to tell, of human efforts working against the wind to bring hope to a despairing lot. There is always a good story buried in the debris only if you look hard enough, the fire you see will reflect light on darkness instead of burning everything around it.

Even if you don’t ask me, I will volunteer that the #EndSARS movement was a good story, rich in tapestry, with all the doggedness, industry and creativity of the young people but for the seed of darkness sowed as infiltrators from a source everybody is scared to dig up. The #EndSARS movement is a proof that the future is not yet blighted of hope and capacity.

However, in the November 27, 2020 meeting, the Minister traced the history of #EndSARS and submitted that “the Federal Government was not only responsive but was also very responsible in its handling of the demands of the #EndSARS protesters. We met the five demands. Some, like disbandment of SARS, were met immediately while we kick started the process of meeting others that cannot be done with an immediate pronouncement.  Despite this, the protest continued and the demands kept expanding, until the protest was hijacked, leading to unprecedented violence characterized by killings, maiming, arson, looting, etc.,” the Minister told his audience.

The Minister was speaking to an informed audience. Some of the people have stations that covered the protest and were still running with the story. Some have been fined for taking materials from unverified source, and will obviously be sulking, while others had their stations attacked or burnt completely. The Minister was talking to an audience that had its own story to tell only if it was allowed that little whiff of immodesty.

Alhaji Mohammed is working for a government, so when his indignation boils over, you really need understand. “In the wake of our spat with CNN,” he pursued his point, “people are asking: Why didn’t our own broadcast stations take the lead in reporting the incident at Lekki? Why didn’t they take the lead in presenting an authentic narrative? Why must we allow the foreign broadcast stations, some of which didn’t even have correspondents on ground, to dictate the pace, thus misleading the world? These are questions begging for answers and I think for BON, this must form part of their review of the coverage of the whole crisis.”

There is some irony at play here. In the early days of this administration, when the government had something to say, it would usually go to BBC, Al Jazeera, VOA and CNN! Naturally, the plethora of stations which made up BON membership were enraged that Nigerian news came to them from abroad. So, is there a trust deficit here?

But the irony is playing out at different levels, on the part of the Nigerian broadcasters that have suddenly become beautiful brides in the new discourse and on the part of the Minister who may not have done enough to find out what the Nigerian stations really know or have concerning the #EndSARS movement which got to a tragic climax on October 20, 2020, and the days following with blistering mayhem. In trying to make some broadcasters speak concerning the meeting, one was stone-walled, just the same way they may have responded to the Minister when he made his very lengthen presentation. However, quite a couple of them are quick to say that they have materials and information which they couldn’t broadcast for patriotic reasons. But as in all things human, there were gaffes, very costly blunders that shouldn’t be made with such adding some avoidable fuel to a festering situation.

In a media management project one would usually talk of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the absolute truth to help build a case for such enterprise. Has the concourse for truth be properly established in the government’s narrative of the #EndSARS story?

The Minister gave grim details of lives lost, of security personnel that gruesomely met their untimely end and of humongous property lost in a moment of unexpected madness. There was no mention of casualties on the part of the protesters who were perhaps only scared away with blank ammunition although it has been disclosed that the soldiers were also carrying some live ammunition. Recall there is this very creative story of “a massacre without bodies.”

What happened at the Lagos Tollgate on October 20, 2020? Would it have been out of place for government to appropriate all sides of the story and render an apology if it was necessary? Instead we are looking for bodies supposedly killed during the protest arguing that the lack of such troubling evidence is an indication that nothing happened. Really? The story in the land is not good. We are losing too many people at peace time, the people are being reduced to a shade less than humanity, and the government ought to be concerned about the residual effects.

We are also talking technology to bear the veracity of reality, some imaginative trappings of byzantine occurrences. Dear friend, technology can be a freak and can put to shame our age long tradition of doing things and expecting the outcome to be shrouded in mystery. Oftentimes, technology refuses to keep secrets. That is what happened. Technology refused to keep secrets at Lekki Tollgate on October 20, 2020.